Answering Readers, Part 14

Biblical (תַּנַ״ךְ) depiction of
the flight from Sodom and Gomorrah

Family Honour |
Thursday – October 8, 2026

Family and the honour of family can sometimes be quite sensitive subjects, especially when people outside the family have a very culturally divergent concept of honour, and this is perhaps and in particular noticeable in the context of multiculturalism in the Western world, where many Westerners have a completely libertarian and almost hedonistic sense of honour based only on individualistic and material standing in the world. This largely Western and may I say action oriented sense of honour will invariably clash with other cultures' sense of what true honour is, and on top of this the Western sense of honour is essentially disconnected from history, which only furthers this painful friction.

    Now, in this part/installment of this series, "Answering Readers series", this is exactly the question that I have been asked to deal with, and I should warn all readers that yes, this will inevitably become quite a controversial post, which is why you may skip this part if you are sensitive and easily agitated by the sometimes blut but necessary language. As this post aims to address the concerns of someone who belongs to the Islamic faith, I gather too that there will be some cultural differences that I will have to deal with head on before I even attempt to address the questions and concerns of the person featured in this post. Since most Moslems (Muslims) actually belong to cultures of the Far East, it should be noted that there exists a meaningful and quite characteristic divide within Islam that goes beyond the simple dichotomy of Sunni (سُنّيّ) and Shia (شيعة),* and this is the necessary division of Islam into the Near Eastern and Middle Eastern tradition and the Far Eastern Tradition, and since most Moslems technically live in the Far East, it would be quite right to consider the less action oriented tradition to be the most common, but in true Far Eastern fashion, this alone does not mean that this tradition in Islam should be dominant. Now, in this part of this series, I am merely considering the Near Eastern tradition of Islam, and the tradition that most Westerners appear to be familiar with, even though their imagined cult of mystical orientalism is somewhat coloured by a certain sense of Imperial conceit still in the 21st century. Because of this consideration, some of the answers that I may provide could come across as quite reprehensible to the average and so-called "ordinary" Westerner.

    As usual, I do have certain rules when it comes to these posts, and I have decided to refer to these mostly soft rules as my editorial policy, and this should be quite fitting as I am going to quote the words of other people in this series. Most of these rules revolve around how I address the questions of my readers in relation to the words used by my readers, that is to say whenever you write a letter addressed to me and you wish for me to respond to your letter, I will sometimes find it necessary to edit your letter in my quotations, mostly to keep away the hysteria of the internet. I will also engage in what I have also decided to refer to "conjecture", that is: because many of the letters that I receive contain very little useful information, it will sometimes be necessary for me to make certain and qualified assumptions, mostly in order so that my answers can flow in a meaningful way, and this means that I am destined to make certain assumptions based on the conjecture of your letter that will be incorrect and that may cause some distress. I should also add, as I almost always do, that while I appreciate a lot of information in your letters, that I do not find it necessary for you to include your real name or other privileged information, unless such information is imperative in the course of me responding to your letter, but the choice of revealing information of this nature I must leave entirely up to you. If your letter does contain information that I find it necessary to remove in my quotations, I will either substitute your words with different words that are politically correct but that still manage to hold true to the fidelity of the meaning of the letter overall, and this I will indicate by the usage of two brackets, [text]. It may also be necessary for me to simply refuse to include certain parts of your letter in my quotation, and if this happens I will simply indicate this by three dots inside two brackets, [...]; this does not mean however, that I found these parts too offensive to quote, it may simply indicate that I consider this information too sensitive to quote or simply not relevant.

    Now, the letter at hand that I am going to attempt to address in this post does not contain any offensive language, but as I alluded to above may contain certain cultural mores and aspects, though mild, that can evoke a certain sense of outrage among very sensitive and action oriented people. Yes, action oriented people, because action oriented people, in the metaphysical sense, do tend to struggle quite a lot with things that are not crude, things that do not require immediate and outward grit, really things that require a certain and qualified level of sensitivity without complete capitulation, may I even say sensibility and diplomatic gesture, read "Directing Films", and this all too often populist conception of the world does tend to clash the hardest, it seems, with these, for them, foreign, and confusing cultural mores, read "Can Western Civilization Be Restored?". Sometimes, you will not be better off by smashing and destroying your opponents, especially when you conceive of people as your opponents that do not deserve to be thought of as opponents; in fact, in these situations all that you are likely to accomplish is the destruction of your own world, read "Disintegration".

