Muslim polygamists abuse British welfare system
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1154789/Polygamy-UK-This-special-Mail-investigation-reveals-thousands-men-milking-benefits-support-wives.html
He cut a smart figure in his grey suit and crisply ironed shirt. The
6ft tall Somalian bowed to the judge, calling him 'Sir', before
begging for his wife, Fatima, and their teenage son to be allowed to
stay in Britain.
Fatima, with a black khimar veil covering her hair and shoulders, sat
quietly next to her husband.
In her late 30s and wearing open sandals, she lowered her dark eyes as
the details of the unconventional life she and her husband, Abdi, led
in the West London suburb of Shepherd's Bush unfolded at a busy
immigration court.
Multiple marriages in Britain were first declared illegal in 1604
The judge listened in silence. Perhaps he knew from past experience
what was coming next. Abdi went on to reveal that Fatima was not his
only wife.
Indeed, he was a self-confessed bigamist who had a second, much
younger wife and a 13-year-old daughter by her. They both lived
nearby.
'I visit them regularly,' said Abdi, 51, who arrived in Britain in the
1990s and works in an old people's home. 'I have done nothing wrong.
In Somalia, it is normal to have two wives - even three or four.
Fatima is still my wife and she should not be deported.'
He was unable to produce wedding certificates or valid official
documents to prove where, or when, he had married both women,
therefore raising questions over the validity of the unions, under
either Somali or British law.
Yet his story, unravelling at an ordinary weekday hearing at Taylor
House, an asylum appeals' centre in North London, is just one example
of the growing phenomenon of multiple marriage in Britain.
Officially, such unions are punishable by up to seven years in prison.
They were first declared illegal in England and Wales in 1604, when
the Parliament of James I took action to restrain 'evil persons'
marrying more than one wife. Parliament ruled that anyone found guilty
of the crime would be sentenced to death.
In the four centuries since, bigamy (having two wives) and polygamy
(more than two) has been frowned on by the state, the Church of
England and the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet it is clear that officialdom is turning a blind eye to such
marriages.
A recent review by four Government departments - the Treasury, the
Work and Pensions Department, the Inland Revenue and the Home Office
- has concluded that 1,000 men in the United Kingdom are now
polygamists, although some say the figure is higher.
What is more, the review found, a Muslim man can claim state support
of more than £10,000 a year to keep his wives, if the wedding took
place in one of those countries where polygamy is commonplace, such as
Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and across huge tracts of
Africa.
For example, a man can receive &£92.80 a week in income support for
wife number one, and a further £33.65p for each of his subsequent
spouses.
Therefore, if he has four wives - the maximum permitted under
Islamic teachings - he can claim nearly £800 a month from the
British taxpayer.
Controversially, a polygamist is also entitled to more generous
housing benefits and bigger council houses to reflect the large size
of his family. He is also able to claim £1,000 a year in child benefit
for each of his growing brood.
The Government insists that polygamy has declined in Britain since the
1988 Immigration Act, which made it harder for men to bring second,
third or fourth wives to the UK.
However, it's little wonder that critics claim our generosity simply
encourages more Muslim men to keep several spouses. Supporters of
polygamy claim the Koran states unequivocally that a Muslim man can
marry up to four women so long as he treats them equally.
But the Taxpayers' Alliance, a lobby group, has complained: 'Polygamy
is not officially condoned here, so why should British taxpayers have
to pay for extra benefits for men to have two, three or four wives?'
Last week, Baroness Warsi, a Tory spokesperson for community cohesion
who is British-born of Pakistani parents, waded into the argument,
warning that politicians have failed to tackle the problem of polygamy
because of 'cultural sensitivity'.
The respected Muslim peer told the BBC: 'We've just avoided either
discussing or dealing with the matter head on.'
Baroness Warsi, a Muslim herself, urged the Government to bring in
laws demanding the official registration of 'Nikah' or religious
Islamic marriage ceremonies, which often take place secretly in
private houses with 'an imam and a couple of witnesses there' - and
which are used to get round our marriage laws.
