Polygamy - It Rings A Bell...

Polygamy is in the news today, thanks to a government sponsored raid on a group known as The Fundamentalist Church Of The Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Texas.

The whole thing started when Texas authorities received a phone call allegedly from a sixteen year old girl who claimed she'd been 'brutalized and raped' by her 50 year husband. That call turned out to be a hoax,but the authorities swooped in en masse and literally kidnapped over 416 children, separating them from their mothers.

They made no exceptions, not even for nursing mothers, whom were separated from their babies like the rest..

Aside from the rather horrendous spectacle of governmental agents disrupting the lives of this many people over one anonymous phone call, there was something that rang a little bell for yours truly. It was this description by one Texas Child Protective Services commandante of the cult and the women in it:

"What we have here are women who are conditioned from an early age to follow orders of men and to be subservient to them,especially when it came to forced polygamist marriages. These forced marriages are cases of sexual abuse, even if the victims themselves may not be aware of it.There are women who have been trained from an early age to lie to anyone but their religious leaders."

Hmmmmm..girls controlled and brainwashed by patriarchal men based on religious teachings,illegal polygamy, forced marriages...where have we heard that before?

Why,this could almost be a description of a big chunk of Islam!

And not just Islam overseas,but here, in the United States, the UK and other bastions of western culture.

Given there are obviously a number of Islamic polygamous marriages in America, do we see government officials knocking down their doors and taking women and children into custody?

And when young Muslim girls complain about being brutalized and being pressured into forced marriages, are the authorities swooping into rescue them?

Nope.Not at all.

And that leads to an interesting question - why the double standard?

I not a fan of forced marriages, legalized polygamy, and certainly not questionable marriages of underaged girls to much older men. But here, we have a group that was essentially minding their own business,without any bizarre ambitions of taking over everyone else and forcing them to follow their beliefs. Nor were they apparently involved in welfare or mortgage fraud, something that's definitely rife in the Muslim polygamous community here in the west as Debbie Schlussel and others have documented.

So why the heavy hand on the FLDS and a nod and a wink for members of the Religion of Peace who are doing exactly the same thing, only with a lot more consequences to society?

Could there be a little fear involved?

Or is it just that one group is relatively isolated and private while the other has multi-billionaire backers who control a vital resource, fund pressure groups and buy politicians like oranges at the market?

I think the answer's obvious.