Medi Siadatan has it all: nine children, two acclaimed restaurants, one faith and three wives. But Siadatan is not happy. Though a respected Walsall businessman, by being polygamous he is forced to live outside the law.

Siadatan wants the British legal system to recognise that a man has the right to be married to four partners. And he wants the law to guarantee multiple wives the same rights as any other spouse. He is launching a challenge to the British laws against polygamy in a move regarded as a test case.

The Iranian-born restaurateur claims that the law violates his rights to religious freedom and has hired a French lawyer to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

He married each of his three wives, aged 38, 32 and 26 respectively, in a simple Muslim ceremony. Under Islamic law, a man is permitted to have up to four wives.

'We would all feel a lot better if our marriage was legally recognised,' he said. 'Just as a lion has four females in his pride so a man can take up to four women. It is in man's nature to take more than one partner.'

Susan Vogel, a Birmingham-based solicitor who specialises in family law and has worked closely with the city's Asian community, said that the 1998 Human Rights Act could 'conceivably' provide some justification for Siadatan's case.

Many Muslims say the case encapsulates the debate over whether minorities have the right to follow their own customs or should conform to established British traditions.

'Polygamy is a very difficult issue for many British liberals,' said Fuad Nahti, editor of the Muslim magazine Q-News . 'It challenges the secular establishment. It pushes the boundaries of multiculturalism.'

Khalida Khan, director of An-Nisa, a Muslim women's group, said that there needed to be a reappraisal of the law to incorporate more of the values of Britain's ethnic and religious minorities. 'At the moment there is a parallel legal system that is completely unrecognised by the state,'she said.

The issue is also important to other ethnic and religious communities. Some marriages conducted according to the rites of Judaism and Hinduism are also not legally recognised. Children of such unions can find themselves deprived of inheritance or other legal rights.

Opponents of any change to British laws say that they protect those who may be coerced into marriages. Siadatan's three wives, however, profess total support for their husband. 'We are all behind him in want ing to have our marriages legally recognised,' Cinzia, his first wife, said.

'Medi is a very honest man and we don't mind sharing him. If a man feels committed to more than one woman then there shouldn't be any legal obstacles in his way.'

Siadatan says he tried a conventional marriage after arriving in Britain from Italy in 1975, but hated all the lying when he took up a mistress. 'So I told her the truth and the mistress moved in with us, but it didn't work out because the jealousy was so terrible.'