Mission & Justice

Corinne Grant; 29/6/08

Sheik Khalil Chami of the Islamic Welfare Centre has called for polygamous relationships to be recognised. As far as I can tell, he’s talking about the practice of men having multiple wives, a bit like that Mormon show on SBS starring Bill Paxton and Chloe Unpronounceable Surname. No one’s mentioned women having multiple husbands. In my opinion, this is a massive oversight and needs to be corrected immediately. There is a very strong argument for female polygamy, or polyandry, if you want to get technical. In fact, I would go so far as to say that only women should be allowed multiple partners. Firstly, chicks have become more and more demanding since feminism came along and the poor guys are having a hard time meeting all of our demands. Maybe it’s time we gave them a break and learnt to spread our uppity ways over a broader base. So, I’d like 15 husbands, please. I’ll have one who remembers my name.

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Rachel Woodlock; 28/6/08

If ever a man flirts with the idea of marrying more than one wife, he should surely be dissuaded from the idea by watching a season of Big Love — a fictional television drama about the polygamous family of a fundamentalist Mormon man whose life is constantly troubled with jealous intrigue, betrayal and psychotic in-laws. I am writing tongue-in-cheek, but since embracing Islam I have become friends with about half-a-dozen different women who are co-wives (none of them with each other). Tellingly, all the relationships involved include at least one convert, which means that polygamy is not merely the preserve of refugees who can barely speak a lick of English and who know nothing of our culture or way of life. Whether or not we like to admit it, polygamy is part of the diverse fabric of family life in 21st century Australia, although admittedly a minority practice. This is partly because although Australian multiculturalism requires assent to the law of the land, many groups (for example, Jews, Catholics, Baha’is and Aborigines) also operate under community-imposed religio-legal codes, particularly when it comes to family relationships.

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Ean Higgins; 28/6/08

At 19 and the daughter of a traditional Middle Eastern immigrant family, Mira says polygamy should be legalised for Muslims because she believes it is sometimes the best way of dealing with marital problems that in a Christian society would lead to divorce. But Mira’s experience as the daughter of a father with two wives has been horrendous: she says the arrangement has split the family. Neither of her parents plans to seek a divorce despite the second marriage tearing her father away from her mother, Mira and her five siblings, she says.

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Michael Pelly; 26/6/08

Even though polygamy is banned under Australia’s marriage laws, there is nothing to stop polygamists from going to the Family Court to settle their disputes. Marriage is defined as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others”, but the Family Law Act says a polygamous union “entered into in a place outside Australia, shall be deemed to be a marriage”. Although a Family Court spokeswoman said the court had never heard a case involving polygamy, a leading family law solicitor said he was aware of one man who had come from Ethiopia with three wives. Ian Kennedy, head of the Law Council of Australia’s family law section and a senior partner at Kennedy Wisewoulds, said Muslims who “took another wife” in Australia - without making those unions official - were now covered because of changes to the Family Law Act.

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