英文讀書會

Polygamy in France

Many wives' tales

A surprisingly prevalent phenomenon

May 6th 2010 | PARIS | From The Economist print edition

WHEN police stopped a woman driving with a full face-covering Islamic veil, little did they know what they would uncover. It turned out that her husband, a halal butcher, practised polygamy, which is illegal in France—or, rather, he was living with four women, one of whom he was married to. Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister, wildly overreacted, demanding that he be stripped of his French nationality. The affair has exposed both the reality of polygamy and the difficulty of doing anything about it.

France considers polygamy “a grave infringement of the principle of equality between men and women”. The practice was forbidden in 1993, when immigration laws were tightened to stop husbands bringing extra wives into the country. Yet there are an estimated 200,000 people, including children, living in 16,000-20,000 polygamous families in France. Most are of African origin, particularly from Muslim parts of the Maghreb and Sahel, where polygamy is accepted.

Over the years, notes Sonia Imloul in a study for the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank, the authorities have turned a blind eye to what she calls life “like a prison for the wives”, many of them forced into marriage. Polygamy is widely blamed for social ills ranging from school absenteeism to street violence. Politicians say it is exploited to maximise welfare and housing benefits. Such fraud is hard to detect, since polygamists “marry” various wives under Islam, all of them claiming single-parent payments, while officially being married to just one.

In a comic twist, Lies Hebbadj, the husband who came under attack from Mr Hortefeux, tried to turn his case against his accusers by declaring that “if one is stripped of French nationality because one has mistresses, then many Frenchmen could be.” The French official organisation representing Muslims this week denounced Mr Hebbadj’s comments as “offensive and insulting” to Islam, stressing that it recognises only official marriages. Even so Eric Besson, the immigration minister, concedes that there are unlikely to be any grounds for stripping Mr Hebbadj of his French nationality without changing the law.

Women’s-rights lobbies have welcomed this debate. Chantal Brunel, a deputy from Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, and a campaigner against domestic violence, describes wives in polygamous marriages as living in “semi-slavery”, subject to violence, and their daughters to female circumcision. France is keen on classic women’s issues, she observes, such as equal pay and promotion at work, or women on corporate boards (see article), but less interested in the grim reality of polygamy on French soil.

Question:

1. Could you bring up 2~3 advantages what Polygamy can benefit society?