The Wiki tells us that Incest is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives.[1][2] This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption, clan, or lineage. The Wikipedia sounds pretty relaxed about the whole thing. In fact it is a nasty form of sexual degeneracy, one being promoted by the Mainstream Media, which includes the very same Wiki.
What is wrong with Incest? The answer is Inbreeding, meaning that the same genes are inherited from both parents. This often produces Genetic Disorders. These are incurable because they are inherent in the ancestry of the victim. The Wiki goes on to the dangers at Cousin Marriage In The Middle East ex Wiki
The issue has been known to be unhealthy for thousands of years. It is the theme of the Greek play, Oedipus Rex written circa 429 BC. When Oedipus discovers that he is guilty he tears his eyes out in horror, while his mother hangs herself.
This knowledge has been almost forgotten by the public at large. This why malign forces have been able to market incest as an unimportant trifle. By chance the Daily Mail wrote recently, in 2021 about the issue. It is one with practical results. It is How royal inbreeding led to Europe's darkest days. It is based on a research paper from two men at UCLA called History’s Masters The Effect of European Monarchs on State Performance.
Its story is solidly confirmed by the Scientific American writing about King Tutankhamen.
Is this mere Paranoia, an overreaction to Fears of one sort or another? Is it a Conspiracy or even a Conspiracy Theory? Try conspiracy fact.
The solution to the incest problem is Families. They establish relationships and responsibilities, clear guidelines, which are very much part of Christianity. Other religions have their customs with the same effect.
But the churches are declining in Western Civilization. The Church of England is at the forefront of ruination. This leaves a power vacuum in Morals. It is all part of the Long March Through The Institutions started by Antonio Gramsci, the leading intellectual of the Italian communists. He knew that his main obstacle was the Catholic Church.
Read for yourself what the Irish Savant has to tell us. The point he makes is that the media are malign Propaganda machines being used to destroy Western Civilization. He writes about Incest, At Last - An All-White TV Series. Think for yourself. Decide for yourself.
At Last - An All-White TV Series
A new Lifetime movie adaptation series is due to air shortly on America's screens. And be prepared for a surprise. There are no people of colour. Just your typical blonde blue-eyed wholesome American family. There must be a catch, you say, and you'd be right. Of course you would. Because this typical White American family is in fact steeped in the sickest form of degeneracy. Adultery, violence and yes, incest. The plot of Flowers in the Attic has been described approvingly by one movie magazine as 'a delicious [sic] assault on family morals, with details considered so lurid and depraved' that nobody would be seen reading it when the book version was initially released in 1979.
Ah, but that was then, this is now. Now it is, if I may make a play on incest itself, a game for all the family. Why, there's even a video out entitled 'Nine reasons to Love [sic] Flowers In The Attic'. The media moguls, with lip-smacking relish, anticipate lots more dollars and civilizational breakdown. I referred here to the program underway to get paedophilia accepted. It now seems that a second incest-armed front has been opened up because 'Flowers' is just one element of a general infestation.
A survey of incest plotlines in popular culture over the past few years alone includes Game of Thrones (sister and brother, Cersei and Jaime); Boardwalk Empire (mother and son, Gillian and Jimmy); Dexter (adopted sister and brother, Deb and Dexter); Bored to Death (half-sister and brother, Jonathan and Rose); Bates Motel (mother and son, Norma and Norman); and Top of the Lake (half-sister and brother, Robin and Johnno, though was only a scare)—not to mention, Brothers and Sisters, Supernatural, Nip/Tuck, Lost, Veronica Mars, Californication, Six Feet Under and the upcoming mini-series The Spoils of Babylon, which stars Toby Maguire and Kristen Wiig as romantically involved adopted siblings.
“Degradation and conquest are companions. By attacking the character and morals … by bringing about, through contamination of youth, a general degraded feeling, command of the populace is facilitated"
Never forget that we are being attacked in a planned, deliberate, cold-blooded and ruthless way. Our naivety and good intentions have been used against us and will, in all probability result in the our civilisation's destruction. And never forget or forgive those who are doing it to us.
