heh heh good one desi!

No, I have returned. I ssuspect that I would not have been able to get to Nepal anyway.

Jai:

Okay, I will e-mail him. I presumed it was fake.

Off topic, do you know if Abhi from Sepia Mutiny is a bit unbalanced?

No, he isn’t. Not at all. I’ve spoken to him on SM and also offline many times, and he’s a pretty good guy.

I only ask because someone using his name, e-mail address and website link keeps getting caught in the spam filter, muttering about how Modi is the only one who can destroy Islam (and then writing NARENDA MODI in capital letters).

I noticed that here on PP too last week. I’m pretty sure it’s a case of someone else trying to hijack his identity in an attempt to slander him personally whilst simultaneously denigrating SM.

I think you should email him directly on abhi@sepiamutiny.com and let him know what the spammer has been doing in his name.

Cousin marrying is fucking up Pakistani/British Pakistani society, especially first cousin marriage (I’m pretty sure it’s not as prevalent in Indian Hindu/Sikh communities)

It is NON EXISTENT amongst Hindus and Sikhs in Britain!

Marrying your cousin is considered equivalent of incest by us!

We tie rakhris on our cousins wrists on rakhri day because they are considered to be our brothers and wea re their sisters!

I find this whole issue very squeamish to think of and frankly quite repellent as a practise.

Off topic, do you know if Abhi from Sepia Mutiny is a bit unbalanced? I only ask because someone using his name, e-mail address and website link keeps getting caught in the spam filter, muttering about how Modi is the only one who can destroy Islam (and then writing NARENDA MODI in capital letters).

For those of you who don’t know, our cousins (no pun intended) over at Sepia Mutiny are currently having an interesting parallel debate about this issue. Razib is on form with his usual genetics knowledge (some others have also contributed to that aspect of the discussion). The topic’s being hammered out at length quite well, and has followed a somewhat different path to the conversation here on PP.

Also, our very own Rohin aka “Bong Breaker” has been putting in a special guest appearance by occasionally sneaking off to the party across the hall

“I sense the idea that cousin marriages was due to wealth to be framed within a Marxist discourse, though in Europe it was probably apt.”

What’s so “Marxist” about bringing up socio-economic factors? Socio-economic issues have existed before Marx was born. Only academics slap on these labels

There’s nothing “Marxist” about pointing out, for example, that people get up in the morning and go to work. It’s a fact that most of us in the world engage in (and I don’t mean in the capitalist sense either; even farmers wake up in the morning to till the ground so as to feed their families). You know?

And sadly, a very one sided view on every single issue. If a person read PP and didn’t know any better, you’d get the impression that Brits who identify themselves as Muslim constitute about like 65% of the British population, and that they can only be Muslim and/or of Pakistani background and nothing more. Very reductionist indeed.

Most posts with actual facts, statistics, and concrete realities get very few comments. If it can’t be reduced to Islam, the Mughal empire, or the fact that the people in question are Muslims, most folks won’t bother, because there is very little room for blowing hot air.

“I would beg to differ; this argument is anachronistic, for people are inappropriately projecting the European experience onto other societies.”

Wait a minute… so non European countries/peoples don’t ever do anything having to do with economics? I don’t think there is anything “European” about identifying that some may want to keep resources and whatever wealth (whether the families are relatively rich/poor) within a certain family.

To be sure, I don’t think families now say, “Hey, we want to keep all of our dough within the family; let’s get our daughters and sons married to their cousins.” But it may very well have been socio-economic factors that initially spurred and/or may have normalized the practice, to the point where it is no longer just a socio-economic thing.

“It depends Desi, some issues are down to culture (which could be driven, or formulated by socio-economic factors) and some are down to religion. It really is about looking at every issue critically, and being prepared to throw away our terms of reference.

For example, I sense the idea that cousin marriages was due to wealth to be framed within a Marxist discourse, though in Europe it was probably apt. However, I believe it is not for other societies, for reasons mentioned above.”

I vehemently disagree with you The above snippet reads as orientialism to me, in that non European countries are more based on religion and “culture” and that class is a side issue. Looking at class is not a “European” framework; class pervades all societies at all levels, in the past and present.

Don’t you mean “European monarchies were also plagued by madness and genetic diseases, which is not surprising considering the amount of inbreeding they did.”, Ravi?
Inbreeding produces genetic illnesses, not vice versa.

And uh, yeah, it’s emotionally immature to point out that real people get to suffer their entire lives for other people idiocy.

Saquib: People do count more than believes, and your human rights stop where theirs begin. In essence this means that I view people who deliberately risk their children’s health with incestuous marriages despite knowing the consequences as criminals, no different to a thug who kicks someone’s head in, knowing that it may well kill or disable them. Whether the injury was inflicted out of hatred or arrogance doesn’t matter — the result is the same: someone is crippled and in lifelong pain because of someone elses stupidity and arrogance.

How about you explain to me how you be happy to suffer in a wheelchair, just to support the right of your mom to marry her cousin?

Why don’t you actually read the comments on this thread, which have been very diverse, instead of using it as a soapbox to spout your emotionally immature ideas.

By the way Cinnamon what else should be banned in your non PC, black and white world?

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/ReproductiveHealth/story?id=4258128&page=1