Essay talk:Consanguinity in the Muslim World

Title

I think a better title might be something along the lines of "Consanguinity among Islamic populations" because "Muslim World" seems to be a vague term. Is India part of the Muslim World despite being a Hindu majority country? The US is colored light green on that population map. Are we part of the Muslim World? My point is that the term doesn't work for me due to vagueness and difficulty of definition. DuceMoosolini^{Your friendly RW dictator moderator} 19:14, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"I think a better title might be something along the lines of "Consanguinity among Islamic populations" because "Muslim World" seems to be a vague term."

@DuceMoosolini I agree that indeed "Consanguinity among Islamic populations" is a better title. I chose "Muslim World" because of Wikipedia. Anyway, why the whole thing has been moved to an essay? Thinker^(unlicensed) 20:52, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

To be honest it was either that or possible deletion. — Dysk (contribs) 21:00, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dysklyver Why? We had religion and practices not recommended by medical science. Isn't that material for RW? Thinker^(unlicensed) 21:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

You cherry picked data from three countries and then stated that applies to the entire Muslim World. You say that Islam favours cousin marriage when it actually is entirely neutral on the matter, and you did all this without citing any real medical authority on the subject. — Dysk (contribs) 21:30, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"You cherry picked data from three countries and then stated that applies to the entire Muslim World."

@Dysklyver Maybe you didn't notice that the page was a stub. I planned to add other muslim-majority countries. Anyway, from the maps, you can see that there's a strong correlation between being a muslim-majority country and having an abnormal high rate of cousin marriages. If you have counterexamples to that, I'm glad to see them. Thinker^(unlicensed) 21:48, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to move this to Draftspace? It’s a worthwhile topic, but this needs a lot lot lot of work. DuceMoosolini^{Your friendly RW dictator moderator} 22:06, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

@DuceMoosolini Yes, I would be perfectly fine with it moved to draftspace. Thinker^(unlicensed) 22:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I am not okay with this going to draftspace, until a serious attempt is made on remedial fixes first. — Dysk (contribs) 22:38, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dysklyver You are free to made such attempt by saying which data are currently wrong or missing... Thinker^(unlicensed) 22:51, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

All of it including every section, the title and the maps, is wrong or misleading. — Dysk (contribs) 22:56, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dysklyver So the articles I cited are wrong or misleading. Do you have better scientific research to show? Thinker^(unlicensed) 09:02, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Why would there be better research on what is essentially an idea you just put together? No respectable scientist I know of has used the "Muslim World" as research area, or used religious beliefs to explain prevalence of genetic disease. The best you will get is correlation, and perhaps implied causation, on a per country basis. It seems to me disingenuous to draw the conclusions you did. — Dysk (contribs) 09:11, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

"No respectable scientist I know of has used the "Muslim World" as research area"

"Muslim World" is a term referring to Muslim-majority countries, and yes it is used. If you don't like it, let's use "Muslim-majority countries", that is, countries where Islam is widespread.

"It seems to me disingenuous to draw the conclusions you did."

I didn't draw any conclusion, I just reported data. Thinker^(unlicensed) 09:20, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Lolwat, have you forgotten writing; "Consanguineous marriage is widely favoured in a large majority of the world's Islamic populations." Also your Muslim World Wikipedia page seems to make no mention of science, and your sources certainly don't. — Dysk (contribs) 09:29, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

"Lolwat, have you forgotten writing; "Consanguineous marriage is widely favoured in a large majority of the world's Islamic populations.""

@Dysklyver Those are not my words, that sentence it taken from the source I provided just after it: Bittles, Hussain (2000). "An analysis of consanguineous marriage in the Muslim population of India at regional and state levels". Annals of Human Biology. It's the first sentence of the abstract. Thinker^(unlicensed) 15:12, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Good lord what racist crap

Not so much that the data is particularly bad, but it does have a giant "no data" for a huge percentage of the predominantly christian third world, and, in a way designed to support UT's basic nutsoness. And when it comes to medical outcomes of actual Homozygosity on a genetic basis in actual individuals, Australia and South America are kicking "the muslim world"'s ass.