Incest ex Wiki
Incest (/ˈɪnsɛst/ IN-sest) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives.[1][2] This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption, clan, or lineage.The incest taboo is one of the most widespread of all cultural taboos, both in present and in past societies.[3] Most modern societies have laws regarding incest or social restrictions on closely consanguineous marriages.[3] In societies where it is illegal, consensual adult incest is seen by some as a victimless crime.[4][5] Some cultures extend the incest taboo to relatives with no consanguinity such as milk-siblings, step-siblings, and adoptive siblings, albeit sometimes with less intensity.[6][7] Third-degree relatives (such as half-aunt, half-nephew, first cousin) on average have 12.5% common genetic heritage, and sexual relations between them are viewed differently in various cultures, from being discouraged to being socially acceptable.[8] Children of incestuous relationships have been regarded as illegitimate, and are still so regarded in some societies today. In most cases, the parents did not have the option to marry to remove that status, as incestuous marriages were, and are, normally also prohibited.
A common justification for prohibiting incest is avoiding inbreeding: a collection of genetic disorders suffered by the children of parents with a close genetic relationship.[9] Such children are at greater risk for congenital disorders, death, and developmental and physical disability, and that risk is proportional to their parents' coefficient of relationship—a measure of how closely the parents are related genetically.[9][10] But cultural anthropologists have noted that inbreeding avoidance cannot form the sole basis for the incest taboo because the boundaries of the incest prohibition vary widely between cultures, and not necessarily in ways that maximize the avoidance of inbreeding.[9][11][12][13]
In some societies, such as those of Ancient Egypt, brother–sister, father–daughter, mother–son, cousin–cousin, aunt–nephew, uncle–niece, and other combinations of relations within a royal family were married as a means of perpetuating the royal lineage.[14][15] Some societies have different views about what constitutes illegal or immoral incest. However, sexual relations with a first-degree relative (meaning a parent, sibling or child) are almost universally forbidden.[16]
Genetic Disorders ex Wiki
A genetic disorder is a health problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polygenic) or by a chromosomal abnormality. Although polygenic disorders are the most common, the term is mostly used when discussing disorders with a single genetic cause, either in a gene or chromosome.[1][2] The mutation responsible can occur spontaneously before embryonic development (a de novo mutation), or it can be inherited from two parents who are carriers of a faulty gene (autosomal recessive inheritance) or from a parent with the disorder (autosomal dominant inheritance). When the genetic disorder is inherited from one or both parents, it is also classified as a hereditary disease. Some disorders are caused by a mutation on the X chromosome and have X-linked inheritance. Very few disorders are inherited on the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA.[3]There are well over 6,000 known genetic disorders,[4] and new genetic disorders are constantly being described in medical literature.[5] More than 600 of these disorders are treatable.[6] Around 1 in 50 people are affected by a known single-gene disorder, while around 1 in 263 are affected by a chromosomal disorder.[7] Around 65% of people have some kind of health problem as a result of congenital genetic mutations.[7] Due to the significantly large number of genetic disorders, approximately 1 in 21 people are affected by a genetic disorder classified as "rare" (usually defined as affecting less than 1 in 2,000 people). Most genetic disorders are rare in themselves.[5][8]
All genetic disorders are present before birth, and some genetic disorders produce birth defects, but many birth defects are developmental rather than hereditary. The opposite of a hereditary disease is an acquired disease. Most cancers, although they involve genetic mutations to a small proportion of cells in the body, are acquired diseases. Some family cancer syndromes, such as BRCA mutations, are hereditary genetic disorders.[9]
How royal inbreeding led to Europe's darkest days [ 25 March 2021 ]
QUOTE
For centuries members of Europe's royal families often married their close relatives. The practice, which stretched across countries including France, Spain and Austria, helped consolidate power, titles and thrones.But it also led to problems. Offspring born to mothers and fathers who share a common ancestry are more vulnerable to birth defects and harmful DNA mutations.
