"Those sons of bitches were raping little girls down in Texas. I knew it and they knew I knew it, and this battle rages on today."

More on Fundamentalist Mormons and their “prophet” in the news today. The Jessops were one of the original families to join.

The parallels with polygamous Muslim populations are striking. Everything from the prevalence of child brides to incest to the problem of excess males, which is not as severe a problem among Muslims due to their unique jihad mandate, to the systematic bilking of the welfare state, to high rates of genetic disease due to inbreeding. In the UK the Pakistani community accounts for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide, due to the prevalence of first cousin marriages. In the FLDS community a rare genetic malfunction called fumarase deficiency is causing severe mental retardation among other congenital complications and a high incidence of domestic abuse is present in both populations.

The Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Church was headed for many years by Rulon Jeffs, a.k.a. “Uncle Rulon,” until his death in September 2002, when the sect was taken over by his son, Warren Jeffs. According to Jon Krakauer in Under the Banner of Heaven:

Uncle Rulon has married an estimated seventy-five women with whom he fathered at least sixty-five children; several of his wives were given to him in marriage when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties. His sermons frequently stress the need for total submission. “I want to tell you that the greatest freedom you can enjoy is in obedience,” he has preached. “Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.”

Comparing this with the Muslim concept of freedom as “perfect slavery,” we see an eerie similarity. Both systems remove the power of choice from individuals who are most often born into the system rather than having chosen it originally. Both seek obedience through coercion, threats and fear. Both construct crude clan systems that militate against the state by claiming the loyalty of believers first and foremost. Both systems set up a state within a state and claim legal authority over territory and believers.

For women, being born into polygamy is to be born into slavery. The individual will of women over their most basic life choices is utterly coerced. Young girls are often incestuously abused by male family members and then married off to much older men, who must (one would imagine) enjoy the thrill of coercing young women into strict obedience in every particular. And along with polygamy comes arranged marriage in both Muslim and Mormon polygamous populations. 

Again I say, to take away a woman’s basic right to pursue happiness, to love and be loved, to find her own place in the world and to develop her own gifts and talents; this is more than tyranny. This is unconscionable slavery. And it is happening in America, Europe and the UK with surprising impunity.

Turning to another form of abuse; this time the abuse of the good will and resources of the state according to Krakauer:

Polygamy is illegal in both Utah and Arizona. To avoid prosecution, typically men in Colorado City will legally marry only the first of their wives; subsequent wives, although “spiritually married” to their husband by Uncle Rulon, thus remain single mothers in the eyes of the state. This has the added benefit of allowing the enormous families in town to qualify for welfare and other forms of public assistance. Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds.

More than $4 million of government largesse flows each year into the Colorado City public school district—which, according to the Phoenix New Times, “is operated primarily for the financial benefit of the FLDS Church and for the personal enrichment of FLDS school district leaders.” Reporter John Dougherty determined that school administrators have “plundered the district’s treasury by running up thousands of dollars in personal expenses on district credit cards, purchasing expensive vehicles for their personal use and engaging in extensive travel. The spending spree culminated in December {2002}, when the district purchased a $220,000 Cessna 210 airplane to facilitate trips by district personnel to cities across Arizona.”

Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. In 2002, seventy-eight percent of the town’s residents living on the Arizona side of the state received food stamps. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid.

“Uncle Rulon justifies all that assistance from the wicked government by explaining that really the money is coming from the Lord,” says DeLoy Bateman. “We’re taught that it’s the Lord’s way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.