Iqbal Mohamed, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dewsbury and Batley in Yorkshire, England, has defended first-cousin marriage amongst ethnic minorities. During a debate in the House of Commons on the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Bill introduced by Conservative MP Richard Holden, Iqbal argued that “ordinary people see family intermarriage as something that is very positive overall; as something that helps to build family bonds and puts families on a more secure financial foothold.”
Iqbal is a member of the so-called Independent Alliance, comprised of Jeremy Corbyn, the previous leader of Britain’s governing Labour Party, and four Muslim MPs, all of whom ran on an anti-Israel ticket. Arguing against the bill to outlaw first-cousin marriage, he insisted it is “important to recognize that this is a highly sensitive issue for many people,” adding: “In discussing it, we should try to step into the shoes of those who perhaps are not from the same culture as ours, to better understand why the practice continues to be so widespread.”
Incestuous marriages are common among Pakistani-heritage couples in Britain, with close to 40 percent or more of Pakistani couples in the country being married to first cousins and around 60 percent married to second cousins and other, more distant relatives. Despite some high-profile historic examples, such as Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin, the number of first-cousin marriages among White Britons is very low, at under one percent—likely a knock-on effect of the Catholic Church banning the practice in the Middle Ages.
HEALTH RISKS.
Consanguineous marriage is linked to lower IQ, higher rates of mood disorders and psychoses, and birth defects, putting strain on Britain’s socialized National Health Service (NHS).
However, Iqbal favors addressing these issues by piling even more taxpayer money into problem communities, providing them with “advanced genetic test screening for prospective married couples, as is the case in all Arab countries in the Persian Gulf,” alongside “health education programs targeting those communities where the practice is most common.”
He notes that, in addition to being “extremely common” among South Asians, “[a]n estimated 35 percent to 50 percent of all sub-Saharan African populations either prefer or accept cousin marriage.”
show lessIndependent Muslim MP Iqbal Mohamed opposed the Cousin Marriage Ban bill proposed in Parliament today.
He explains that sub-Saharan, south Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures prefer cousin marriage
But it is not British culture, we can condemn it, and ban it.
The Pope banned… pic.twitter.com/0jVMex0AvO
— Connor Tomlinson (@Con_Tomlinson) December 10, 2024
