When the Wives Become Four: Polygamy in the USA

In some States the practice of Polygamy is spreading, often due to many conversions to Islam.

THE exact number of polygamous relationships in America is hard to estimate. According to the Associated Press, in the USA there could be between 30 and 100 thousand polygamous families- in which one man has multiple wives- and the majority is supposed to be in Utah. Limited by tradition, the Midwestern and Southwestern States are where Mormons and Christian Fundamentalists practice polygamy- but other States have recently shown high numbers of this practice.

Last April, the Texan social service ordered the removal of almost 500 children from the YFZ ranch buildings, apparently from the Polygamous sect of Flds of Eldorado in Texas. Now this practice is diffusing into States of the East Coast such as New York and Jersey City which attract substantial numbers of immigrants from African states such as Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan and other nations in which polygamy is practiced for cultural or religious reasons.

If in the past this practice came through demographic fluctuation, other regions in the East of the USA polygamy is present even within the indigenous population, such as the African American one. In this way we discovered that- according to the NPR and the Washington Post- the metropolitan area with the largest density of polygamous families is Philadelphia, which was the first capital in 1790 and the sixth most populated city in the United States, and recently the electoral battlefield between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The unique mixture of ethnic, religious and social factors make Philadelphia a polygamy sanctuary. The first factor is the fact that many residents of color have converted to Islam. The Islamic religion enables men to marry up to four wives, under the condition that he does not favor one more than another, both under romantic and material aspects.

According to the Nation of Islam calculations, the black Muslims in Philadelphia would amount to more than 100 thousand and many of these live along Lancaster Anevue, which is nicknamed the “Muslim Main Street”. Philadelphia is the Mecca of the African American Islamic Nationalism. The leader is Wallace D. Muhammad, son of his adversary Louis Farrakhan, the spiritual guide of the Nation of Islam.

Another reason for why the metropolitan area of Philadelphia is particularly sensitive to polygamy is that it has the largest number of African American felons, which amounts to 602 for every 100 thousand inhabitants. The age range between 25 and 29 years old accounts for 10.4% of this number. It is not an extreme to say that in Philadelphia there are as many young African Americans in jail as there are in college.

Even mortality has its say. The life expectancy of an African American male in Philadelphia is 15 years less than that of a White male: 61 years against 74.4. The National Center for Victims of Crime says that a young African American has 5 times more chances of suffering a violent death than a White person.

Polygamy has become a compulsory choice for the families who want to offer a male presence to their children. According to a report made by the National Public Radio, the major public radio network in the USA, a large number of second, third and fourth wives is counted among widows of small children, divorced women, and among the younger ones who have grown up in polygamous families or who have converted to Islam.

“Today’s Philadelphia is similar to VII century Arabia”, says Abdullah, the imam of Philadelphia’s mosque, “polygamy was introduced in those years to cope with the large number of death caused by the Middle Eastern wars. Unfortunately we have the AIDS crisis that is causing real shortage of men who are willing to take care of families with children”.

This way, Abdullah often celebrates second, third and fourth weddings. Always in secret, because they are not approved by the Law, and always being careful that the union is occurring among Orthodox Muslims. “The Koran specifies that a man can marry women of his choice- he adds- two, three and also four, but if the man thinks he cannot be fair to them, then he should marry only one”.