In the case of the kings and queens of Europe, this meant some heirs were born with medical issues or died in infancy. It also, research suggests, caused reduced intelligence, which in turn impacted the monarch's ability to rule.
Sebastian Ottinger and Nico Voigtländer, of UCLA, suggest there is a correlation between how inbred a king or queen was and how effectively he or she ruled in their NBER Working Paper History’s Masters The Effect of European Monarchs on State Performance
The academics looked at 331 European monarchs who ruled between 990 and 1800.
They worked out how inbred the ruler was and then assessed the success of their reigns against two criteria.
Firstly, they considered the score the monarch was given by US historian Adam Woods, who in 1913 'graded' individual members of European royal families on their mental and moral qualities based on what historians had written about them.
This subjective measure was combined with a more objective one: the change in land area controlled by the country under the monarch's rule. Loss of land meant a king or queen was less effective; gaining land reflected a more successful reign.
Results show countries 'tended to endure their darkest periods under their most inbred monarchs, and enjoy golden ages during the reigns of their most genetically diverse leaders,' according to The Economist, which analysed Ottinger and Voigtländer's data.
Among the best performing were King Henry VIII and Maria Theresa of Austria. Both had relatively genetically diverse ancestry - Henry VIII's parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York were third cousins - and were highly regarded by historians.
At the other end of the scale is Charles II, King of Spain from 1665 to 1700, who was determined to be the 'individual with the highest coefficient of inbreeding', or the most inbred monarch.
His parents were Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria, who were born to first cousins and were uncle and niece.
They were part of the House of Habsburg, which produced generations of Austrian and Spanish kings and queens, and occupied the throne of the Holy Roman Empire from 1438–1740.
However they were also masters of inbreeding and frequently married close relatives such as nieces or first relatives. This in turn led to ill health and a high rate of infant and child mortality.
Centuries of inbreeding within the House of Habsburg culminated in Charles II.
According to Ottinger and Voigtländer's calculations, he was 'more inbred than the offspring of siblings would be'.
Historians believe inbreeding contributed to Charles II's host of medical issues, as well as his inability to produce an heir. Despite having married twice, Charles II died childless, which sparked the War of the Spanish Succession between 1701 and 1714.
Charles's physical disabilities are well documented. He only started talking at the age of four, the same year he became king, and walking at the age of eight. Woods described Charles II as an 'imbecile'.
His tongue was so big he had difficulty speaking and drooled, and when he died in 1700 aged 38, the coroner found lungs corroded and his intestines rotten.
Analysis shows that Spain suffered under Carlos II's rule. Woods noted he reigned over a country characterised by 'misery, poverty, hunger, disorders, decline, especially in agriculture, finances and strength of the army'.
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A grim warning to all of us.
Flowers in the Attic: V.C. Andrews: 9780671729417: Amazon.com ... FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC is the novel that began launched the extraordinary career of V.C. Andrews "RM", winning her an immediate and fiercely devoted ...
Flowers in the Attic ex Wiki
Flowers in the Attic is a 1979 Gothic novel by V. C. Andrews. It is the first book in the Dollanganger Series, and was followed by Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, Garden of Shadows, Christopher's Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger and Christopher's Diary: Secret Brother. The novel is written in the first-person, from the point of view of Cathy Dollanganger. It was twice adapted into films in 1987 and 2014. The book was extremely popular, selling over forty million copies world-wide.[1]
Oedipus Rex ex Wiki
Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus (Ancient Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, pronounced [oidípoːs týrannos]), or Oedipus the King, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC.[1] Originally, to the ancient Greeks, the title was simply Oedipus (Οἰδίπους), as it is referred to by Aristotle in the Poetics. It is thought to have been renamed Oedipus Tyrannus to distinguish it from another of Sophocles's plays, Oedipus at Colonus. In antiquity, the term "tyrant" referred to a ruler with no legitimate claim to rule, but it did not necessarily have a negative connotation.[2][3][4]Of Sophocles' three Theban plays that have survived, and that deal with the story of Oedipus, Oedipus Rex was the second to be written. However, in terms of the chronology of events that the plays describe, it comes first, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone.
