re: #2 steve_davis

The marriage of first cousins in this country is still going on. It’s legal in any number of places, and 100 years ago, not only would no one have thought twice about it, it would have been necessitated by bad transportation and not a whole lot to choose from by way of eligible ladies. The blue Appalachians are apparently one result of what happens when the gene pool gets a little too crowded, but for the most part, unless you are royalty and you’ve been doing it for several hundred years, there’s actually not much genetically that goes wrong when cousins marry.

Nonsense. This is dangerous from the get-go. The Amish also have an inbreeding problem, and this, even though first-cousin marriages are not so common.

Literal, actual inbreeding is unfortunately easily confused with the insult phrase “inbred”. Literal inbreeding does cause increased rates of genetic conditions that reduce intelligence and bodily vigor.

It’s not an attack on Muslims to bring to people’s attention the fact that this practice is dangerous. It’s not part of Islam, but it’s part of several cultures.

The fact that some of these cultures are Islamic doesn’t annul the other fact.