Europe and the wider West have long believed that their laws, customs and moral grammar would act as an unbreachable sieve: charity for the oppressed would be offered, but incompatible social practices would not be absorbed. That confidence is now being tested. What began as an exercise in compassion toward refugees has become, in certain cases, a legal and moral minefield – one that Islamist networks and opportunistic litigants are learning to exploit with surgical precision.

At the root of this confrontation lies an apparently arcane legal dispute that may have seismic consequences. For the first time the European Court of Human Rights has been asked to rule on a polygamy-related family-reunification case brought by a Yemeni national, Khaled Al-Anesi, who was granted asylum in the Netherlands after the Arab Spring. The case challenges the Dutch refusal to admit five children fathered by wives the asylum-seeker did not initially seek to bring to the Netherlands – a refusal rooted in the Netherlands’ ban on polygamy. The litigant’s strategy, as defenders of Dutch policy have warned, is simple and cunning: use a claim for the children’s reunification as the legal channel that will later, in practice, enable the mothers to join them and thereby circumvent the prohibition on multiple spouses.

If Strasbourg’s judges, tasked with balancing Article 8 (respect for family life) against Member States’ public-order and equality principles, side with the applicant in a way that privileges reunification despite an express national ban on polygamy, the ruling could become a precedent replicated across Europe – and beyond. That prospect has not gone unnoticed by those who view such changes as the thin edge of a cultural wedge. Former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman captured the mood when she warned bluntly on social media that Europe “doesn’t have to commit this cultural suicide”.

Braverman is not alone. Dutch politician Geert Wilders, long criticized for his warnings about uncontrolled migration, once posted the cover of National Geographic’s 2018 issue titled “The New Europeans”, lamenting: “I want my country back”.

But the question now is graver than ever: Can Western nations truly reclaim their cultural identity while they continue to import social structures that reject Western laws, gender equality, and monogamy?

This controversy is not merely legalistic hair-splitting. It illuminates a broader pattern: how Islamist movements, conservative religious networks and self-interested individuals have adapted to, and now exploit, liberal legal frameworks, refugee protections and welfare states. To understand the challenge, one must follow the incentives.

The strategic logic: Law, welfare and immigration as instruments of demographic influence

First, migration and family-reunification rules are a vector for demographic change. Polygamist households typically have more children. When such family structures arrive in countries with generous social safety nets, they create concentrated, rapidly growing sub-communities whose demographic weight can reshape local politics, electoral dynamics, schooling systems and public services. In short, what begins as private family life becomes a matter of public consequence. Western states, eager to avoid the appearance of discrimination, often apply their rules inconsistently or grudgingly – inviting litigation and incremental accommodation.

Second, Islamist and conservative religious groups understand that human-rights jurisprudence has weaknesses when abstract rights collide with collective cultural differences. Rights designed to protect individuals can be reframed as collective or family rights: the right to family life, the right to cultural practice, the “right” to have one’s marital arrangements recognized for the purpose of reunification. A carefully framed legal claim can shift a dispute from immigration policy to the language of human dignity – a language that courts are loath to reject outright. This is precisely the lens being used in the Al-Anesi matter and similar disputes.

Third, the mechanisms for asylum, resettlement and reunification are porous and complex. States process tens of thousands of cases each year; administrative capacity is strained; evidence is imperfect; and political pressure to avoid appearing heartless is intense. These conditions create a marketplace of legal strategies where incremental wins – a favorable verdict on a narrowly framed family-reunification argument – accumulate into systemic change. What looks like an isolated procedural victory can therefore generate a cascade of comparable claims across jurisdictions.

Cultural relativism as a Trojan horse

Western liberalism’s reflexive tolerance is being weaponized. Polygamy is constitutionally and socially rejected in virtually all European legal orders because it violates the principle of gender equality, a cornerstone of modern European law. Yet advocates for recognition frame polygamous family units as deserving of protection under family-life provisions. This framing asks courts to treat social practices that are antithetical to liberal norms as mere “cultural differences” rather than structural inequalities. The result is paradoxical: the very institutions designed to protect vulnerable individuals can be deployed to legitimate practices that undermine the rights of vulnerable members within those communities – most notably women and children.

Empirical studies suggest that polygamy remains rare globally, concentrated in a “polygamy belt” across parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia – but rarity doesn’t blunt impact. Even a modest number of polygamous households can exert outsized social effects when clustered in particular neighborhoods, bolstered by welfare benefits and insular cultural institutions. The Pew Research Center summarizes this distribution and notes the limited geographic scope of polygamy, yet the legal and policy debates in liberal democracies remain live and consequential.

