“One of the topics that does frequently come up amongst muslims is cousin marriage. Whilst muslims do affirm the validity of a cousin marriage, not all necessarily encourage it out of fear of offspring having ‘defects’. What I claim is that there is a lot of worldly benefits with cousin marriage and the fear of these supposed ‘defects’ is exaggerated…massively.”

“The benefits of cousin marriage is quite numerous whilst I want to focus on the large-kin networks which is associated with the number of both economic advantages and social advantages. To understand the benefits of large-kin networks, think about a hypothetical situation of a man who has passed his exams, he has done his job experience and his CV has little to no gaps. He tried to do the job interview...and he failed. He did it again. And he failed. He did it again…and he failed. Several times he has failed. You might think it’s an ‘extreme hypothetical situation’ but this ‘extreme hypothetical situation’ is very much common amongst many job-seekers who struggle to find work as they realise that some skills that they claim to have is something that more than a thousand people have. Also, ask yourself this question, how does this individual with a degree is able to find a job despite his his vast skillset and experience? Large kin-networks. Such large-kin networks are more effective than a linkedin network as large kin networks are more willing to help the individual as they have higher degree of loyalty to the person, sympathy to the person and willingness to the person as that person happens to have familial ties with. In other words, in areas that where your individual capacity is unable to reach, large kin networks are able to aid the individual with a large support network where that person is able to reach areas of institutions that the ordinary person is not able to obtain who happens to not have the ‘connections’. In other words, you’re able to practice nepotism more effectively with large kin networks than linkedin networks. There are numerous worldly benefits of large-kin networks as not only do these large-kin networks help in terms of not only finding jobs, they also help a man or woman get married or help several businesses financially (majority of business in several countries are family businesses) and also there is larger forms of cooperations.”

“Some might ask for cases of large kin networks who were highly influential. In Europe, there were several members of european monarchies who were involved in a cousin marriage. One of the famous cases was Elizabeth who married her first cousin. The rothschilds family who are a jewish family involved in the financial systems of the british state (Blackrock), the members of that family have been involved in cousin marriage.”

“Now some ask about the ‘genetic defects’. Alan H. Bittles who has studied the health effects associated with cousin marriage for at least 35 years and who has wrote the book, ‘Consanguinity in Context’, he has said, ‘For over 90% of cousin marriages, their risk [of having a child with a genetic abnormality] is the same as it is for the general population,’ Whilst he does acknowledge studies of offspring of two cousins with risks of illnesses statistically is 3-4% higher than the rest of the population but these risks are usually occur to couples who are carriers of disorders which are…very rare. In pakistan, 40% of marriages are cousin marriages and you don’t see high number of people with ‘genetic defects’. Now some might still avoid it still out of fear of ‘defects’ but as you know, many members of the masses aren’t very consistent especially when increases in maternal age is associated with down-syndrome pregnancies yet we don’t see these non-muslims encourage getting married early. You see the opposite when they encourage people to get married later. When they’ve been confronted with the fact that increases in maternal age is associated with down-syndrome pregnancies and questioned about their support of the abolition of age of consent, they throw away their supposed ‘eugenic’ arguments and they utter inconsistent nonsense and they avoid the topic. Now ask yourself, if you were really concerned about birth defects, why aren’t you getting married early? If you’re above 18, why haven’t you got married at the age of 18 if you were really afraid of these supposed ‘defects’?”

“There have been several claims uttered by christians, hindus and jews towards cousin marriage. What the christian doesn’t understand is that the old testament and the new testament do not reject cousin marriage. Whilst the new testament does not comment on cousin marriage, the old testament endorses cousin marriage and it claims that god commanded cousin marriage, according to Numbers 36:6-11. Whilst the jews claim to believe in the torah, they do believe in the talmud which is an oral interpretation of the old testament. The jews believe that the talmud is more important than the torah. According to Yevamot 62b, the talmud endorses cousin marriage and according to maimondes, he claims its a mitzvah to marry your niece. Hinduism endorses cousin marriage according to the ‘Mahabharata’. The hindu scholars believe that the text is a smiriti text.”