Prior to the start of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus has become the king of Thebes while unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his father, Laius (the previous king), and marry his mother, Jocasta (whom Oedipus took as his queen after solving the riddle of the Sphinx). The action of Sophocles's play concerns Oedipus's search for the murderer of Laius in order to end a plague ravaging Thebes, unaware that the killer he is looking for is none other than himself. At the end of the play, after the truth finally comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, proceeds to gouge out his own eyes in despair.
In his Poetics, Aristotle refers several times to the play in order to exemplify aspects of the genre.[5][6]
Cousin Marriage In The Middle East ex Wiki
Is what the name tells us. It leads to Biological Aspects
QUOTE
Cousin marriages have genetic aspects arising an increased chance of sharing genes for recessive traits. The percentage of consanguinity between any two individuals decreases fourfold as the most recent common ancestor recedes one generation. First cousins have four times the consanguinity of second cousins, while first cousins once removed have half that of first cousins. Double first cousins have twice that of first cousins and are as related as half-siblings.In April 2002, the Journal of Genetic Counseling released a report which estimated the average risk of birth defects in a child born of first cousins at 1.1–2.0 percentage points over an average base risk for non-cousin couples of 3%, or about the same as that of any woman over age 40.[211] In terms of mortality, a 1994 study found a mean excess pre-reproductive mortality rate of 4.4%,[212] while another study published in 2009 suggests the rate may be closer to 3.5%.[2] Put differently, a single first-cousin marriage entails a similar increased risk of birth defects and mortality as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 rather than at 30.[213]
Repeated consanguineous marriages within a group are more problematic. After repeated generations of cousin marriage the actual genetic relationship between two people is closer than the most immediate relationship would suggest. In Pakistan, where there has been cousin marriage for generations and the current rate may exceed 50%, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins, 7.9 percent for first cousins, 9.2 percent for first cousins once removed/double second cousins, 6.9 percent for second cousins, and 5.1 percent among non-consanguineous progeny. Among double first cousin progeny, 41.2 percent of pre-reproductive deaths were associated with the expression of detrimental recessive genes, with equivalent values of 26.0, 14.9, and 8.1 percent for first cousins, first cousins once removed/double second cousins, and second cousins respectively.[214]
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Should you? Would you? Clearly it is not a good idea. Do a Google search on "Pakistan inbreeding" to confirm the point.
Tutankhamen's Familial DNA Tells Tale of Boy Pharaoh's Disease and Incest
QUOTE
New insight into the fragile pharaoh's family tree shows intrafamilial marriage, and royal lives cursed by malarial infections and bodily defectsDespite his brief nine-year reign, Tutankhamen is probably the most famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt. Because his tomb had not been robbed at the time of its discovery in 1922, historians have been able to piece together aspects of the boy king's 19-year life. More than 100 walking sticks and "pharmacies" (medicinal seeds, fruits and leaves) found mingled among funeral offerings and other treasures within the tomb suggested that the pharaoh was frail, and two mummified fetuses implied that his offspring might have suffered from lethal genetic defects. But a new study on the Tutankhamen family mummies themselves, published February 16 in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, has provided biological insight into the king's incestuous royal lineage and his early death.
Secretary General Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities teamed up with paleogeneticist Carsten Pusch from the University of Tübingen in Germany, to examine Tutankhamen and 10 royal mummies, including the two fetuses, presumed to be related to him for kinship, inherited disorders and infectious diseases. Five mummies that were thought to be unrelated served as morphological and genetic controls. Hawass, Pusch and 15 other scientists continue to perform detailed anthropological, radiological and genetic studies on the precious mummies in a lab built into the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo—two floors below the famous golden mask.After extracting tiny amounts of ancient DNA from the mummies' bones, the researchers amplified 16 short tandem repeats (short sequences in the DNA that create a genetic fingerprint) and eight polymorphic microsatellites (hereditary molecular markers) to testable quantities using techniques commonly employed in criminal or paternity investigations. They also looked for DNA sequences from the malaria pathogen.
