do france and belgium have a berber problem?

i don’t know the answer to that question — i only ask because it turns out that several of the paris terrrorists (from the recent attacks) are of berber extraction — and i’m thinking maybe someone should bother to find out if there’s something going on here.

here’s a list of the known (and some unknown) attackers as of a couple of days ago:

#ParisAttacks gunmen and suspects pic.twitter.com/FfDdFveteQ

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) November 24, 2015

– salah abdeslam and his brother ibrahim (“brahim”) are riffians. while they are/were french citizens (resident in belgium), their parents were immigrants from bouyafar, nador province, morocco.

– samy amimour, who grew up in france, is of kabyle heritage (like hot-tempered zinedine zidane). libération says his family is of kabyle origin, but deutsche welle seems to suggest that only his mother is berber.

– abdelhamid abaaoud — and his cousin hasna aitboulahcen — were probably chleuhs or shilha berbers from southern morocco. one of abaaoud’s noms de guerre for himself was “abou omar soussi,” indicating that he identified with the souss valley where his parents were from, the souss region being mostly populated by chleuhs.

– bilal hadfi (french citizen, belgian resident) was ethnically moroccan — at least his father was — but i haven’t yet found out if he was berber or not.

– omar ismael mostefai’s father was algerian, but i don’t know if he is berber. reports are that mostefai’s mother is portugese, but the portugese authorities deny having any record of her. however, the mostefai family’s neighbors all talk about how the mother was portugese and was a convert to islam, so i think that must be correct.

– ahmed dahmani is also of moroccan heritage, but i don’t know if he’s berber or not. he’s also something of an amateur boxer.

– mohammed amri is also “belgo-marocain,” but again i haven’t found out of he’s berber or not.

– not sure at all about hamza attou’s ethnic background.

– don’t know what fabien clain’s story is. he’s from réunion originally, and is a convert to (radical) islam (as is his brother). haven’t seen what his ethnic background is, but he looks to be a person of mixed ethnicity/race.

so, out of eleven suspects with confirmed identities, three are definitely of berber extraction (salah and ibrahim abdeslam and samy amimour), two most likely are (abdelhamid abaaoud and hasna aitboulahcen), three have a moroccan background (could be berber), and another is algerian. plus there are two unknowns. that’s definitely a heavily maghrebi group, and i’m betting berber.

since i’m adding up berber/maghrebi islamic terrorists, here are a few more:

– mohammed bouyeri, the guy who killed theo van gogh, was a riffian (moroccan berber) [pg. 114].

– zacarias moussaoui — remember him? — his mother is a berber.

– mehdi nemmouche, who killed four people at the jewish museum of belgium, has at least one kabyle (algerian berber) grandmother.

– wikipedia claims that the kouachi brothers responsible for the charlie hebdo shootings were berbers, but there is no source, so i still need to confirm this. they were definitely of algerian extraction.

– ayoub el khazzani, the thalys train wannabe shooter, is from morocco himself — from tétouan which is in the rif region, so he may very well be another riffian.

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who feels most strongly that they are citizens of their nations?

those individuals who feel most strongly that they are members of their local community.

at least there’s a strong positive correlation (0.85) between the presence of the two groups in a country.

from the world values survey 2005-2008 wave, below is a chart [click on chart for LARGER view] and a table giving the percentages of people in each nation who responded that they “strongly agree” with the following statements:

– (V211) I see myself as member of my local community
– (V212) I see myself as citizen of the [country] nation

here’s the table sorted by “Citizen of nation.” i can’t see any rhyme or reason for why some peoples feel more citizen-y than others. if you can see a pattern, lemme know! certainly having a lot of people in your country who strongly identify as citizens of that country does not appear to be enough to get you a well-functioning nation: ghana? mali? egypt? japan towards the bottom of the list? hmmmm.

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how inexplicable!

this is a real head-scratcher…

“Can Libya Be Saved?

“Two years ago this month, Tripoli, the capital of Libya, fell to the amalgam of rebel forces that had been closing in on the city. The country’s leader Muammar Qaddafi fled to his home town, Surt, where, on October 20, 2011, rebels stabbed, beat, and shot him to death after his convoy was hit by a NATO missile strike. Qaddafi’s eccentric, forty-two-year dictatorship was over, signalling the apparent end to a dramatic chain of events that had started nine months earlier, in the eastern city of Benghazi. There, inspired by the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, in neighboring Egypt, Libyans had demonstrated against Qaddafi’s rule, and the protests had turned into a bloody national showdown with security forces. The protesters, eventually assisted by French, American, and British bombers under the NATO banner, succeeded. The smoke had not yet cleared when the victory was being touted as a shining example of what Western powers could do on a modern battleground without ever putting ‘boots on the ground.’

