Ghulam is a taxi-driver who lives in Blackburn, a once
booming textile town in Lancashire. He has a terrace
house near his local mosque (one of 53 in the area), a silver Nissan
car and a very complex private life. For he has so many children that
he struggles to remember their names and five wives from various
countries, including Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and his own birthplace,
Pakistan. Ghulam’s latest bride is a shy 20-year-old called Hafeza. He
brought her to Britain from Morocco soon after his 45th birthday
earlier this year (2011). They married in an Islamic wedding ceremony,
called the nikah, in her village, with Hafeza’s pleased parents among
the guests.
Thirty miles across the Pennines in Yorkshire, pizza
delivery driver Wasim, 27, has an equally complicated domestic life.
He lives in a part of Dewsbury called Savile Town, a network of 11
terrace streets dominated by one of the biggest mosques in Europe,
where most residents are Asian with origins in Pakistan or India.
Wasim has three wives, the first of whom lives with him and their
three teenage sons. His other two wives have separate houses in Savile
Town, one down the road and another round the corner. He visits each
two nights a week. The women have had several of Wasim’s children and
he hopes the youngest bride (aged 19) will soon present him with
another baby.
I learned of Ghulam and Wasim this week while
investigating a subject that is taboo in politically correct Britain.
It is the huge rise of bigamy and polygamy in our Muslim communities.
The issue was recently bravely highlighted by Baroness Flather, a
cross-bench life peer who was herself born in Lahore, now part of
Pakistan.
She warned the Lords (and also wrote an article for
the Mail on the subject) about how our shambolic benefits
system is being exploited by men hailing from Pakistan and other
Muslim nations who indulge in multiple marriages – with taxpayers
forced to foot the bill. As Baroness Flather explained, "The wives are
regarded by the welfare system as single mothers and are therefore
entitled to a full range of lone parent payments. As a result, several
‘families’ fathered by the same man can all claim benefits, as they
are provided for by the welfare state which treats them as if they
were not related."
Lady Flather also lamented the reluctance of
politicians to address the issue: "It is certainly difficult to
discuss this phenomenon of serial marriage and exploitation of the
benefits system, with few people in Britain seeming to want to
confront the disturbing truth."
Two years ago, another peer, Baroness Warsi, born in
Dewsbury to Pakistani parents and now a coalition cabinet minister,
also voiced her concerns. She said cultural sensitivity was stopping
politicians from addressing the problem.
Yet this week I found those – from within the heart of
the Asian communities – who were prepared to speak out.
Although the government says there are only 1,000 such
bigamous or polygamous unions in the UK, two experienced Lancashire
social workers – one of Indian English heritage and the other with
Pakistani origins – told me that although it is difficult to be
precise, in their estimation, the figure is closer to 20,000. The
social workers said the multiple marriages are encouraged by a welfare
system which allows a second, third or fourth wife to be treated as a
single mother who gets a house and an array of other state payments
for herself and her children. Controversially, it means that a man can
take a new spouse (from anywhere in the world), sire any number of
children with her and yet have no responsibility for this family’s
upkeep or care.
To avoid breaking Britain’s matrimony laws, the men
marry their extra ‘wives’ in an Islamic nikah ceremony either in their
own homes or a mosque. These marriages are not recognised officially
so they do not appear in government statistics or have any status
under the law. They also do not count when assessing welfare payments.
Another technique is for a couple to marry legally
under British law but then divorce, leaving them then to have a nikah
ceremony and continue living together. The woman will then be entitled
to welfare payments as a single mother and the man can then bring
another woman from abroad and legally marry her in Britain. Men also
cheat the system by bringing brides from abroad as nannies for their
children or as carers for a sick relative. The bride gets a year’s
visitor’s visa, disappears into a tight-knit local community and is
entitled to receive welfare handouts.
While it has long been a cliché for men to complain
that their wives and children take up most of their income, the
reality for polygamous husbands is that the more babies he sires, the
more money pours in for him and his wives.
As Tariq Ali, the 45-year-old co-founder of Project
BME (Black Minority Ethnics), a charity based in Darwen, Lancashire,
admits, "There are thousands of bigamous and polygamous marriages in
the UK’s Pakistani community – the same community into which I was
born. Every single man of my age who I bump into seems to have a
third, fourth or fifth wife. The issue is going unreported but in the
Asian communities, this is becoming a way of life. I think the number
of polygamous relationships must be 20,000. The men find second wives
in the UK as well as any Muslim country abroad. The new favourite
places to find women are Turkey and Morocco because the men can drive
there by car to meet them and bring them back."
His colleague, Zed Ali, the manager of Project BME,
added: "These arrangements satisfy a man’s sexual desires when he is
trapped in an unhappy or sexless arranged marriage with a first wife
and their families don’t countenance a divorce. The first wives often
accept the situation as a compromise. There is a limitless number of
girls living in Muslim countries wanting to come to the UK for what
they, and their parents, think is a better life even as a second,
third or fourth wife. What’s more, they are virgins – which the men
like. But it means British laws are being abused and something should
be done by the government. A first step would be the registration of
nikah weddings in this country at least." This would prevent many
bigamous marriages.