Based on their results so far, the researchers were able to name several mummies who were previously anonymous (referred to only by tomb number), including Tut's grandmother "Tiye" and Tut's father, the KV55 mummy probably named "Akhenaten". "This is the most important discovery since the finding of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922," Hawass says. The team also identified the mummy likely to be Tut's mother as KV35YL, not Queen Nefertiti as was once thought. "Now I'm sure that it cannot be Nefertiti, and therefore the mother of King Tut is one of the daughters of Amenhotep III and Tiye—and there are five," Hawass says, adding that he plans to investigate this further.
"The more data we collected, the more the museum specimens came back to life," Pusch says, who admits he was worried about working with such ancient "pharaohic" DNA. "We had 16 mummies," Pusch explained. "You have a lot to do in the lab when you have a single mummy!" But the embalming process used to preserve these royal remains worked in Pusch's favor. "Some embalming really enhances the preservation of genetic material," he says.The study revealed that King Tut's parents were siblings, a trend which might have continued in Tut's marriage. "There are rumors that Tut's wife was his sister or half sister. If this is true we have at least two successive generations that had interfamilial marriages, and this is not a good thing," Pusch says. "We see it quite often in royal families that they marry each other. They thought: 'Better to stay close.' I think we cannot judge from the insight we have nowadays." Because only partial DNA was retrieved from the mummified fetuses, it is still unclear whether they were Tut's offspring or just ceremonial offerings.
In 2005 Hawass performed a computed tomography (CT) scan to determine the cause of the boy pharaoh's death. The scan revealed a fractured femur, which could have caused death from infection or from a blood clot. The present study revealed that juvenile aseptic bone necrosis—a disorder in which poor blood supply leads to bone damage—might have rendered Tut particularly vulnerable to physical injuries. "We know that this man had 130 walking sticks and that he used to shoot arrows while he was sitting," Hawass says.
But the genetic analysis identified DNA from the malaria tropica (Plasmodium falciparum) pathogen, suggesting that Tut was also hampered by infection. "Unfortunately this was the worst form of malaria. Even today we don't have very good medications to deal with it," Pusch explains. The team concluded that a sudden leg fracture might have led to a life-threatening condition when a malaria infection occurred. "He was not a proud pharaoh or a strong leader, he was a young boy—frail and weak. He couldn't walk by himself and needed other people or walking sticks because of this bone necrosis," Pusch says, explaining that Tutankhamen's family was plagued by malformations and infections. "When I was a boy, I thought, 'Wow, these are royals and queens,' but they were suffering. They had pain, chills and fevers."
The study is the first to examine DNA from King Tut and his royal family, according to the researchers. "It's really a new kind of scientific discipline," Pusch says, calling it molecular anthropology. (The paper refers to it as molecular Egyptology.) "You have to be careful with these things. It's about evolution and history. The more you examine the mummy, the smaller it will become."
Pusch says he is grateful to have been a part of the project, adding that he couldn't sleep for three days after first arriving in the lab below the museum. "I remember going there with my parents when I was 12. To go back 30 years later to work with the original one and only, sometimes I wake up and think it's a dream!" Pusch says that the project has answered many questions but raised many more. "We have so many exciting questions for the future. In the meantime, we’ll gather more and more questions—it will never end!"
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Inbreeding? Not for me!
