Euro-Muslims and Cousin Marriage

Among married people in Britain of Pakistani background, 55% are married to a first cousin. An article from the Wellcome Trust on "The impact of genetic risk on UK Pakistani families:"

For anyone, the risk of having a child affected by a genetic condition is comparatively low. According to birth incidence data, the risk of having a child with a congenital or genetic (including recessive) disorder is about 2 per cent. The risk doubles to about 4 per cent for first-cousin couples, mainly because of the increased risk of recessive disorders.

(Recessive disorders are associated with inheriting two copies of an identical mutation; cousins are more likely to inherit an identical mutation because of sharing a pair of grandparents, one of whom might carry a mutation that they could pass on to their children and grandchildren. Background: Recessive diseases)

There is a further approximately 2 per cent risk for first-cousin couples where there is also a history of consanguineous marriage in the family.

In other words, if a typical American marries his first cousin, the odds of their child having a major genetic disease is doubled. But if a typical British Pakistani, whose family tree is already entangled by inbreeding, marries his first cousin, the odds are tripled. Also, although it's not stated here, the odds are that the child will suffer various forms of in-breeding depression that don't rise to the level of a specific disease, but are still mildly deleterious, such as losing a few points of IQ.

Moreover, cousin marriage is to be deplored on multiple grounds. It goes hand in hand with arranged marriages, which we in the West despise. White Europeans are supposed to be beating themselves up with guilt right now over their failure to "integrate" Muslims, but arranged cousin marriages are the surest engine for maintaining Muslim ethnocentrism. And, finally, Muslim cousin marriages are a major engine of immigration fraud. Believing in true love, European countries allow their citizens/subjects to bring in their foreign spouses, but these arranged cousin marriages seldom have anything to do with romance, and often everything to do with getting visas for extended family members.

Obviously, European countries need to stop first cousins from marrying. But, that's not the way you're allowed to think about the problem:

"The problem that faces clinicians is how to deliver genetic services without stigmatizing British Pakistanis on the basis of their marriage pattern."

Stigmatization of cousin marriage is exactly what Britain needs, but it won't happen because it's associated with a politically privileged minority group. As we've seen in the U.S., stigmatization can work when a behavior is seen as either being common among the majority (e.g., drunk driving, smoking) or within a non-privileged minority (e.g., cousin marriage was easily stigmatized because it was associated with white hillbillies, who aren't a political force qua hillbillies). But when a form of bad behavior is linked to a privileged minority, such as gangsta rap or illegitimacy is linked with blacks, it is much harder to stigmatize in a multi-culti society.

The article also hints that British Pakistanis are not razor-sharp thinkers when it comes to modern scientific concepts like genetics:

"The research has found that, for many UK Pakistanis, the very idea of ‘genetic’ disease is unfamiliar, and competes with social, environmental and spiritual understandings of the causes of illness. It has also found that families understand probabilistic risk information not in abstract terms, but according to the social context and circumstances of their lives. Where a recessive disorder is diagnosed, the one in four recurrence risk is interpreted in very different ways by different couples. Their interpretations reflect their prior experiences of fertility and disability, the expectations and experiences of other family members such as siblings and senior kin, their marital and family circumstances, and the social environment of contemporary Britain."

As I've said before, Muslims can't afford to lose a few IQ points to inbreeding depression.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer