Heavy cloud but no rain

Tomorrow at 6:05 p.m., at the behest of the government, 38 Qatari mosques will offer prayers for rain.

The slippery slope

I was reading The Bookseller of Kabul recently when it suddenly hit me: if Sultan Khan had fled to North America, as he was at one point considering, he would have had to leave his second wife behind.

How weird is that? Expats here in Qatar complain that we have to hide relationships that fall outside of Muslim standards (e.g. same-sex relationships, cohabitation), but if a polygamous Muslim moves to the States he actually has to renounce his legally and religiously sanctioned marriages. We require him to ditch his family. (This applies to refugees as well.)

And, what's more, you can't get a greencard or citizenship if you've practiced polygamy within the past five years. It violates the "good moral character" you must exhibit to qualify.

I sure as heck wouldn't want to be a cowife, and I'm ambivalent about polygamy as a marital option, but I don't really understand how it can be considered so "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family" (to quote my esteemed senator Santorum, in the infamous "man-on-dog" interview) that it must be banished from our borders.

Welcome to the land of the free.....