Officially, bigamy and polygamy are punishable by up
to seven years in prison. It was 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 – on penalty of death. But
officialdom now turns a blind eye because of cultural sensitivities.
A 2007 government report estimated that there were
1,000 bigamous or polygamous marriages in England and Wales. It
claimed that men living in a harem arrangement, with their wives under
the same roof, were each claiming state handouts of £10,000 a year for
the spouses through income support, housing and child benefits. But
the report ignored the thousands of men squeezing more money from the
state by having a string of wives living in separate homes, all
claiming benefits intended for single mothers and their children.
Those women are eligible for full housing benefit – reaching £1,06,000
a year in some parts of London – and child benefit paid at £1,000 a
year for a first child and nearly £700 for each subsequent one. Little
wonder there has been an increase of foreign brides.
Lady Flather believes this free-for-all should be
reduced – by giving full benefits to a woman’s first two children,
three-quarters for the third and half for the fourth child. Then there
should be no more benefits for any extra children. It was also wrong,
she said, that families were moving to ever larger taxpayer-funded
homes simply by expanding the number of children they have. Yet
tackling this phenomenon will be difficult.
I was told this week that even the mosques’ preachers
– the imams themselves – have second or third wives, some chosen from
among their own worshippers.
One female health visitor in Lancashire, whose parents
were born in Pakistan and came here in 1971, explained: "My sister has
been asked by her own imam in Manchester to marry him as his second
wife. She is 38 and went to school here. She played netball,
socialised normally and had British friends. But her marriage to a
British Asian broke down when she became very fundamentalist about
religion and wanted to wear a burkha. Then she turned to the mosque
for advice. The imam, who recently arrived from Africa, suggested a
bigamous marriage to him would be the solution. My family are
horrified but plenty of imams in the UK have more than one wife."
A little later in the day, I was introduced to Javeria,
a 26-year-old British-born Muslim who is the second wife of a
29-year-old man in Rochdale, Lancashire. He was also born in Britain
and has a first wife with whom he had an arranged marriage organised
by his parents when he was 21. The forced union was an unhappy one and
they had no children. Javeria originally met her husband at an Islamic
community gathering.
"I was under pressure from my mother to get married,’
she says. "Most girls in my community are wives by 22 even here in the
UK. I was prepared to compromise because I liked him. I knew from the
start there would always be his first wife and he would not divorce
her."
Javeria and her new husband had a small nikah ceremony
at her parents’ house, conducted by the local imam. Now she lives in a
block of flats with her two children, aged five and three, and works
in a bank as a cashier. Her husband, meanwhile, lives half a mile away
with his first wife and their three children in a semi-detached house
with a garden. He visits Javeria three nights a week.
"His first wife knows about me and is pleased because
the arrangement gives her freedom from him and it also gives me
freedom to pursue my career. He is devoted to his children. But he
does not have to pay for my family." She adds: "I get tax credits
because I am on low pay and have young children. I also get housing
benefit because the council says I need three bedrooms for myself and
the kids. The child benefits for our son and daughter are paid into my
account."
But, of course, not all multiple marriages work this
well.
Each year, London solicitor Anne-Marie Hutchinson, of
family law firm Dawson Cornwell, advises around 20 Muslim women who
have married in a nikah ceremony – many of them second or third wives
now facing marital breakdown. "These women are left unprotected," she
explains. "They cannot claim matrimonial rights. They get no
maintenance payments or share in their husband’s pension
contributions. They are not wives in the eyes of the British legal
system."
No one knows that better than one Bangladeshi-born
mother of three children who works in a care home in Slough,
Berkshire. Orpita contacted me through her lawyer when she heard I was
writing about multiple marriages in the Muslim community. She was
deserted by her husband of 20 years when he went on holiday to
Bangladesh and returned to say he was about to marry a girl of 19,
called Saba, in a nikah ceremony and wanted to bring her to Britain as
his second wife.
Despite the pleas of Orpita and her children, one a
teenage boy who – in fury at the betrayal – hit his father in the
face, the husband told the British immigration authorities that Saba
was from his home village and was to be a nanny for his children. They
needed, he lied to them, a caring person who understood his family’s
cultural heritage. The officials believed him and after the nikah in
Bangladesh, Orpita’s husband set up home with his second wife two
years ago in Maida Vale, North London. They now have a one-year-old
baby.
"I am only just recovering from the shock," says
Orpita. "We are not divorced because I will not allow it. When he
walked out, he said the state could look after me and that was how it
worked in Britain. All over the place, in London’s East End, in
Yorkshire towns, down the road, across the street, I see Muslim men
taking second or third wives. I cannot count the number of times I
have been approached to be a second wife myself by Bangladeshi men who
know I am now on my own. This bigamy and polygamy is destroying
families. Children grow up angry and bewildered. Many rarely see their
own fathers because they have so many wives to visit."
Then she tucks a scarf around her head and adds sadly:
"It is a tragedy for everyone in this country, whether they are Muslim
or not. And it is the crazy welfare system that encourages it all to
happen."
(Some names in this article have been changed.)