Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Islam and Inbreeding

Nicolai Sennels’ latest essay concerns the deleterious effects of cousin marriage within the Muslim world, and the impact the practice is having in Western countries with large numbers of Muslim immigrants.


Muslim Inbreeding: Impacts on intelligence, sanity, health and society

by Nicolai Sennels


Massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1.400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool. The consequences of intermarriage between first cousins often have serious impact on the intelligence, sanity, and health of their offspring, and on their surroundings.

Ramses IIThe most famous example of inbreeding is in ancient Egypt, where several Pharaonic dynasties collapsed after lasting for several hundred years. In order to keep wealth and power within the family, the Pharaohs often married their own sisters or half-sisters, and after a handful of generations offspring were mentally and physically unfit to rule. Another historical example is the royal houses of Europe in which royal families often married among themselves because tradition did not allow them to marry people of a non-royal class. The high number of mentally retarded and handicapped members of royalty throughout European history shows the unhealthy consequences of this practice. Fortunately, royal families now allow themselves to marry for love and not just for status.

Muslim culture still practices inbreeding and has been doing so for longer than any Egyptian dynasty. This practice also predates the world’s oldest monarchy (the Danish) by 300 years.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called “consanguinity”) and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2/2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants”). Statistical research on Arabic countries shows that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algiers are consanguine (blood-related), 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (southern Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen (Reproductive Health Journal, 2009 “Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs”). The number of blood-related marriages is lower among Muslim immigrants living in the West. Among Pakistanis living in Denmark the amount is down to 40 percent and 15 percent among Turkish immigrants (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants”). More than half of Pakistani immigrants living in Britain are intermarried: “The research, conducted by the BBC and broadcast to a shocked nation on Tuesday, found that at least 55% of the community was married to a first cousin. This is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.” (Times of India, 17/11 2005 “Ban UK Pakistanis from marrying cousins”). The lower percentages might be because it is difficult to get the chosen family member into the country, or because health education is better in the West.

Intelligence

Several studies show that children of consanguineous marriages have lower intelligence than children of non-related parents. Research shows that the IQ is 10-16 points lower in children born from related parents and that abilities related to social behavior develop more slowly in inbred babies: “Effects of parental consanguinity on the cognitive and social behavior of children have been studied among the Ansari Muslims of Bhalgapur, Bihar. IQ in inbred children (8-12 years old) is found to be lower (69 in rural and 79 in suburban populations) than that of the outbred ones (79 and 95 respectively). The onset of various social profiles like visual fixation, social smile, sound seizures, oral expression and hand-grasping are significantly delayed among the new-born inbred babies.” ( [pdf] Indian National Science Academy, 1983 “Consanguinity Effects on Intelligence Quotient and Neonatal Behaviours of Ansari Muslim Children”). The article “Effects of inbreeding on Raven Matrices” concludes that “Indian Muslim school boys, ages 13 to 15 years, whose parents are first cousins, were compared with classmates whose parents are genetically unrelated on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices, a nonverbal test of intelligence. The inbred group scored significantly lower and had significantly greater variance than the non-inbred group, both on raw scores and on scores statistically adjusted to control for age and socioeconomic status.” (Behaviour Genetics, 1984).
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Another study shows that the risk of having an IQ lower than 70 goes up 400 percent from 1.2 percent in children from normal parents to 6.2 percent in inbred children: “The data indicate that the risk for mental retardation in matings of normal parents increases from 0.012 with random matings to 0.062 for first-cousin parentage.” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 1978 “Effect of inbreeding on IQ and mental retardation”). The study “A study of possible deleterious effects of consanguinity” (Departments of Pediatrics, United Arab Emirates, 1996) concludes that “The occurrence of malignancies, congenital abnormalities, mental retardation and physical handicap was significantly higher in offspring of consanguineous than non-consanguineous marriages.”

Mental and physical diseases and death

The risk of stillbirth doubles when parents are first cousins (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants”). One study analyzed the risk of perinatal death (the child dies during its own birth), infant death (the child dies while still infant), and autosomal recessive disorders (serious and often deadly genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy): “Perinatal mortality in the Pakistani children was 1.5 times higher than that in the Norwegian children, and infant mortality in the Pakistani children was more than double that in the Norwegian children. Deaths due to autosomal recessive disorders were 18 times more common in the Pakistani children. Similarly, deaths due to multiple malformations, which may be part of unrecognized autosomal recessive syndromes, were 10 times more common.” (BMJ, 1994 “Infant death and consanguineous marriage”).