    Mr. Ahem Abdullah Ahmed asks:

"Hello to you Mr. Dutt, I am writing to you with the help of (Google Translate). I am a muslim man living in the Netherlands, and my parents wants me to marry my cousin, in order to not bring shame on the honour of the family and the klan. Must I do this as a Muslim, or am I allowed to marry someone else? Will I bring shame on my family if I refuse to marry my cousin?" — Ahmed Abdullah Ahmed.

First of all, it is rather clear among most qualified scholars of Islamic jurisprudence, Fiqh (فِقْه), that marriage between cousins is perfectly legitimate,† and in fact this happens a lot among moslems, and most of them are quite fine with this arrangement, and of course this also helps to preserve the roots of the family, as this is an effective way of combating the introduction of foreign elements that may threaten to pollute the tree of life. In fact, cousin marriages was a rather common practise even in the Western world until fairly recently, and no doubt the world would not be the same without this practise, as everyone alive on earth today can trace a rather substantial part of their genealogy back to ancestors who furthered life by procreating in this rather horizontal way, horizontal for it did not require the painful interruption of traditional ways. Of course, not interrupting tradition is what your family is aiming at, and this is why they are likely to prefer for you to marry your cousin rather than a complete stranger, even though this complete stranger could be a moslem, and I suppose as well that your parents must be taking the fact that you are outsiders and foreigners in the Netherlands into proper account when they prefer cousin marriage of any other kind of marriage, because in the context of cosmopolitan Europe, which the Netherland is a part of, your tradition is more threatened than ever, and so in this context it makes even more sense for your parents to press the issue. I believe that an accurate description of your current situation as an outsider in the Netherlands is that of being lost on the High Seas without a compass and without light, read "What about All the Noise?", and this currently leaves you only with that traditional sense, and no doubt your family and your ways will face many tremendous challenges ahead inside a country like the Netherlands and really within the context of the Western world at large.

    The question then, Mr. Ahmed, could perhaps be reframed: who is it that is actually having issues here, is it you or is it your parents who are merely attempting to preserve your way of life, the way of life imprinted on your entire genealogy? Could it not be that you have been affected by the currents of Western decadence and confusion, and this has now left you completely without a sense of honour? Because if this is about honour and a sense of keeping the honour and protecting your family from shame, it would seem to me that you at the very least should consider why your parents believe that it is important for you to marry your cousin. Is it something about your cousin that you find unattractive or gross, could it even be the case that your conception of marriage is entirely material and based on individualism and preference? Now, I leave it up to you Mr. Ahmed to answer these questions, but what I must admit that I am reacting to in your letter, is your framing, a framing that already appears to assume that the Western point of view must be correct, and that what then invariably appears rather backwards under that assumption is what deserves to be questioned.

    Now, the cultural aspects of your question can almost in their entirety be separated from Islam, which is what I have attempted to do, and the question of honour and shame then becomes a question of your family and the tradition of your family, because from the point of view of Islam, I can almost assure you that you have no obligation to marry your cousin, even though this is allowed by Islam. So, shame must first and foremost be understood from the point of view of your culture, and yes, if you do belong to a culture where this practise is more than common, even expected, then yes, you should expect that refusing to marry your cousin will bring a certain shame on your family, and it may also be that this shame will be felt even more in the cultural context of borderless cosmopolitanism. Now, I am not a lawyer and I am not familiar with the laws of the Netherlands, but it could be that this practice of cousin marriage is right out banned in the Netherlands, which may contribute to further complications and pains if you do decide to marry your cousin, which could be a reason for you to refuse, depending on your cultural context, to marry your cousin. It could also be that you may be forced to leave the Netherlands or simply marry your cousin in a different jurisdiction, read "The Problem of Secular Law", but then we must still keep the Islamic, your particular and cultural conception, and the legal conception of marriage apart: it is certainly the case that you can be married to your cousin in the eyes of Islam and your family, without this necessarily being recognized by Dutch law. Again, I understand that this may be a pressed situation that you are now finding yourself in, but at the very least I do believe that you should think of the honour of your family and your tradition before you make your decision: if you decide against marrying your cousin, then this is fine, but do still consider the consequences of this act beyond yourself; yes, what I am asking you to do is to consider this problem from a holistic point of view, rather than from a narrow minded and self serving point of view, especially if you are culturally aware and find it important to not lower your standards to those around you.

Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – October 8, 2026.

Footnote(s)

* It is technically incorrect to conceive of Islam as being divided into a dichotomy of Sunni and Shia, but this is the common western conception it would seem, and to a rather large extent this conception of Islam appears to stem from a confusion with Christianity to begin with, read "The Problem with Protestantism".

† For more on this I must direct you to my post "Cousin Marriage", as this subject is too vast for me to explain within the timeframe of writing this post.