NPR reports that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 Muslims practicing polygamy in the US. Your thoughts?

Question

Some Muslims in U.S. Quietly Engage in Polygamy

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

All Things Considered, May 27, 2008 · Although polygamy is illegal in the U.S. and most mosques try to discourage plural marriages, some Muslim men in America have quietly married multiple wives.

No one knows how many Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families. But according to academics researching the issue, estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.

You can see some of the women involved in polygamous marriages in the lobby of Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit women's center in New York City. It bursts with color as a dozen women in bright African dresses and head wraps gather for a weekly noon meeting for West African immigrants. The women come each week to this support group where they discuss hard issues, such as domestic abuse, medical problems, immigration hurdles and polygamy.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90857818

Answer 1

Look if everyone is over 18 let them be. Who cares? For a country built on the principle of freedom we do tend to get in other people's business quite a bit.

Answer 2

If they are happy with their lives and the women are adults what does it matter?

Answer 3

I don't know how many there are but i do know this. that  polygamy is wrong, i don't care how they put it. they have different beliefs and it is just down right wrong. we have to pray for those people and their children. what they are doing to do is not at all right, so let all not to forget to pray for them. when social services came in to get those children's  that was the best thing that could ever happen to them. i pray that those childrens are safe and well procted from that situation.

Answer 4

I am in a polyamorous relationship. I enjoy polyamory, and know it is not for everyone, but if it works for all involved in the relationship I am all for it.

Answer 5

It is against the law, so the law should be enforced on the issue.

Morally, I see nothing wrong with it. If all parties involved agreed freely then I think it is okay.

Answer 6

The women in the report were all over 18, so I don't really care. If some man wants to complicate his life to the point of near insanity, that is his right. One wife is great, but I can easily see how two or more would wear you out mentally and physically.

Answer 7

It's strange that Hugh Hefner can live with multiple girlfriends and people seem to think it's ok.  He isn't breaking any laws.  Were he to marry them, it would be different.

The vast majority of cultures in our world's history have been polygamous.  If the relationships are consensual, not abusive, and everyone is over eighteen, then I don't understand the problem.  A man can only actually be married to one of the women, anyway, and the others are more like live-in girlfriends who call themselves wives.  This happens all the time; how many men sleep with more than one woman at once?  How many of them are arrested?

Also--I have to address a frequent misunderstanding that annoys me.  Mormons don't practice polygamy.  They haven't for well over one hundred years.  There are groups with similar names that do, but Mormons do not.  Just wanted to clear that up for some of the people who have already responded.

Answer 8

It terrifies me. I know how hard we fought for equal rights for women in this country, and I think this is another indication that we can go backwards in a flash.

People who practice polygamy do NOT respect women. Their children are brought up to not respect women.

I expect people who come to our country to do so because they respect our institutions and one of those is monogamy. the countries they came from are backwards and poor, and they are bringing the reason for that with them.

Polygamy is a backwards system that only rewards rich powerful men at the cost of the men who then can't find any wives, and the women. It belongs in the past with slavery.

Answer 9

As long as it's between adults....and they are able to afford it(I'm think one man three wifes getting welfare..I'm not paying for it)

I dont really see how it's my business.  I dont think it's healthy...nor would I participate.  But it doesn't impeded my own rights nor does it harm others.

Answer 10

I heard the same report about republicans.

Answer 11

This is from psychology today, '10 politically incorrect truths about human nature'. most definitely worth reading..

"#2

#  Humans are naturally polygamous

The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.

Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.

Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.

In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)

#3

#  Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy

When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.

The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.

Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.

#4

#  Most suicide bombers are Muslim

According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, a comprehensive history of this troubling yet topical phenomenon, while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is always Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions?

The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in it). It may have nothing to do with the religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a lot to do with s*x, or, in this case, the absence of s*x.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single."

Answer 12

Sounds no different than Mormons who practice polygamy.

(I agree with afraidofamericans, it's against the law, but morally speaking I'm indifferent to it)