It has been suggested by Western medical research that intermarriages within the family may cause deformed children, whereas the Holy Quran categorically allows such a union. This question was put to me by a Christian. Can you please explain? The fact is that although it is permitted to intermarry in your relations, I mean among certain relations, it is not imperative to do that. In fact, on the other hand, Islam removes all racial barriers and barriers of classes and so-called superiorities or inferiorities from the marriages.
And the Islamic teaching widens the human contact so much that this intermarriage among relations becomes a very small region where marriages would be repeated within the same family. Most often than not, marriages would be held maybe among other nations, among other people, among other classes and castes. So this is exactly how we find it in Islam. This becomes a health hazard only if over a long period of time, generation after generation, a family does not believe a different blood and the intermarriage is repeated so often that ultimately it’s a closed circuit reproduction system. The result is that in that case sometimes the good points are also multiplied and bad points are also multiplied. So here and there you find geniuses born and freaks of nature born as well.
So because this is not exactly as Islam conceives, Islam does not want Muslims only to marry among the relations, but in fact widens the human contact so widely that no other religion encourages marriages between man and man with such generosity. So that more than offsets the dangers inherent in this. Moreover, if you look at those human beings born out of marriages which have no relationship with each other, even there you find such freaks. Because it’s a rare phenomena, it’s not a common feature that invalids are born or distorted people are born or dwarfed persons are born and so on.
This is a rare phenomena. It is observed both in cases of closed relationship marriages and no relationship marriages, no blood relation marriages. So because there also there is a possibility, why don’t we abstain from marriages altogether? Abstain from it and say because some unfortunate boys or girls are born with congenital defects, so marriage should be absolved of, I mean totally discarded. This is absurd.
So it only would be objectionable if Islam, like some Hindu caste systems or some other caste systems, had insisted on marriages only within the family framework and not beyond. Perhaps in certain families this is observed, this is why people have perhaps objected against Islamic teachings. But this is not Islamic teaching, this is a practice against Islamic teaching. I know some Syed for instance, there are Syed families who would insist on marrying among the Syeds.
There are some Rajput families who would insist to marry among the Rajputs. They write to me sometimes that their daughters are getting older and they are getting worried about them, chances of their marriage are lessening by the passage of time and still they insist that you must produce a Syed for our Syed girl and you must produce a Rajput for a Rajput girl. I can’t make a Syed, I mean out of clay, nor can I make a Rajput out of clay. How can I do that? I can do that, they defy the teachings of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa S.A.W. and still want to escape the punishment.
Because A.S. has removed all these barriers and you stick to them. This is why you face difficulties. This is why some unhealthy children are born to you, not because Islamic teaching is defective in itself.
