The Problem of Inbreeding in Islam

[Pastaneta]

A good article on the problems in Islam as caused by inbreeding:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-proble ... n-islam/2/

Massive inbreeding among Muslims has been going on since their prophet allowed first-cousin marriages more than 50 generations (1,400 years) ago. For many Muslims, therefore, intermarriage is regarded as being part of their religion. In many Muslim communities, it is a source of social status to marry one’s daughter or son to his or her cousin. Intermarriage also ensures that wealth is kept within the family. Islam’s strict authoritarianism plays a large role as well: keeping daughters and sons close gives families more power to control and decide their choices and lifestyles.

Westerners have a historical tradition of being ready to fight and die for their country. Muslims, on the other hand, are bound together less by patriotism, but mainly by family relations and religion. Intermarrying to protect the family and community from outside non-Islamic influence is much more important to Muslims living in a Western nation than integrating into that nation and supporting it.

Today, 70 percent of all Pakistanis are inbred and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants“). A rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred. A large percentage of the parents that are blood related come from families where intermarriage has been a tradition for generations.

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.”

The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. It is not a surprise, therefore, that, in response to this evidence, a Labour Party MP has called for a ban on first-cousin marriage.

Medical evidence shows that one of the negative consequences of inbreeding is a 100 percent increase in the risk of stillbirths. One study comparing Norwegians and Pakistanis shows the risk that the child dies during labor increases by 50 percent. The risk of death due to autosomal recessive disorders — e.g., cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy — is 18 times higher. Risk of death due to malformations is 10 times higher. Mental health is also at risk: the probability of depression is higher in communities where consanguine marriages are also high. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of mental and physical retardation and schizophrenic illness....

And then there are the findings on intelligence. Research shows that if one’s parents are cousins, intelligence goes down 10-16 IQ points. The risk of having an IQ lower than 70 (criterion for being “retarded”) increases 400 percent among children from cousin marriages. An academic paper published in the Indian National Science Academy found that “the onset of various social profiles like visual fixation, social smile, sound seizures, oral expression and hand-grasping are significantly delayed among the new-born inbred babies.” Another study found that Indian Muslim school boys whose parents were first cousins tested significantly lower than boys whose parents were unrelated in a non-verbal test on intelligence....

The policies adopted by Denmark are exactky what should be done in all the West:

Denmark is a pioneering example of where to begin: in order to counter forced marriages, the country does not allow Danish citizens to marry foreigners younger than 24 years old. It also offers non-Western immigrants up to 15 thousand euros or 20 thousand dollars to emigrate back to their countries of origin. Immigrants who are not Danish citizens are banished from Denmark if they commit violent crimes. The state does not support families economically for having more than the country’s average amount of children. This prevents foreigners from coming to Denmark who have plans to have a lot of children and live off the state’s child support system. The country also denies resident permits to foreigners who are marrying their cousin in Denmark. Right now, the country is working on a complete halt to immigration from countries that are not oriented towards Western values (mainly Muslim countries).

[Spengler]

Why so many first-cousin marriages? The likely answer, as I suggested in my review of Robert Reilly's book on Islam

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LH24Ak01.html

is that the family in most Muslim countries exists under the protection of the clan.

[charleston]

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/20 ... blets.aspx

Nuzi was a Hurrian administrative center not far from the Hurrian capital at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The Hurrians are equivalent to the Horites in the Old Testament, also called Hivites and Jebusites. Excavations were carried out at Nuzi by American teams from 1925 to 1933. The major find was more than 5,000 family and administrative archives spanning six generations, ca. 1450-1350 BC. They deal with the social, economic, religious and legal institutions of the Hurrians.

The tablets tell of practices similar to those in Genesis such as adoption for childless couples (Gn 15:2 children by proxy (Gn 16; 21:1, inheritance rights (Gn 25:29, marriage arrangements (Gn 28 and levirate marriage (Gn 38; Dt 25:5. They also demonstrate the significance of the deathbed blessing (Gn 27; 48 and household gods (Gn 31:14 30. Some Nuzi tablets, called “tablets of sistership,ve agreements in which a man adopted a woman as a sister. In the society of the Hurrians, a wife enjoyed both greater protection and a superior position when she also had the legal status of a sister. In such a case, two separate documents were drawn up, one for marriage and the other for sistership. This may explain why both Abraham (Gn 12:10 20:1and Isaac (Gn 26:7) said their wives were their sisters. It is possible that they had previously adopted them to give them higher status, in accordance with the custom of the day.

Family records were highly valued at Nuzi, being passed down from father to son for as many as six generations. Nowhere else in the ancient Near East is this kind of reverence for family documents illustrated, except in the Old Testament. Indirectly, the practice at Nuzi supports the position that Genesis and the other books of history in the Old Testament are grounded in actual family, clan and tribal records carefully passed from generation to generation.

As with Mari, the Nuzi records demonstrate that the cultural practices recorded in the book of Genesis are authentic. The accounts are not fictional stories written at a much later time, as some critics claim, since the customs were unknown in later periods.

[Michael]

From very early times, Church law extended the prohibited degrees to include second cousins once removed (Seven degrees in the Civil Law computation, the same as the limit for intestate succession under the Praetorian Edict (Bonorum possession unde cognati)

Saint Augustine approved of this legislation, as tending to disperse the bonds of family affection throughout the community (De Civ. Dei XV 16)

It was the Reformers who restricted the prohibited degrees to those in Leviticus 18.

[Pastaneta]

From what I have been told, Christian Middle Eastern Churches do not prohibit first cousins' marriages.

[Michael]

From what I have been told, Christian Middle Eastern Churches do not prohibit first cousins' marriages.

There was always a distinction beween absolute prohibition (basically Leviticus 18) and Church law, which was always, in principle, dispensible. Given the small size of many Christian communities in the Middle East, bishops either have to grant dispensations for cousin-marriages, or for "disparity of cult" (marrying outside the Faith). Not surprisingly, they choose the former.

It remains true, though, that the tradition has always discouraged such marriages and never held them up as an ideal.

[Richard Greene]

This is an excellent survey of the problem (cousin-marriage): http://www.isteve.com/cousin_marriage_conundrum.htm

And also answers the question: Why are they sooooo different than us?>

. . .
In summary, although neoconservatives constantly point to America's success at reforming Germany and Japan after World War II has evidence that it would be easy to do the same in the Middle East, the deep social structure of Iraq is the complete opposite of those two true nation-states, with their highly patriotic, cooperative, and (not surprisingly) outbred peoples. The Iraqis, in contrast, more closely resemble the Hatfields and the McCoys.