The Bad News:  Al Quaeda is using mentally-handicapped people as involuntary suicide bombers.

The Worse News:  According to the Britain’s environment minister, their tradition of arranged marriages between close relatives – even first cousins – might create a bumper crop:

A government minister has warned that inbreeding among immigrants is causing a surge in birth defects – comments likely to spark a new row over the place of Muslims in British society.

Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.”

The minister, whose views were supported by medical experts this weekend, said: “The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children].”

Ew.  Just…ew.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 5:27 am and is filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.