There is also evidence suggesting that inbred people have a higher risk of developing mental disorders: “The clinical observations indicated that depression is very high in some communities where the consanguinity of marriages is also high.” (Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 2009 “Relationship between consanguinity and depression in a south Indian population”). Another study focused on the relationship between intermarriage and schizophrenia: “The closer the blood relative, the more likely was there to be a schizophrenic illness.” (American Psychiatric Press, 1982 “The role of genetic factors in the etiology of the schizophrenic disorders”). The increased risk of insanity among children of marriages between cousins might explain why immigrant patients are causing stress to the psychiatric system and are strongly overrepresented among the criminally insane: “In Sct. Hans Hospital, which has the biggest ward for clinically insane criminals in Denmark, more than 40 percent of the patients have an immigrant background.” (Kristeligt Dagblad, 26/6 2007 “Ethnic minorities overrepresented among the criminal insane”).

Implications for the Western and Muslim Worlds

The consequences for offspring of consanguineous marriages are unpleasantly clear: Death, low intelligence or even mental retardation, handicaps, and diseases often leading to a slow and painful death. Other consequences are: Limited social skills and understanding, limited ability to manage education and work procedures, and painful treatment procedures. The negative cognitive consequences also influence the executive functions. The impairment of concentration and emotional control most often leads to anti-social behavior.

The economic costs and consequences for society of inbreeding are of course secondary to the reality of human suffering. However, inbreeding among Muslims has severe implications for both Western society and the Muslim world.

Expenses related to mentally and physically handicapped Muslim immigrants drain the budget for other public services: “When cousins have children together, they are twice as likely to have a disabled child — it costs municipal funds dearly. Disabled immigrant children cost Danish municipalities millions. In Copenhagen County alone, the number of disabled children saw an overall increase of 100 percent in 10 years… Meredith Lefelt has contacted 330 families with disabled children in Copenhagen. She estimates that one third of their clients have a foreign cultural background.” (BT, 10/11 2003 “Immigrants’ inbreeding costs one million”). On top of that come the expenses for Muslim immigrants who — because of various consequences of being born from blood related parents — are not able to live up to the challenges of our Western work market: Muslim immigrants and their descendants in Europe have a very high rate of unemployment. The same goes for Muslims in USA, where the Gallup Institute made a study involving 300,000 people that concluded “The majority of Muslims in USA have a lower income, are less educated and have worse jobs than the population as a whole.” (Berlingske Tidende, d. 3. marts 2009 “Muslims thrive in the USA”).

The cognitive consequences of Muslim inbreeding might explain why non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the Danish army’s intelligence test than native Danes: “19.3% of non-Western immigrants are not able to pass the Danish army’s intelligence test. In comparison, only 4.7% of applicants with Danish background do not pass.” (TV 2 Nyhederne, 13/6 2007 “Immigrants flunk army test”). It probably also explains — at least partly — why two thirds of all immigrant school children with Arabic backgrounds are illiterate after ten years in the Danish school system: “Those who speak Arabic with their parents have an extreme tendency to lack reading ability — 64 percent are illiterate… No matter whether it concerns reading ability, mathematics, or science, the pattern is the same: the bilingual immigrants’ skills are exceedingly poor compared to their Danish classmates.” (Rockwool Foundation Research Unit [pdf], May 2007 “Ethnic students do not make Danish children worse”). The high expenses of special education for slow learners consumes one third of the budget for the Danish schools. “Immigrant children are clearly overrepresented on Copenhagen’s schools for retarded children and children with physical handicaps… 51 percent of the children in the three schools in Copenhagen for children with physical and mental handicaps have an immigrant background, and in one of the schools the figure is 70 percent… These amounts are significantly higher than the share of immigrant children in the municipality, which is 33 percent. The many handicapped children are clear evidence that there are many intermarried parents in the immigrant families.” (Jydske Vestkysten, 4/4 2009 “Tosprogede i overtal på handicapskoler”).

Our high level of education may also make it harder for inbred students to follow and finish their studies: “Young people with minority backgrounds have a significantly higher dropout rate at secondary schools than youth with a Danish background. For trade school education, the dropout rate among immigrants is 60 percent, twice as high among adolescents with a Danish background…There is great variation in educational outcomes when compared with national origin. For example, dropout among young people with Lebanese or Iranian background is far greater than among people of Vietnamese background.” (Center for Knowledge on Integration in Randers, May 2005 “Youth, education and integration”). “Among immigrant children that are born and raised in Denmark, more than a third has no education. Among native Danes it is less than one fifth that do not get an education. (Danmarks Statistik “Indvandrere i 2007”).