It's not something to not discuss, but UT is being a racist shit again. If it were "cousin marriage in Islam" we could talk about the dumb claims in the quran without being racist shits. But "the muslim world" is such reductive analysis of his own data, much less a broader understanding of the medical implications of homozygosity, that maybe just burn this where it stands. I don't know. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 19:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Good points, @Ikanreed. I should note both that Indonesia has the highest population of Muslims of any country, and has a low birth defect rate. As far as I am aware, cousin marriage among Indonesian Muslims is not common. Bongolian (talk) 20:27, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't worried about the nature of patriarchal institutions, particularly arranged marriages, causing this in like tribal pakistan. It's just this feels like such a "No, those primitives are ICKY" rather than a serious analysis of anything. There's a real case to be made against societies that follow religious law on medical questions. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"Not so much that the data is particularly bad, but it does have a giant "no data" for a huge percentage of the predominantly christian third world, and, in a way designed to support UT's basic nutsoness."

@Ikanreed} I'm no sure of what you mean. Are there predominantly non-muslim countries with a significative percentage of consanguineous marriages? Thinker^(unlicensed) 21:08, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"I should note both that Indonesia has the highest population of Muslims of any country, and has a low birth defect rate."

@Bongolian That's interesting. Do you have sources? I checked Pew Research Center and Indonesia is 87% of Muslim, so it's not true that is has the highest population of Muslims of any country. Thinker^(unlicensed) 21:08, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, that's the thing, if you drill down into the paper's citations the actual data source for your graphic has a very very very very heterogeneous source. It's a wiki, and rather than a single coherent source with a singular methodology, they cite a billion papers, and don't really connect individual ones to individual entries on the map. That's rough for making tit-for-tat comparisons.

While not exactly fine, it happens, and goddamn it that wiki went down in the middle of composing this and I can't get back to the "tables" page now, so I'll have to delay answering thoroughly until later. The point I was going to make is that there is not good information here to begin with and omitting a huge chunk of the world and drawing cultural conclusions is dangerous. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 21:22, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"Well, that's the thing, if you drill down into the paper's citations the actual data source for your graphic has a very very very very heterogeneous source."

That's not the source of the graphic. The source is this (It's pay wall, but you can access it by using Sci-Hub...) Thinker^(unlicensed) 21:30, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Lol, owned. I did that, that paper cites their source for the graphic. Guess what their source was. Go on. Guess. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 23:16, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

OK, I checked an the source points to that. Still, concluding that "The point I was going to make is that there is not good information" seems unjustified. I wonder if selecting more recent and homogeneous sources would really make you change your mind... Thinker^(unlicensed) 09:12, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, but look deeper, now that the tables are online again. Japan is currently <1% on that chart, but the historic data from when some of the ME data is sourced would make them the same color as Egypt(which is, itself, dated from the early 80s). It's just way too heterogenous in nature to draw the "this region walks like this and this region walks like this" that you're hoping to get. And it's not because the source is badly put together, it is a fairly thorough aggregation, it's just apples and oranges comparison and any interpretation of that data needs to understand that. For context of how more modern data might reflect better on "the muslim word" Bahrain has a 1989 survey with 45% and a 2009 analysis of newborns with %5. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 14:57, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what bringing up Indonesia's Muslim population is supposed to prove. Regional variation in practices is to be expected. 2A02:1810:4D34:DC00:1D8:7F7C:A69D:476A (talk) 21:26, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

The reason that Indonesia is an issue is because of the title of the page. If it were just about worldwide cousin marriages, but might be different but it also might be non-missional. It's well know to anyone who's ever read about Indonesia that they have the largest Muslim population by country. Wikipedia shows it here: Islam by country § Countries (229,000,000), based on the CIA Factbook. Bongolian (talk) 22:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

This sounds like nitpicking. If there was an article about "Black Friday violence in America", would anyone argue "there's states where there's no violence so it's not an American phenomenon"? 2A02:1810:4D34:DC00:1D8:7F7C:A69D:476A (talk) 23:01, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"Yeah, but look deeper, now that the tables are online again. Japan is currently <1% on that chart, but the historic data from when some of the ME data is sourced would make them the same color as Egypt(which is, itself, dated from the early 80s)."

