A majority of marriages in Britain’s Pakistani community being between first cousins is wreaking a terrible toll on public health, with stillbirths, birth defects, and disabilities far higher than they would otherwise be.
In an article published by the Daily Mail, journalist Sue Reid described how an estimated 55 per cent of Pakistani-heritage couples are first cousins in so-called consanguineous marriages.
Not coincidentally, British Pakistanis account for an astonishing 33 per cent of birth defects in the country — far, far in excess of the proportion of births they account for overall, according to Reid.
Indeed, places in England with very large South Asian heritage populations, such as multicultural Bradford, appear to be paying a heavy price for the practice, with doctors in one study identifying some 140 different gene disorders among local youngsters, against only 20-30 among the general population.
Reid also highlighted the fact that stillbirths and infant deaths in the city are approaching double the national average, and many case studies of people with debilitating — and presumably costly, for Britain’s taxpayer-funded National Health Service — illnesses resulting from their parentage.
Breitbart London reported back in 2017 that in Redbridge, a multicultural borough in Britain’s hyper-diverse capital, almost one-in-five child deaths since 2008 were attributable to their parents being close relatives, with “chromosomal, genetic or congenital abnormalities” being a leading cause of death.
“The first duty of a Government is to protect its citizens from harm. There is a strong argument, down the road, for it to consider whether first-cousin unions should be outlawed in the same way as incest is,” suggested Nazir Afzal, a prosecutor turned pundit who the media has often turned to for comment on the topic of now-rarely covered majority-Muslim rape gangs in the past.
“We are tired of burying our babies,” suggested Afzal, whose own parents hail from Pakistan, adding that it is time “to follow the science and act to save lives” — although in truth it appears as though the problem is one of the Pakistani community’s own making, with the British government only culpable insofar as it has done nothing to prevent the Pakistani community from indulging its collective penchant for first cousin marriages, which are in modern times well outside the norm for the native population and socially discouraged.
Afzal, a practising Muslim, said that in his view the popularity of first cousin marriages among Pakistanis in Britain is down to greed, not religion.
‘They are arranged for material reasons, not because of religion. Families don’t want to risk their gold by allowing their child to marry an outsider,” he said.
“Some brothers betroth their boy or girl at birth to each other. Where is the choice of partner for their adult child?” he demanded.