While reading norwegian online newspaper, I found an article about a debate going on there: it’s about fordidding, or not, wedding between cousins.
The major argument of pro is that they think it’s very hard for someone to refuse marrying (strong family pressure) a cousin so it’s a major source of forced weddings…
but Pakistani is the main non-european immigrant community in Norway, and someone came with an astonishing statistic: 50% of Pakistanis living in Norway are married with cousins:eek: Do you believe it? (link to the article below, sorry it’s in norwegian) http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article1059040.ece
So one can say it’s directed against Pakis first…anyway do you think forbiding cousin marige is an efficient way to prevent forced wedding?
other people think you only need to raise legal marital age to prevent it..like Denmark where it’s forbidden to live with a non-EU national below the age of 24 (as a result those who want it go to Sweden)…
ok as far as I know general measures against forced marriage allways deprive someone else right to marry who one wants (may it be a cousine, a young foreigner…) while it’s not solving the problem of those who suffer.
I guess finacial support and justice help to those who can escape forced wedding is better. I know some parents have been sent to jail in France because they had forced their young daughters to marry strangers in their african native village…
I’d like to know fellow guppies opinion on that topic…and are there guppies in North Europe?
That’s easy to believe .. I have a book by a French academic at home where he states that around 42% of Pakistanis in Pakistan are married to cousins. Pakistan has the highest rate of cousin marriages in the Muslim world.
Surprisingly, Iran, which is right next door, has one of the lowest rates of cousing marriages. I think Iran’s rate is 3%.
This has been discussed on GS a couple of times before. I think a major part of it is that in Pakistani culture, a marriage is between more than just the two individuals - a marriage is a tie of two families.
People are not just concerned about their child marrying a partner who is compatible with their child - they also need to make sure that their child married into a family that is compatible with them.
When someone marries their cousin, they are marrying into a family their own family has known intimately from the very beginning. The amount is risk is thus reduced.
Also, in a culture that prizes loyalty to family, cousin marriages are an opportunity allow two branches of the same family to prove how loyal they are to each other.
Obviously different pakistani families have different attitudes to cousin marriages. I know some that just don’t do it at all, some that only do cousin marriages, some that dislike them but occasioanally do them, and some that generally do cousin marriages but who are open to “outsiders”.
In my own family, they are generally very rare. When they do happen, it generally tends to be between second or third cousins (i.e someone marrying the daughter of their mother’s cousin), or the grandson of their grandfather’s cousin.
I read in a magazine that it's illegal in 23 states of USA to marry your first cousin :-. I used to think it was really nasty, but now ever since I found out how common it is in Pakistan it's like yea whateva.
it was so much hoped for in our family at one point to marry to this cousin and that cousin.
now story is none of my cousins are married to any cousin in the family :)
we are total 7 from fathers side including me and my sisters
and 11 from mothers side.
oh i missed my phupho - army she managed to have 7 equalise the total number of her 4 brothers have combined.
none of above mentioned cousins got married to cousins.