Re: Cousin Marriage?
I wouldn't mind marrying my cousins in Pak but the ones who I grew up with in the UK feel like sisters.
Nobody in my immediate family has had a cousin marriage, most my cousins are married to people outside our ethnicity.
The negative effects have been proven to be overtly exaggerated, it's only dangerous if your family is known to have serious diseases and you carry on intermarrying generation after generation after generation...
There's lots of South Indian cummunities who only do cousin marriages, the European royal families only married their cousins till lately.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it if the couple are happy, having said that, there's a lot of Pakis who think cousin marriage is the only way just because Islam did not forbid it!!! Islam might allow cousin marriages but it doesn't exactly encourage them, out of all the Prophet's PBUH wives only one was his cousin and that was after the marriage he arranged for her with someone else didn't work out. Muslims are encouraged to marry outside their families.
It's really sad when Pakis only marry their cousins because of caste bigotry or to keep wealth in the family.