@Ikanreed In the chart, Egypt is in the range 20-29%. In the tables you linked, the highest figure of consanguinity for Japan is 15.5% [Watanabe (1956)]. So I don't get why you say that Japan should have the same color of Egypt.

"It's just way too heterogenous in nature to draw the "this region walks like this and this region walks like this" that you're hoping to get. And it's not because the source is badly put together, it is a fairly thorough aggregation, it's just apples and oranges comparison and any interpretation of that data needs to understand that."

Put it straight: How would you make an estimate of consanguine marriage around the world?

"For context of how more modern data might reflect better on "the muslim word" Bahrain has a 1989 survey with 45% and a 2009 analysis of newborns with %5."

OK, good for them (maybe is the result of pre-marital genetic screening?). But how this invalidates the general trend? Thinker^(unlicensed) 15:40, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Or maybe you're inventing an ad hoc hypothesis to further your poorly structured argument that has real, and substantive problems with oversimplification? ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

That's quite a non-reply. Why did you ignore my comment on Egypt-Japan and my question about how you would estimate consanguine marriages around the world? Thinker^(unlicensed) 17:15, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Because I felt the last part of the post warranted the most attention, since it's an annoyingly common method of rationalization for a thesis with gaping problems. "Oh well, this specific instance, (which is literally the only recent nationwide middle east data in the data sources) could be artificially affected by some possible phenomenon I just made up, so let's discount the way it highlights a potentially incredibly bad assumption". The absolute mess of the underlying data just isn't great for establishing the X->Y trend you're making. In my mind, it's no coincidence that the problem diminished over the same time period Bahrain's GDP increased 600% and adult literacy went from 70% to 95%. Now are these exclusive or even dominant factors? No. But are they critical factors completely omitted from your assertions about the role of Islam in cousin marriages? Yeah. Big time. And when you get right down to it the possible excuse you gave also undercuts the assumption of the innate nature of the phenomenon to Islam. Overinterpretting crap data is practically the definition of prejudice to me. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:30, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

"In my mind, it's no coincidence that the problem diminished over the same time period Bahrain's GDP increased 600% and adult literacy went from 70% to 95%. Now are these exclusive or even dominant factors? No. But are they critical factors completely omitted from your assertions about the role of Islam in cousin marriages? Yeah."

And what prevents you from adding those factors to the page? Isn't this a collaborative Wiki? I certainly remember a paper showing a negative correlation between education and cousin marriages, although I don't remember the country.

"your assertions about the role of Islam in cousin marriages"

Actually, I made no personal assertions about the role of Islam in cousin marriage. Every statement was taken almost literally from the given sources. Thinker^(unlicensed) 17:38, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

What prevents me from doing it is a find your underlying theory to be bunk. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:09, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Some Context

Islam does not advocate cousin marriage, although it is allowed. The most prominent Islamic restrictions on marriage involve religious requirements. Immediate family level incest, such as brother/sister, is not allowed, but a man can marry two sisters for example. There are few other restrictions. Cousin marriage is not religiously praiseworthy and Islam does not place value on cousin marriage as opposed to marrying a non-relative. ikanreed said "If it were "cousin marriage in Islam" we could talk about the dumb claims in the quran" but this topic is never mentioned in the Qur'an. At most a Muslim could say it is sunnah, and it is, but the Prophet also married non-relatives so that is sunnah as well.

Next, as has been pointed out, it's not really accurate to call this "the Muslim world" become it excludes places like Indonesia, which is home to the world's largest Muslim population. More accurate to call this "Consanguinity in southwest Asia and North Africa." It is true that the places with high consanguinity are mostly Muslim majority places (and Hindu India) but the religion is neutral towards this. Personally I would say cousin marriage is caused more by cultures that favor arranged marriage rather than any religion. It would be very interesting to see the data for Christian southern Africa.