So how do the polygamists get away with it here? Firstly, it needs to
be understood that the generous benefits system allows any man and the
partner he lives with to claim benefits together - even if the woman
is not officially registered as his wife.
If they do marry, to avoid breaking Britain's bigamy laws, such men
often engage in a ceremony with their second or third wife in a Nikah
secretly in their own homes and never register the union officially in
this country.
Another technique is for the man to divorce his first wife under
British law while continuing to live with her as his spouse under
Islamic law. He then gets a visa for a new wife to enter the country
and can legally marry her here.
Moreover, our politically correct immigration rules state that if a
husband has divorced his first wife under British law - and even if
that divorce is actually suspected to be part of a plan to set up a
polygamous household - a second wife from abroad must be allowed to
come and live here.
During this investigation, I spoke to health workers and benefits
officers who have seen at first-hand the scale of polygamy in
Britain.
An NHS district nurse working in Tower Hamlets, East London, explained
that it was now commonplace. He said he knew of a Bangladeshi-born
male patient with two wives and 13 children aged between three months
and 15 years.
'The women have council flats, each paid for by the local authority.
The elderly husband collects benefits for both women, who are in their
30s. The wives speak very little English, but they are in and out of
each other's flats and are friends.
'On more than one occasion when I have been called to the flats to
give treatment to the old man, I have heard them talking in the
kitchen and even taking each other's children to the park.'
The male nurse said this family set-up was not unusual. 'I know of
others that comprise of one husband, a number of wives and numerous
children.
'It is not difficult to conclude that if there were no state benefits,
a man could not afford to live like this, especially here in London.
'The system is at fault. The men want more wives for their sexual
pleasure, but also because it is lucrative.'
Yet there is another issue to be raised. Are the Government figures of
around 1,000 foreign men living polygamously a gross underestimate?
Recently, a senior imam in Finchley, North London, said there are at
least 4,000 men involved in such marriages.
Meanwhile, to show just how far some men have stretched the teaching
of the Koran, another senior Islamist, Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the
Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, has revealed a case of a man
living here with five wives.
But what, indeed, of the wives living in polygamous marriages
themselves?
In an age of supposed sexual equality, how can they accept what many
will feel is the degradation that goes hand in hand with polygamy?
Not surprisingly, few dare to speak out publicly for fear that they
will be ostracised by their families.
But one 34-year-old mother who lives in the Bangladeshi community of
East London rang the Mail because she said she wants to reveal the
truth of what is happening.
Sitting in her kitchen in Newham, she reeled off a list of male
relatives and friends who have two or three wives.
What is more, the woman - who does not want to be named for fear of
attacks on her and her family - said that polygamy is tacitly
encouraged by our benefits system, where few questions are asked or
checks made.
The woman, whom we will call Kaela, arrived in Britain with her mother
and younger brother when she was 11.
They were following her father, who had come to Britain from a poor
province called Sylhet, seeking work in the food factories of West
London.
Kaela learned English, went to a local comprehensive and, at 19, fell
in love with a Bangladeshi-born boy who had also arrived in this
country as a youngster.
They married, set up home in a small council flat and soon had two
children. Kaela worked hard for her family. With a clutch of GCSEs,
she became an adviser to the Bangladeshi community on issues such as
welfare, housing and education. She now works as a parttime civil
servant.
Yet, two years ago, her husband suddenly disappeared back to
Bangladesh and, in an Islamic Nikah ceremony, married a 19-year-old
second wife who has since given birth to his son.
'My husband has a British passport and plans to come back into this
country with his two-year-old boy and his new wife.
'He has not given me a penny. He knows that the State will provide for
us. He has told me to tell the authorities I have been deserted and
claim income support, housing benefit and council tax.'
But what of his second wife? Kaela suspects the shy teenager without
any English will be brought into Britain on a tourist visa, pretending
to be her own son's nanny.