The negative consequences of inbreeding are also vast for the Muslim world. Inbreeding may thus explain why only nine Muslims ever managed to receive the prestigious Nobel Prize (5 of them won the “Peace Prize” — for peace that turned out not to last for very long).

The limited ability to understand, appreciate and produce knowledge following a limited IQ is probably also partly the reason why Muslim countries produce 1/10 of the World average when it comes to scientific research: “In 2003, the world average for production of articles per million inhabitants was 137, whereas none of the 47 OIC countries for which there were data achieved production above 107 per million inhabitants. The OIC average was just 13.” (Nature 444, s. 26-27, 1. November 2006 “Islam and science: The data gap”). The lack of interest in science and human development in the Muslim World is also clear in the UN Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR). AHDR concludes that there have been fewer books translated into Arabic in the last thousand years than the number of books translated within the country of Spain every year: “The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates. The cumulative total of translated books since the Caliph Maa’moun’s [sic] time (the ninth century) is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year.” (Eugene Rogan “Arab Books and human development”. Index of Censorship, vol. 33, issue 2 April 2004, s. 152-157). “70 percent of the Turkish citizens never read books.”(APA, d. 23. February 2009 “70 percent of Turkish citizens never read book”)

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the widespread Muslim tradition of first-cousin marriages has harmed the gene pool among Muslims. Because Muslims’ religious beliefs prohibit marrying non-Muslims and thus prevent them from adding fresh genetic material to their population, the genetic damage done to their gene pool since their prophet allowed first cousin marriages 1,400 years ago are most likely massive. The overwhelming direct and indirect human and societal consequences have been explained above.

Compassion for the health of future generations should be enough to ban intermarriage among first cousins. The economic and social consequences are also important. Such a ban would also lessen Muslim immigration to the West because many Muslim families would like to be able to continue their practice of intermarriage in order to live up to cultural and religious traditions and keep wealth and power inside their families.

A legislative ban on first cousin marriages is a logical and compassionate imperative for the Muslim world, the EU, and our Western national governments.


Nicolai Sennels is a psychologist and the author of “Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist’s experiences with the Copenhagen Municipality”.

Previous posts by or about Nicolai Sennels:

2010 Jan 6 The Eternal Victim
  Feb 19 Youths, Crime, and Islam
  Apr 11 The Stigmatization Fallacy
  May 8 Islam Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
  Jul 28 Nicolai Sennels: An Open Letter to David Cameron
  Aug 5 Rape by Proxy

16 comments:

Cyrus said...

My first question would be what are the consanguinous marriage rates for Copts, Punjabi Hindus/Sikhs, Lebanese Christians/Druze. I would then like to know the breakdown of such marriages according to schools of jurisprudence or ethnic tribe.

Zenster said...

One of my first essays at Gates of Vienna dealt with this insidious problem. The implications are as profound as they are threatening to Western culture.

The clinical observations indicated that depression is very high in some communities where the consanguinity of marriages is also high.

The question being; is this a result of a congenital predisposition to depression as conferred by parents of consanguineous relationship or is this inclination the result of growing up in a culturally benighted climate where more frequent incidents of child and spousal abuse indicate home environments that are conducive to mental illness?

The increased risk of insanity among children of marriages between cousins might explain why immigrant patients are causing stress to the psychiatric system and are strongly overrepresented among the criminally insane

Here is where the really damaging aspects begin to emerge. Muslim immigrant families are responsible for a disproportionate burden upon social services and the penal system. Both of these are government operated agencies and, therefore, represent increased consumption of tax derived revenue.

More simply put, Muslim families extract jizya (tribute), in the form of heavy demands upon local welfare and judicial systems. Ancillary to this is the decreased quality of life for victims of Muslim criminality, schoolchildren who must endure cretinous Muslim bullies, incarcerated non-violent offenders who are put at risk from being housed with Islamic thugs and a host of other negative indicies.

This is a form of Genetic Jihad™ that accompanies the more familiar terrorist and stealth modes of Muslim aggression against the West. ALL OF THEM fray the structure of Western life while contributing to an general decline in wealth, productivity and societal well-being.

It is one more reason that Muslim immigration needs to be halted immediately.

