There are some things that are difficult if not impossible to defend and to defend for logical and sane reasons. Paedophilia, rape and murder are among those things that are outside of what any reasonable person in possession of a functioning moral compass could create any sort of defence for. This is because all of these things involve one person visiting great harm on another.
Incest is also something that cannot be defended. We have enough evidence both scientific and historical to show that this is wrong. In the West there is quite rightly a strong ‘yuk’ factor associated with incest. We look back in horror at how incest led to the decline into madness and disability of too many members of the royal House of Hapsburg and how the monarchical products of incest that were feeble minded and physically damaged by this practise, contributed somewhat to the wars and the political upheavals that ravaged Europe for centuries.
When I’ve travelled around very rural parts of the UK I’ve in the past I have occasionally seen people in pubs and shops whose appearance and demeanour give the distinct impression that they are the result of a consanguineous relationship. I don’t hate such people, on the contrary I feel sorry for them. They didn’t ask to be born that way. They were created that way by people who should have known better, people who ignored both religious and secular instructions not to engage in relationships with those who they are related to. The harm that incest does to the individuals who are a product of it and to the societies that permit it are clearly visible to anyone who has eyes to see.
There are damned good reasons why British society in particular looks down on, is disgusted by and sometimes mocks the idea of incest. It’s why Britons look in pity and horror at incestuous relationships and why football fans sing offensive ditties to the fans of other teams who come from areas where incest is perceived to be prevalent. Yes, incest has gone on in the Britain of the past but that doesn’t mean that it is approved of today. We know it’s wrong and we know that it cannot be defended.
But what sort of degenerate would defend incest? What sort of individual would look at all the scientific evidence that stacks up against incest and defend this practise?
Step forward the ‘independent’, Gaza-focused, Hamas support adjacent MP Iqbal Hussain Mohammed. This MP for the Dewsbury and Batley constituency in the North of England is the one who has stood up in the Commons chamber to defend what is quite clearly the indefensible practise of incest.
Iqbal Mohammed MP made his defence of incest in the Commons chamber in response to a private members bill from Conservative Party MP and former Tory government minister Richard Holden that would have prohibited marriages between first cousins. In the past such marriages, civil ones at least, were not prohibited by law in part because such phenomena were so rare. Whilst marriages between other close relatives such as brothers and sisters for example were expressly forbidden by law, first cousin marriage was not. In his speech to the House of Commons in response to Mr Holden’s new Bill Iqbal Mohammed MP stood up to defend cousin marriage even though he recognised that it has medical risks. You can see this disgraceful individual defending a disgraceful practise HERE.
The lack of any legal prohibition of first cousin marriages might have remained a legal curiosity, like the laws that prevent a Roman Catholic from becoming the UK’s monarch, something that didn’t have that impact on society in general, but for a major demographic change. That change is the rise in the numbers of Britain’s Muslim population, some of whom are highly enthusiastic about the idea of breeding with their relatives. Not all British Muslims want to marry their relatives of course, some British Muslims are educated, integrated and sensible, but there are enough British Muslims who do engage in consanguineous relationships for it to now be a growing and costly problem.
Islamic cousin marriage in the UK is a fiscal and human tragedy. In the London Borough of Redbridge an area that was once heavily Jewish but is now dominated by Islam, 1 in 5 child deaths are the result of genetic abnormalities inherited from their closely related parents. In Bradford in the North of England, there was a study into child deaths researchers which found that out of 69 child deaths, 30 or 43% of these deaths were the result of chromosomal abnormalities caused by inbreeding.
The deaths of these children are a human tragedy in themselves for their parents and the wider society but those products of inbreeding that do survive into childhood or adulthood often end up suffering from catastrophic and life limiting medical conditions. There is also a fiscal cost to Britain for treating those with incest-related medical conditions. One press report linked to here claimed that £2 billion was spent in 2004 alone by the National Health Service treating those with appalling and avoidable genetic conditions. I have little doubt that twenty years on from that report that the number of those with incest-related medical conditions will have grown and so will have the cost to the National Health Service of treating these conditions.
Mr Holden’s Bill has passed to its Second Reading and then, if it progresses it will hopefully go to Committee Stages and via the House of Lords and then Royal Assent. The problem is that this Bill is unlikely to pass because it is not being backed by the current Labour Government. This Government will not risk upsetting the Pakistani Muslims who have become reliable vote fodder for the Labour Party. Labour will not want to take any chance that this voting cohort, which is very very important for Labour, will transfer their loyalty and their massively influential Postal Votes, to ‘independent’ Muslim political parties.
The tragedy of inbreeding in Britain and the human and financial cost of it will continue because Labour are unwilling to surrender political advantage in order to do what is clearly the correct thing and outlaw first cousin marriage. Incest is always wrong. It’s wrong when Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs or isolated communities do it. It is not something that suddenly becomes morally correct because a political party doesn’t want to lose the votes of those who practise incest.