'I have seen it happen before,' Kaela explains. 'I know of one man
living in East London who has two wives here, each with a flat, and a
third wife in Bangladesh. Between the wives, there are five children
under 13, all living in this country.
'The first two women look after the third wife's child. So who pays to
keep this enormous family? The State, of course.
'I have an uncle who lives near Heathrow who has two wives. They are
all together in a big five-bedroom house, with off-street parking. It
is a council flat and the rent is paid from housing benefits because
he does not work.
'The first wife, who is 60, claims pension credit and carer's
allowance to look after his old mother, whom he has brought here as a
dependent from Bangladesh.
'His much younger second wife claims income support for herself and
child benefits for their three children of school age. We are talking
about hundreds of pounds a week to keep this family going.'
Kaela says there are myriad tricks used to bring second wives into
Britain. Apart from the 'nanny ruse', new female partners enter the
country using tourist visas, student visas or work permits. They
simply overstay the visas, which are normally for six months, and stay
in Britain, often hiding away in their husband's home.
But women suffer as a result of polygamy, says Kaela. 'The first wives
get depressed because they are so ashamed of their husband taking a
second or third wife.
'Many wives have been here for years, but have never been allowed to
learn English or even go out of the house alone. They have no one to
turn to for help.'
No one knows such anguish better than Sameera, a well-spoken, middle-
aged woman living in one of our multi-cultural cities, whose 55-year-
old husband found a second wife after 30 years of marriage.
He went on holiday to his homeland of Pakistan where, without
Sameera's knowledge or consent, he married a 26-year-old cousin.
'I fainted when I heard,' says Sameera. 'The fact that he's married a
girl young enough to be his daughter has upset me so much.
'I cried. I felt like my mind was exploding. The ground had just
fallen from me. Why did he do it? It shouldn't happen.'
Astonishingly, though, Sameera has been forced to welcome the new wife
into her house.
The alternative, she says, would be the breakdown of her relationship
with her husband and, possibly, the loss of her home. In other words,
she might be thrown on to the streets.
Yet despite such emotional cruelty, there are those who say polygamy
should be legal in multicultural Britain. A leading Muslim academic at
Cambridge University has claimed that men are biologically designed to
desire more than one woman and that, therefore, polygamy should be
legalised.
Meanwhile, a primary school teacher in Birmingham recently spoke
publicly about his contented life with two wives and six children, all
living in the same house.
Even a prominent female member of the Muslim Parliament of Great
Britain - set up in 1992 to debate Islamic issues - has claimed
that she knows of many very happy polygamous marriages in Britain.
'I am aware that this practice is taking place, and there are couples
who are quite satisfied with their relationship, and they would like
it to carry on and be protected by law,' she proclaimed.
Back at the immigration appeals centre at Taylor House, which heard
the case of Somali-born polygamist Abdi, a Home Office lawyer took me
aside and whispered: 'This man's not the only husband doing this.
'Last week, there was one man who was born in Pakistan and arrived to
settle here only four years ago. He brought in one wife legally. They
arrived as asylum seekers. The next wife came in on a student's visa.
The third pretended to be visiting relatives in Southwark, South
London. She had a sixmonth tourist visa but overstayed and was about
to be deported.
'She ended up here, begging to remain in Britain with her husband.'
As for Abdi, I spoke to his son after the case adjourned as he waited
for a bus with his mother, Fatima, while his father went back to work.
The polite, intelligent-teenager is studying at college and hopes to
become an engineer.
He came to Britain with his mother (who speaks only a few words of
English) as asylum seekers from Somalia several years after Abdi had
made the journey alone seeking a job, money and a better future.
'I knew my father had a second wife,' the teenager said with a
friendly smile. 'That is not unusual in Somalia. I want to stay in
Britain, and so does my mother. Our lives should not be shattered
because of this.'
But British taxpayers footing the bill may beg to disagree.