Finally, it is intuitive that less intelligent individuals are more likely to use violence as a problem solving tool. They would also be more susceptible to persuasion and indoctrination. Furthermore, diminished social skills would also increase the probability of being overly sensitive to any loss of social status.

These factors all point directly at reasons why Muslims display such fanaticism, routinely employ violent conflict resolution and cannot endure humiliation of even a minor sort.

It would come as no surprise to find that the Islamic propensity for inbreeding carries with it direct genetic links to fanatical terrorist violence.

OnRelatedness said...

Which came first, Islam or cousin-marriage in the Middle East?

Hint: cousin-marriage. Specifically FBD (father's brother's daughter) or paternal cousin marriage, which is rare in pretty much every other part of the world.

There are additional problems with FBD marriage beyond the problems with cousin marriage that you already outlined:

1) You get rampant nepotism and warring tribalism based around patrilineal tribes. Quaint notions like democracy and freedom of speech will never work in such societies as Steve Sailer and Parapundit have pointed out;

2) You get rather severe control of reproduction practices in such societies, most strongly directed towards women.

Peoples who practice institutionalized cousin-marriage, and especially institutionalized FBD cousin-marriage, will never adopt Western values nor fit in to Western society (unless they stop marrying their cousins). Islam, with all its demands for submission, is really just a symptom of the level and type of inbreeding in Muslim societies.

Svartwulf said...

OnRElatedness, you do have a point about this tradition existing before Islam. However, I don't think it was at tightly enforced, pre-Islam. There is a difference between tradition and enforced ideology. I think the point of the article is that Islam kept the tradition alive and made it even more powerful, rather than letting it transition out. As with the Egyptians above, royalty interbred, but the rest of the population was a likely to marry outside of their family as in it. Same with other such peoples. Islam is what has brought it to its current levels.

Vintage Seltzer said...

Something isn't entirely right in this article. While Jews had--until recent times--a similar practice of marrying a relative (maybe, not as widespread as in the Muslim community, but, nevertheless, not illegal or frown upon)--the cognitive benefits of endogamous marriage were as high, if not higher, than the negative effects. I'm talking in statistical terms, not in individual: a sick child is a sick child, one or a thousand doesn't matter to that child or her family.

Maybe, consanguinity can amplify both the negative and the positive of the founding population?

Svartwulf said...

Vintage, I might have an answer to your "problem" with Jewish "inbreeding" and it's positive effect on the Jewish population.

First of, one must remember that due to "evolutionary" pressures on the Jews in the form of antisemitism, only the "fittest" of Jewish people survived. As this was predicated towards intelligence in most place there were Jews, as intelligence wasn't as threatening as say physical mass. Hence why there are lots of smart Jews, while few that would fit the traditional "warrior" body mass seen in Europe. This would remove weaker and less intelligent members of the Jewish tribe.

Secondly, Jews never really practiced the type of inbreeding that Muslim nations do. Indeed, great care was taken to avoid this, and often marriages were set up among couples from different cities or countries, both as a way to keep the entire tribe unified, and to fight the dangers of inbreeding. They were mostly successful, but there are a few genetic diseases found only in Jews that have arisen from such a small population continually mating with only itself.

Hence, why Jews are on average more intelligent per population and do not suffer the negative effects on a large scale.

Cyrus said...

Vintage: beneficial founder effects would also be compounded, similar to negative effects. However you only hear of negative effects because they are the limiting factor. Yes the beneficials are helpful, but they are unlikely to overcome the compounded action of the negative effects.

Just an idea, but on the topic of Jews in Europe it is possible that those who could not succeed in the learned professions would convert out of Judaism in order to earn a living. I know there is very little non-Jewish genetics in the Ashkenazi but have not read on the extent of Jewish DNA in the general European gene pool.

Juniper in the Desert said...

Muslims will use this to rape more indigenous women and convert them.

They are dragging our future generations into the mud with the assistance of our governments.

EscapeVelocity said...

Inbreeding was common in European Royalty and Aristocracy. The Ruling Elite.

That is why you have droolers like Prince Charles, waiting to take the throne of England.

Jesterhead45 said...

I see inbreeding as possibly islam's greatest inherent flaw in the mid to long term, one that has the potential to collapse islam from within.

Sure, as Juniper mentioned before me, they could just simply rape and forcibly convert non-muslim women, while at the same time using their immunity from the law of the land as a means to entice non-muslim men to convert.

