Time Immortal

Polygamy is still illegal there, of course, but only if the marriages happen within the Netherlands proper. If you skip the jurisdiction and get hitched in, say, some African country where polygamy is a-ok, then it’s “no harm, no foul” as far as the authorities in Rotterdam are concerned!

Although polygamy is banned in the Netherlands, the marriages of Muslims who have several wives are recognised by Dutch authorities.

Registrars in the major cities, in particular, record dozens of bigamous or polygamous marriages per year. These marriages are prohibited and an offence in the Netherlands. However, polygamous marriages that take place in countries where more than one wife is permitted, such as Morocco, are accepted, newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports.

If immigrants with several wives settle in the Netherlands, the local authorities register all the marriages. However, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS), where all marriages are registered nationally, removes these bigamous or polygamous marriages from its files, on the assumption that administrative errors have occurred. As a result, it is not known how common the phenomenon is in the Netherlands.

Two questions.

First: why did we send Canadian soldiers to fight and die to liberate this country back in the 1940s?

Second: why accept an illegal polygamous arrangement just because it is legal somewhere else? In some parts of the world, it’s legal to marry a six-year-old girl, because that’s what Muhammad did. In some parts of the world, it’s legal to have sex with a nine-year-old girl, because that’s what Muhammad did. Does the Netherlands allow paedophilic marital arrangements as long as the nuptial ceremony takes place in…say…Iran?

If so: why (also, see question #1)? If not: then why allow something else with is both illegal and immoral to flourish and be “legitimized” within the country, simply because the relevant nuptial ceremony took place on foreign soil?

On the other hand, it should be observed that the Netherlands doesn’t really have a legal leg to stand on in this matter. I do believe that they have recognized gay marriage as a “right”, haven’t they? If the gender of participants in a marriage doesn’t matter, why should the number of participants matter?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!