Also, I noticed some of the claims in the essay contradict themselves. For example, the essay claims that the "Arab world" and Saudi Arabia in particular have the highest rates of cousin marriage, but the attached world map clearly shows that Pakistan is significantly more affected than any Arab country, which conforms to my own knowledge of the matter. Lord Aeonian (talk) 22:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"Indonesia, which is home to the world's largest Muslim population."

I disagree, Pew Research Center counts 256,820,000 Muslims in Indonesia, less than Pakistan and India.

"More accurate to call this "Consanguinity in southwest Asia and North Africa.""

Well, if the problem is the title, we can fix it.

"It would be very interesting to see the data for Christian southern Africa."

I agree. Thinker^(unlicensed) 22:35, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

It's due to heterogeneity of sources on Wikipedia but you're quibbling. Counting who's a Muslim in Indonesia can be difficult as they're more plasticity in religion there than elsewhere. It's not unusual for people to claim multiple religions; Sukarno was the most famous to do this. Bongolian (talk) 22:39, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I added the Saudi Arabia section based on a news report for frequency of cousin marriage. It might not be accurate but it is from a Saudi source, so they're not likely to distort it upwards I think. Bongolian (talk) 22:40, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"I added the Saudi Arabia section based on a news report"

@Bongolian OK, but then this is not an "Essay of UnlicensedThinker". If other people start adding material, then it's not right that this page is attributed to me. By the way, I think I made a mistake: Indonesia is the country with more Muslims, in absolute number not percentage, the data from Pew Research Center I cited was a 2050 projection, not today numbers. Thinker^(unlicensed) 22:48, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I added Saudi Arabia before it became an essay. You're welcome to change it now that it's in Essayspace. Bongolian (talk) 22:53, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Pakistan's entire population, including non-Muslims is only 220 million, how exactly is that more than 256 million? And to give some context here, Saudi Arabia only has 33 million people - many of whom are foreign workers. Lord Aeonian (talk) 23:30, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Whoever quoted and linked to the Pew data was referencing projected figures for 2050, not actual figures. Pew has 209m Muslims in Indonesia in 2010 against 167m in Pakistan. --Annanoon (talk) 13:55, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

What's wrong with this page?

Reading the comments, it's still not clear to me why this page has been moved to an essay.

Are the data I cited wrong or not coming from reputable sources? Some people have problem with the term Muslim World and other point to Indonesia. Would the page be OK if titled "Consanguinity in the World"?

By the way, I don't think that moving the page to an essay after it has been edited by other people is right. Now it is written that the page is "an original work by UnlicensedThinker" but that's not true. I didn't write some parts and other were edited respect to my original version. Thinker^(unlicensed) 09:32, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

the issue is that this is ur own personal research that peeps dont agree with. u ask "What's wrong with this page?" but u should be asking "What's not wrong with this page?" EK (talk) 13:27, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

"the issue is that this is ur own personal research that peeps dont agree with."

@EK How is this my personal research? Every statement is supported by a scientific paper. Take for example the Pakistan section. Can you tell me what's wrong that? Are the date of [10] false? Thinker^(unlicensed) 13:38, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

i feel like u dont understand what Islamophobia is. read Cousin marriage and Cousin marriage in the Middle East. note the tone difference EK (talk) 13:53, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

"I feel like you don't understand term x" is a weirdly common recurring theme with this UnlicensedThinker. 🤔 --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 17:17, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

The point being?

I don't quite understand the point being made. Is there some suggestion that there is greater likelihood of inherited diseases in these populations? If not, well, even assuming the facts are completely true - so what?Hubert (talk) 15:29, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hubert Something something Islam bad, something something let's ignore the actual failings of Islam _{*cough*crazy primitive ideas and persecution of minorities*cough* *cough*just like other religions*cough*} and focus on this much more lurid but ultimately more trivial concern. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:48, 23 April 2019 (UTC)