However, just as a socialist loves to spend everyone else's money, it will eventually get to a point where both the money and “fresh blood” will inevitably run out. While the former typically leads to rebellion, the latter’s outcome is much more dire if they (heaven forbid) did managed to conquer the world and are not stopped.

I would even go as far as to say that it would be nothing less then the destruction of humanity, going out not with a bang like many assume but with a pathetic whimper as a result of inbreeding.

Think of it this way, do you honestly see muslims from one sect / race / tribe actively marrying outside their respective groups as a means of combating the effects of widespread inbreeding or are you more likely to see countless inter-islamic wars eventually reducing islam down to a single inbred tribe?

Paisley Pirate said...

I am also curious about other control groups versus "immigrants"...

One other group that has a lot of consanguinity is the American Amish and Holdeman Mennonites, which has led to the undesirable recessives in their populations.
As a local observer, I know that they as a community have decided to widen the pool by shipping their kids to other communities to (hopefully) get away from this.

The vital difference I see is that this community was wise enough to see it early on (probably because of their farming background, and understanding what interbreeding does to livestock) that a wider genetic diversity is necessary for the group to be viable.

Thank you for sharing this!

Unknown said...

"Islam kept the tradition alive"

Islam kept the tradition alive alright - you might say it froze arabic society..
A frozen, static society daunting all hope of better days. Surely this must make for an idordinate amount of depression and vindictiveness, even for genetically healthy people

Ashan said...

With respect to consanguinity and genetic illnesses and mental disease among Jews:
1. There are considerable birth defects and genetic diseases among Haredi (ultraorthodox) populations, who tend to marry within their various sects (Gur, Breslav, Toldot Avraham, etc.)
2. Since Jews were forced to migrate over the centuries due to pogroms, expulsions, wars, etc., the gene pool mixed and expanded. In this way, many illnesses associated with consanguinity were avoided.
3. Non-Haredi Jews, especially in Israel (were I lived for 28 years) normally "mix and match" among various ethnic groups ("edot"), even if Ashkenazim (western) Jews and Sefardim (non-western) Jews marry within their own group. (I, a Jew of Czech/Hungarian extraction married a Jew of German/Russian background. Lots of genetic spread there.) Diaspora Jews are less lucky if they choose to marry within their own communities (predominantly Polish and Russian). Their chances improve with the introduction of Israelis (especially Sefardim) into the mix.

BTW - Israeli hospitals, particularly the pediatric wings, are chock-a-block with Arabs and Haredim suffering from genetically based diseases, mental illness, and the like.

1389 said...

I've covered this issue here: Islam and Genetic Damage

Julie said...

Very interesting article. It is true for Muslims but also pretty much the whole arab world (Muslim or otherwise)in general. Arabs being modern inadequates, their evolutionary expression as DNA vehicles would tend to follow the angry and hateful phenotype path. Much like the proverbial William Hung look-alike in high school gets left out (or for the rest of his live for that matter).

Inbreeding also affect negatively intelligence, physical appearance, height and a multitude of other phenotypes. While inbreeding is in large part related to why arabs are the way they are – appearance, height, lack of conventional physical beauty etc also keep in mind that they often come from extremely harsh environment where choosing inbreeding (as disgusting as it is for more heterogeneous and more adapted individuals) was sometimes the only way to survive. Although I agree sometimes you might feel non-being might have been better for them, when you see the horrors that were committed by them in the name of Islam.

I once saw an arab women in the street. She was aesthetically challenged and looked inbred from several generations. Although it would have been easy to judge instead I chose to look at her compassionately, knowing that she did not chose her condition. She looked back at me with anger. I simply smiled and continued on my way.

Don't respond to hatred with more hatred (although defending yourself is perfectly legitimate of course).

Anonymous said...

I work with a little boy with Autism in his home as an ABA therapist. He is muslim and Egyptian. He resides with his mother, father, brother, and maternal grandparents.

I recently learned as of yesterday, that his grandmother and grandfather are first cousins! His grandmother shared this information in a jovial, non-challant manner to me as if it's not a taboo subject at all. I personally, wanted to jump out of my skin.

This little boy's mother stated that her son's Autisic disability has "ruined her life" and "ruined this family". He was diagnosed at the age of one, and is severe. His older brother is "normal", if you will, but was born without an esophagus.

I'm wondering if in-breeding within the family may have skipped over to this generation and possibly contributed to these disabilities/ birth defects?

This family is so bitter that their son is disabled. I'm wondering, do muslims who partake in this practice know the effects that this article mentions?