Public opinion is also shifting in ways that complicate policy responses. Surveys from recent years show a rising tolerance for plural marital arrangements among sections of Western publics. American polling, for instance, recorded a notable increase in respondents who describe polygamy as “morally acceptable” – a trend that reflects broader changes in sexual and marital mores and which can be exploited by those seeking formal recognition or legal accommodation.

In February [2020], Utah passed a bill to reduce the penalties for adults who voluntarily live in polygamous relationships, making the practice an infraction, a low-level offense that is not punishable with jail time.

In other parts of the world, including swaths of the Middle East and Asia, polygamy is legal but not practiced widely. And in some countries – particularly in a segment of West and Central Africa known as the polygamy belt – the practice is frequently legal and widespread.

Islamist movements and the careful long game

Different Islamist organizations pursue different strategies, but several patterns recur. Political Islamist parties – whether moderate or hardline – often aim to expand their social base through community services: marriage counseling, welfare assistance, schooling and religious instruction. These services build loyalty and create networks that can be mobilized for political ends. Parallel religious courts, informal arbitration mechanisms and pressure on local authorities to recognize religious norms all reinforce a parallel social order.

At the international level, activist lawyers, think tanks and sympathetic NGOs pursue strategic litigation, seeking rulings that incrementally stretch legal doctrines in favor of accommodation. A favorable court decision on a technical family-reunification point may seem narrow; in practice, it produces a legal foothold. Once jurisprudence at Strasbourg or in national high courts evolves, administrative practice frequently follows, because legislatures are usually slow to react and political courage to reverse such rulings is rare.

Policy responses for democracies that still wish to remain themselves

If liberal democracies hope to resist this slow, legalistic transformation while remaining true to the principles of compassion and rule of law, policymakers must take several concrete steps.

Tighten family-reunification criteria and close loopholes. States should ensure that family-reunification regimes cannot be gamed to import additional spouses through the backdoor. This requires careful statutory drafting, tightened evidentiary standards, and administrative guidelines that make explicit how polygamous relationships will be treated.

Preserve the principle of equality as non-negotiable. Courts should be reminded – through legislative clarifications where necessary – that gender equality is not a negotiable cultural preference. Legal frameworks must defend those within immigrant communities who are most vulnerable to gender-based disadvantage.

Increase administrative capacity and scrutiny. Better vetting, improved cooperation with sending states, and more resources for asylum adjudication will reduce the number of cases that succeed through procedural overload rather than legal merit.

Target bad-faith litigation. Where evidence suggests a deliberate strategy to exploit reunification rules (e.g., staged applications intended to bring wives later via their children), governments should be empowered to rebut such strategies with fact-based findings and to refuse applications that are part of a circumvention scheme.

Invest in integration, not segregation. Robust language training, education and employment opportunities reduce the formation of self-contained enclaves and strengthen the ties between newcomers and the host society.

Transparent public debate. Democracies must not cede the story of migration and values to soundbite politics. Honest, fact-based public discussion – including uncomfortable truths about cultural incompatibilities – is essential to democratic legitimacy.

Compassion must not mean capitulation

Helping the persecuted is a moral duty; protecting the institutions that make liberal life possible is another duty that cannot be deferred. The Al-Anesi case at Strasbourg is decisive not only for its particular parties but for what it reveals about the modern mechanics of cultural change: discreet legal claims, smartly framed, can have civilizational consequences. If Europe and other Western democracies allow their human-rights architecture to be hollowed out by incremental reinterpretations that privilege cultural accommodation over equality, the result will be a slow-motion transformation in which vital liberal commitments are eroded one judicial ruling at a time.

Those who plead for tolerance must explain what toleration means – and what it does not. Toleration does not mean rewriting law to legitimize practices that deny equal dignity to half the population. Nor does it mean permitting the strategic use of asylum and family-reunification rules to engineer cultural enclaves that resist integration and challenge the rule of law.

The West can and must remain humane. But humanity without principle becomes self-destructive. If liberal democracies value their legal traditions – particularly the commitment to gender equality and the rule of law – they must act now, with clarity and conviction, to ensure that compassion never becomes the instrument of its own undoing. The future of free societies depends on it.

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An internationally acclaimed multi-award-winning anti-militancy journalist, writer, research-scholar, counterterrorism specialist and editor of Blitz. He regularly writes for local and international newspapers on diversified topics, including international relations, politics, diplomacy, security and counterterrorism. Follow him on ‘X’ @Salah_Shoaib