Cousin Marriage Conundrum ex The American Conservative
Many prominent neoconservatives are calling on America not only to conquer Iraq (and perhaps more Muslim nations after that), but also to rebuild Iraqi society in order to jumpstart the democratization of the Middle East. Yet, Americans know so little about the Middle East that few of us are even aware of one of the building blocks of Arab Muslim cultures: cousin marriage. Not surprisingly, we are almost utterly innocent of how much the high degree of inbreeding in Iraq could interfere with our nation-building ambitions.In Iraq, as in much of the region, nearly half of all married couples are first or second cousins. A 1986 study of 4,500 married hospital patients and staff in Baghdad found that 46 percent were wed to a first or second cousin, while a smaller 1989 survey found 53 percent were “consanguineously” married. The most prominent example of an Iraqi first cousin marriage is that of Saddam Hussein and his first wife Sajida.
By fostering intense family loyalties and strong nepotistic urges, inbreeding makes the development of civil society more difficult. Many Americans have heard by now that Iraq is composed of three ethnic groups—the Kurds of the north, the Sunnis of the center, and the Shi’ites of the south. Clearly, these ethnic rivalries would complicate the task of reforming Iraq. But that is just a top-down summary of Iraq’s ethnic make-up. Each of those three ethnic groups is divisible into smaller and smaller tribes, clans, and inbred extended families—each with its own alliances, rivals, and feuds. And the engine at the bottom of these bedeviling social divisions is the oft-ignored institution of cousin marriage.
The fractiousness and tribalism of Middle Eastern countries have frequently been remarked. In 1931, King Feisal of Iraq described his subjects as “devoid of any patriotic idea, … connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil; prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever.” The clannishness, corruption, and coups frequently observed in countries such as Iraq appear to be in tied to the high rates of inbreeding.
Muslim countries are usually known for warm, devoted extended family relationships but also for weak patriotism. In the U.S., where individualism is so strong, many assume that “family values” and civic virtues such as sacrificing for the good of society always go together. But, in Islamic countries, family loyalty is often at war with national loyalty. Civic virtues, military effectiveness, and economic performance all suffer.
Commentator Randall Parker wrote, “Consanguinity [cousin marriage] is the biggest underappreciated factor in Western analyses of Middle Eastern politics. Most Western political theorists seem blind to the importance of pre-ideological kinship-based political bonds in large part because those bonds are not derived from abstract Western ideological models of how societies and political systems should be organized. … Extended families that are incredibly tightly bound are really the enemy of civil society because the alliances of family override any consideration of fairness to people in the larger society. Yet, this obvious fact is missing from 99 percent of the discussions about what is wrong with the Middle East. How can we transform Iraq into a modern liberal democracy if every government worker sees a government job as a route to helping out his clan at the expense of other clans?”
U.S. Army Col. Norvell De Atkine (Ret.) spent years trying to train America’s Arab allies in modern combat techniques. In an article in American Diplomacy titled, “Why Arabs Lose Wars,” a frustrated De Atkine explained, “First, the well-known lack of trust among Arabs for anyone outside their own family adversely affects offensive operations … In a culture in which almost every sphere of human endeavor, including business and social relationships, is based on a family structure, this orientation is also present in the military, particularly in the stress of battle. “Offensive action, basically, consists of fire and maneuver,” De Atkine continued. “The maneuver element must be confident that supporting units or arms are providing covering fire. If there is a lack of trust in that support, getting troops moving forward against dug-in defenders is possible only by officers getting out front and leading, something that has not been a characteristic of Arab leadership.”
Similarly, as Francis Fukuyama described in his 1995 book, Trust: The Social Virtues & the Creation of Prosperity, countries such as Italy with highly loyal extended families can generate dynamic family firms. Yet, their larger corporations tend to be rife with goldbricking, corruption, and nepotism, all because their employees do not trust each other to show their highest loyalty to the firm rather than their own extended families. Arab cultures are more family-focused even than Sicily, and therefore their larger economic enterprises suffer even more.
American society is so biased against inbreeding that many Americans have a hard time even conceiving of marrying a cousin. Yet, arranged matches between first cousins (especially between the children of brothers) are considered the ideal throughout much of a broad expanse from North Africa through West Asia and into Pakistan and India.
