Scandinavia has established a precedent. The law that has permitted cousin marriages in Sweden for nearly 150 years is about to be repealed. Denmark announced its intention to follow suit the next day. Both countries have followed in the footsteps of Norway, which declared its proposal to ban the practice earlier this year.

The justification for the ban is the same in all these Nordic nations: cousin marriage is a customary practice among some immigrant communities. One of the highest rates of cousin marriage in the world – as much as 65 per cent – is found in Pakistan, the country of origin for many immigrants to the West. The Swedish Justice Minister, Gunnar Strömmer, is correct when he says that a ban will contribute to the abolition of forced marriage. When consanguineous marriages go awry –usually because the woman refuses to carry it through – it can lead to inter-ethnic conflict between families and oftentimes to violence based on honour.

Cousin marriage should be illegal in the United Kingdom as well. For many years, I have written about the impact of cousin marriage. This is not a new crime in Britain. The incident that follows took place nearly twenty years ago. I would like to share this case with you, which many readers may not be familiar with, just to give you some context.

Banaz Mahmod seemed like a normal 20-year-old woman going about her daily life in London. Originally from Iraqi Kurdistan, she fled the country with her family when she was ten and sought asylum in Britain. Born into a traditional Kurdish family, she was raised by her father, Mahmod Babakir Mahmod, and his wife, Behya. She was one of five girls. Banaz resided in Mitcham, South London, with her family. Like many young Londoners, she was driven and ambitious.

But in private, Mahmod’s life was anything but ordinary. As a child, she underwent female genital mutilation by her grandmother. Like her eldest and youngest sisters, Banaz was forced into a marriage with her cousin ten years older. The man raped her and beat her repeatedly. Despite her family’s knowledge of the abuse, she was forced to remain with him due to the shame it would cause the family in the eyes of their community.

In the summer of 2005, Banaz announced that she had met another man with whom she had fallen in love. She asked for a divorce, but her family objected. In December, she overheard her family plotting to kill her. Fearing for her life, she called the police, but to no avail. On the morning of 24 January, 2006, her parents went shopping and left Banaz asleep in the family home. Three of her relatives, Mohamad Marid Hama, Mohammed Saleh Ali and Omar Hussain, entered the property and subjected Banaz to hours of brutal rape and torture before they strangled her to death. They put her body in a suitcase and buried it.

We’re told that we should not apply our moral standards to other cultures. It is a key tenet of cultural relativism. Contrary to what relativists say, not all cultures are equal and harmonious. Simply put, there are some crimes that the West imports.

The tragic case of Banaz Mahmod is not an outlier. According to data there were 2,594 cases of honour-based abuse – which includes female genital mutilation, rape, forced marriage and assault – in 2022 a 60-per-cent increase on 2020 and 193-per-cent since 2016.

One significant contributing factor to cultural isolation is cousin marriage. A study by academic Patrick Nash estimates that 38 to 59 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to their first cousins. One report suggests that in the northern town of Bradford, as many as 75 per cent of Pakistanis marry their first cousin. Family marriages lead to a loss of trust and fragmented cohesion in the wider community. Certain Pakistani communities in London, Bradford and Rotherham isolate themselves and refuse to integrate. It has resulted in sectarian religious conflict, interethnic riots between Islamists and Hindu nationalists, and radical Islamic preachers calling for a jihad on London’s streets. The first step toward integration is to outlaw cousin marriage.

Archaic kinship systems exist around the world. Afghanistan is a tribal society with one of the highest rates of consanguinity in the world – its national anthem mentions over a dozen ethnic groups. Its rigid tribal system has existed for thousands of years. It explains why military intervention by the West in the region was so disastrous. When kinship and ethnic affiliation are commonplace, liberal democracy cannot function.

All current examples notwithstanding, Britain would still be a warlike, sectarian society in the absence of a mandate from the Catholic Church. In the 6th century, the Church outlawed incest and cousin marriage. By compelling people to marry across tribal lines, it destroyed traditional values and imposed new ones, such as individualism, cooperation and scepticism of in-group preference. This created a new shared national identity. According to Stephen Stich of Rutgers University, it helps explain the emergence of democracy in the West. Unfortunately, the ban was rescinded with the passing of the Marriage Act of 1540.

The United Kingdom should follow the Nordic countries and ban cousin marriage. Doing so would bring isolated communities into the open. It would also have a positive health benefit as it would reduce the possibility of genetic abnormalities. A report from the east London borough of Redbridge found that twenty per cent of child deaths occurred because the parents were closely related.

The multiculturalism experiment in the West has failed. A breakdown in trust and a weakening of social cohesion have resulted from the large-scale importation of people who, in addition to their refusal to integrate, follow violent misogynistic cultural practices and extremist ideologies throughout Europe.

Can cultural relativists truly stand up for the murders of Banaz Mahmod? Are they indifferent to the heartbreaking stories of infants born with deformities like facial asymmetry and limb abnormalities? We need to ban cousin marriage if we are to protect Western democracies. We won’t be able to restore a high-trust society founded on civic virtues and equality before the law until then.