Feature - Consangeuineous Marriages

As social taboos continue to be broken and guilty secrets exposed, one subject seems set to buck the trend and remain off-limits: marriage between close family members.Yet it's a practice that appears to be on the rise.More than a billion people around the world are believed to be married to second cousins or closer relatives, or to be the offspring of such marriages.And through migration, the incidence of consanguineous (kon-san-GWIN-ee-us) marriage in Western countries is believed to be increasing, despite the general unease surrounding the practice.Kulasegaram Sanchayan reports.

Consanguineous marriage is most common in predominantly Muslim areas today