Americans have long dismissed cousin marriage as something practiced only among hillbillies. That old stereotype of inbred mountaineers waging decades- long blood feuds had some truth to it. One study of 107 marriages in Beech Creek, Kentucky in 1942 found 19 percent were consanguineous, although the Kentuckians were more inclined toward second- cousin marriages, while first-cousin couples are more common than second-cousin pairings in the Islamic lands.
Cousin marriage averages not much more than one percent in most European countries and under 10 percent in the rest of the world outside that Morocco to Southern India corridor. Muslim immigration, however, has been boosting Europe’s low level of consanguinity. According to the leading authority on inbreeding, geneticist Alan H. Bittles of Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, “In the resident Pakistani community of some 0.5 million [in Britain] an estimated 50% to 60+% of marriages are consanguineous, with evidence that their prevalence is increasing.”
European nations have recently become increasingly hostile toward the common practice among their Muslim immigrants of arranging marriages between their children and citizens of their home country, frequently their relatives. One study of Turkish guest-workers in the Danish city of Ishøj found that 98 percent—1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation—married a spouse from Turkey who then came and lived in Denmark. (Turks, however, are quite a bit less enthusiastic about cousin marriage than are Arabs or Pakistanis, which correlates with the much stronger degree of patriotism found in Turkey.)
European “family reunification” laws present an immigrant with the opportunity to bring in his nephew by marrying his daughter to him. Not surprisingly, “family reunification” almost always works just in one direction—with the new husband moving from the poor Muslim country to the rich European country. If a European-born daughter refused to marry her cousin from the old country just because she does not love him, that would deprive her extended family of the boon of an immigration visa. So, intense family pressure can fall on the daughter to do as she is told. The new Danish right-wing government has introduced legislation to crack down on these kind of marriages arranged to generate visas. British Home Secretary David Blunkett has called for immigrants to arrange more marriages within Britain.
Unlike the Middle East, Europe underwent what Samuel P. Huntington calls the “Romeo and Juliet revolution.” Europeans became increasingly sympathetic toward the right of a young woman to marry the man she loves. Setting the stage for this was the Catholic Church’s long war against cousin marriage, even out to fourth cousins or higher. This weakened the extended family in Europe, thus lessening the advantages of arranged marriages. It also strengthened broader institutions like the Church and the nation-state.
Islam itself may not be responsible for the high rates of inbreeding in Muslim countries. (Similarly high levels of consanguinity are found among Hindus in Southern India, although there uncle-niece marriages are socially preferred, even though their degree of genetic similarity is twice that of cousin marriages, with worse health consequences for offspring.) Rafat Hussain, a Pakistani-born Senior Lecturer at the University of New England in Australia, told me, “Islam does not specifically encourage cousin marriages and, in fact, in the early days of the spread of Islam, marriages outside the clan were highly desirable to increase cultural and religious influence.” She adds, “The practice has little do with Islam (or in fact any religion) and has been a prevalent cultural norm before Islam.” Inbreeding (or “endogamy”) is also common among Christians in the Middle East, although less so than among Muslims.
The Muslim practice is similar to older Middle Eastern norms, such as those outlined in Leviticus in the Old Testament. The lineage of the Hebrew Patriarchs who founded the Jewish people was highly inbred. Isaac married Rebekah, a cousin once removed. And Isaac’s son Jacob wed his two first cousins, Leah and Rachel. Jacob’s dozen sons were the famous progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Due to inbreeding, Jacob’s eight legitimate sons had only six unique great-grandparents instead of the usual eight. That is because the inbred are related to their relatives through multiple paths.
Why do so many people around the world prefer to keep marriage in the family? Rafat Hussain noted, “In patriarchal societies where parents exert considerable influence and gender segregation is followed more strictly, marriage choice is limited to whom you know. While there is some pride in staying within the inner bounds of family for social or economic reasons, the more important issue is: Where will parents find a good match? Often, it boils down to whom you know and can trust.”
