Italy Grapples With Polygamy
Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2008
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Thousands of polygamous marriages like Hadi’s have sprung up throughout Italy as a byproduct of a fast-paced and voluminous immigration by Muslims to this Roman Catholic country.
Despite the obvious culture clash, Italian authorities largely turn a blind eye, leaving women in a murky semi-clandestine world with few rights and no recourse when things go especially badly, as they did in Hadi’s case.
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Italy is one of several European nations faced with the issue of polygamy. In Britain and Spain, where large Muslim communities have also settled, some officials favor recognizing polygamous marriage as a way to ensure the wives’ access to pensions, medical care and other state benefits.
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Sbai [Souad Sbai, a Moroccan-born Italian lawmaker] estimates that there are 14,000 polygamous families in Italy; others put the number even higher. Many take advantage of the so-called orfi marriage, a less formal union performed by an imam, that does not carry the same social or legal standing as regular marriage.
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When Sbai recently created a hotline for Muslim immigrant women, she was inundated with 1,000 calls in the first three months. To her astonishment, she had tapped into a hidden community of women desperate for information, many trapped in violent, polygamous households, isolated and lonely.
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Sbai, the politician, remembers polygamy from her childhood in Morocco. There, at least officially, the husband could marry no more women than he could adequately and justly care for. Here in Italy, she says, polygamy is often distorted. The immigrant experience is turned on its head: regression and isolation instead of integration.
Of the hundreds of women Sbai hears from, most are Moroccans and illiterate, at a much higher percentage rate than in Morocco. That also tends to isolate them, a condition compounded by mistrust of Italian authorities and fear of the unknown.
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Email Tracy Wilkinson at wilkinson@latimes.com.
(Posted on July 18, 2008)
Comments
Don’t worry. In a rather short period of time, I predict, Italy will outlaw islam and start mass deportations. After an initial outcry, I suspect, the rest of europe will get on the bandwagon as they notice the dramatic improvement of the quality of life in italy.
Posted by at 1:32 PM on July 19
I really am sorry for these abused women, but the article clearly shows that countries where polygamy is the norm, there are social safeguards, too. In civilized western societies there are no safety nets for these women and their children, so they really shouldn’t be in Italy, or any other European country.
Posted by at 12:27 AM on July 20
Don’t worry. In a rather short period of time, I predict, Italy will outlaw islam and start mass deportations. After an initial outcry, I suspect, the rest of europe will get on the bandwagon as they notice the dramatic improvement of the quality of life in italy.
Posted by at 1:32 PM on July 19
I predict, that the Muslims will riot on a scale never seen before if Italy tries that. There will be wholsale bombings, looting, burning, pillaging, demands made and threats against the lives of persons involved in such a move, to include the actual murder of same. I predict the Italian government will crumble, just as the U.S. government will. These things will precipitate the general collapse of western civilization, and outright violence on a HUGE scale.
Posted by Skip at 4:19 AM on July 21
Skip wrote: “I predict the Italian government will crumble, just as the U.S. government will.”
Good. Just what we need. With our own repressive governments out of the way, we can quickly deal with the insanity of multiculturalism. It won’t be pretty, but it has to happen or they will deal with us.
Posted by Xenophon at 7:36 PM on July 21