Just how many people are behind the polygamy push?
Irfan Yusuf; 27/6/08
Listeners to Triple J’s Hack program learned this week that some Muslims want Muslim men to have the right to marry more than one wife. Indeed some Muslim men, including Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Association (whose members, I suspect, share the same surname and hold dinner meetings each night in the same home), have made serious attempts at it. Really? Australians committing the offence of bigamy? Muslims wanting to introduce sharia into Australia? Is the dream of Camden’s fundamentalist mayoral candidate (and comedic character on SBS’s new talk show Salam Cafe) Uncle Sam coming true? Then again, we are talking about Muslims. Even in Australia, the thinking goes, some traces of their weird Middle Eastern faith and culture must exist. And, as always, some of our media tend to jump on the pronouncements of self-styled Muslim “leaders” for clues about the secrets this allegedly non-integrating fifth-column is hiding from the rest of us.
Gender equality and polygamy are not compatible
Editorial; 27/6/08
Multicuturalism has been a contentious doctrine in Australia, while also being a celebrated and mostly uncontentious fact. Those who complain most loudly about the use of the term typically live peaceably, and sometimes even amicably, alongside those whose religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds differ considerably from their own. To that extent, the cultural diversity created in Australia by post-World War II migration and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy in the 1960s and ’70s has created one of the world’s most tolerant societies. But that diversity has in turn been dependent on a shared acceptance of the rule of law, and of fundamental values on which Australian law is based. Sometimes, however, an issue arises that draws attention to the fact that without at least that measure of agreement even the cultural diversity of which contemporary Australians are rightly proud would not be possible.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/editorial