Another important motivation—one that is particularly important in many herding cultures, such as the ancient ones from which the Jews and Muslims emerged—is to prevent inheritable wealth from being split among too many descendants. This can be especially important when there are economies of scale in the family business.
Just as the inbred have fewer unique ancestors than the outbred, they also have fewer unique heirs, helping keep both the inheritance and the brothers together. When a herd-owning patriarch marries his son off to his younger brother’s daughter, he insures that his grandson and his grandnephew will be the same person. Likewise, the younger brother benefits from knowing that his grandson will also be the patriarch’s grandson and heir. Thus, by making sibling rivalry over inheritance less relevant, cousin marriage emotionally unites families. The anthropologist Carleton Coon also pointed out that by minimizing the number of relatives a Bedouin Arab nomad has, this system of inbreeding “does not overextend the number of persons whose deaths an honorable man must avenge.”
Of course, there are also disadvantages to inbreeding. The best known is medical. Being inbred increases the chance of inheriting genetic syndromes caused by malign recessive genes. Bittles found that, after controlling for socio-economic factors, the babies of first cousins had about a 30 percent higher chance of dying before their first birthdays. The biggest disadvantage, however, may be political.
Are Muslims, especially Arabs, so much more loyal to their families than to their nations because, due to countless generations of cousin marriages, they are so much more genealogically related to their families than Westerners are related to theirs? Frank Salter, a political scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, whose new book Risky Transactions: Trust, Kinship, and Ethnicity takes a sociobiological look at the reason why Mafia families are indeed families, told me, “That’s my hunch; at least it’s bound to be a factor.”
One of the basic laws of modern biology, quantified by William D. Hamilton in 1964 under the name “kin selection,” is that the closer the genetic relationship between two people, the more likely they are to feel loyalty and altruism toward each other. Natural selection has molded us not just to try to propagate our own genes, but to help our relatives, who possess copies of some of our specific genes, to propagate their own.
Nepotism is thus biologically inspired. Hamilton explained that the level of nepotistic feeling generally depends upon the degree of genetic similarity. You share half your personally variable genes with your children and siblings, but one quarter with your nephews/nieces and grandchildren, so your nepotistic urges will tend to be somewhat less toward them. You share one eighth of your genes with your first cousins, and one thirty-second with your second cousin, so your feelings of family loyalty tend to fall off quickly. But not as quickly if you and your relatives are inbred. Then, you will be related to your kin via multiple pathways. You will all be genetically more similar, so your normal family feelings will be multiplied. For example, because your son-in-law might be also be the nephew you have cherished since his childhood, you can lavish all the nepotistic altruism on him that in outbred Western societies would be split between your son-in-law and your nephew.
Unfortunately, as nepotism is usually a zero-sum game, the flip side of being materially nicer toward your relatives would be that you would have fewer resources left with which to be civil, or even just fair, toward non-kin. So nepotistic corruption is rampant in countries such as Iraq, where Saddam has appointed members of his extended family from his hometown of Tikrit to many key positions in the national government.
Similarly, a tendency toward inbreeding can turn an extended family into a miniature racial group with its own partially isolated gene pool. (Dog breeders use extreme forms of inbreeding to create new breeds in a handful of generations.) The ancient Hebrews provide a vivid example of a partly inbred extended family (that of Abraham and his posterity) that evolved into its own ethnic group. This process has been going on for thousands of years in the Middle East, which is why not just the Jews, but also why tiny, ancient inbreeding groups such as the Samaritans and the John-the-Baptist-worshipping Sabeans still survive.
In summary, although neoconservatives constantly point to America’s success at reforming Germany and Japan after World War II as 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, co-operative, and (not surprisingly) outbred peoples. The Iraqis, in contrast, more closely resemble the Hatfields and the McCoys. [ see Hatfield-McCoy feud ]
Steve Sailer (www.iSteve.com) is a columnist for VDARE.com.