“With no further need for war and with Western powers fussing over what was being vaunted as the oil-rich nation’s new democracy, Libya should have once again achieved peace and stability. Instead, the country, of more than six million people, seems to have been fatally destabilized by the war to remove its dictator, and it is increasingly out of control. Militias that arose on various regional battlefronts found themselves in possession of vast arsenals and large swaths of territory. Despite the orchestration of parliamentary elections and the assumption of nominal rule by civilian politicians in Tripoli, those militias have not stood down; instead, they have used their force and their firepower to try to effect change in the capital, even, on several occasions, besieging government buildings. They have also fought one another over long-held regional enmities; the most recent such battle occurred last month….“

previously: libyans on democracy: meh and the nyt discovers tribes! and consanguinity in libya… and number of libyan tribes… and all tribes, all the time! and libya update and “tribes mean trouble” and inexplicable rifts in libyan rebel forces

_{(note: comments do not require an email. libyan tribal map.)}

consanguinity and islam and democracy

i said last week that the week would be devoted to the woodley & bell consanguinity and democracy paper … and then i got distracted. typical. so, now, back on track…

aside from looking for any straight up connection/s between consanguinity and democracy (see previous post), woodley & bell also looked at consanguinity and democracy and several other possible factors that might affect the success of democracy in the nations included in the study: economic freedom, inequality, exports of fossil fuels (the “resource curse”), pathogen load (i’ll come back to that one!), and islam.

using path analysis, they found that islam seems to have a direct impact on democracy in muslim nations and ALSO that islam has an indirect impact on democracy via consanguinity.

recall that woodley & bell used two different indices of democracy: data from the polity iv project and the eiu democracy index. so they worked up two path analyses (click on charts for LARGER view). percent muslim for each country came from pew:

both analyses indicate: “that Islam has both direct effects on democracy and effects that are mediated by consanguinity, although the direct path from percentage Muslim to democracy [in the first model] only approached the conventional cutoff for significance (p = .096).”

from the paper (pg. 12):

“The largest impacts on consanguinity in the path models were produced by pathogen load and the effect of the percentage of Muslims within a nation. In the first path model the latter variable did not have a significant direct path to democracy, which suggests that its effects on democracy are largely mediated by consanguinity. Both pathogen prevalence and the influence of Islam have been described in the literature as having an inhibitory effect on democracy (e.g., Fincher et al., 2008; Fish, 2002; Fukuyama, 2001; Huntington, 1984; Thornhill et al., 2009). Here we indicate that these variables, which had previously been posited to have independent effects on democracy, are actually mediated by consanguinity.”

so, if a nation is islamic, that will affect how democratic it is (or not!), but what seems to be more important is if the population practices cousin marriage. it’s islam+consanguinity that is the key here, not just islam.

i think it makes sense that the effects islam has on democracy are “mediated” by how much cousin marriage there is in a society. cousin marriage directly affects the genetic relatedness between the individual members of a population, making individuals more related to their family members than would happen in an outbred society, while making those same individuals less related to non-family members, again unlike in an outbred society. i think this pretty clearly leads to clannish or tribal behavioral patterns which, as woodley and bell point out, are not conducive to liberal democracy at all.

islam doesn’t demand cousin marriage, but it doesn’t prohibit it either. since muslims are supposed to emulate mohammed (who married a cousin – see below), it probably rather encourages it. and anyway — which came first, cousin marriage or islam? yup. cousin marriage. one of mohammed’s wives was a cousin of his (his fzd) — and ali (yes that ali), who was mohammed’s cousin, married mohammed’s daughter, ali’s first cousin once removed. cousin marriage was very much the norm amongst the arabs in mohammed’s day. and, unlike roman catholic church policy makers, neither mohammed nor any imam since him (at least none that count) seem to have come down against cousin marriage afaik.

furthermore, good ol’ father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage, the form of cousin marriage that leads to the most inbreeding, and that is still the preferred form amongst many muslims, was probably already well established amongst the arabs in mohammed’s day. fbd marriage was probably introduced to the arabs by jewish tribes from the levant who migrated into the arab peninsula starting in the second century b.c. so not only is cousin marriage amongst the arabs old, it’s really old — and it’s fbd marriage to boot. the arabs went on to introduce fbd marriage to the peoples of north africa, the mashriq and south asia (like the pakistanis and the afghanis).

my guess is that it’s not just the amount of consanguinity in a nation that negatively affects the success of democracy in that country, but the length of time the people have been practicing cousin marriage AND how close that cousin marriage is. like i said in the previous post, i think the evolution of “genes for altruism” comes into play here, not just the immediate genetic relatedness between the individuals in these societies, although it’s important, too.

so, i would bet that democracy would fare the worst in the levant, where fbd marriage originated, and the arab peninsula, where fbd marriage has been present for so very long, and that distance from that core region would predict better odds of democracy working at all.

kinda looks that way, don’t it? (eui democracy index 2011 – click on map for LARGER view):

syria, saudi arabia, yeman and oman have the worst scores for democracy in the muslim world (in the world!). iran, turkemenistan and uzbekistan have similar scores and all three of those countries were “arabized” in the early- to mid- seventh century a.d. pakistan was not brought under the arab sphere of influence until later (the early eighth century) and conversion to islam and arabization (and, presumably, the adoption of fbd marriage) took some time. this, i think, might partially explain why, even though pakistan today has similar consanguinity rates to saudi arabia, it does better as far as having a democratic state goes — the pakistani populations haven’t been marrying their fbd for as long as arabs.

similarly, at the other end of the “arab” world, north africans are relatively better at democracy than the saudis since they, too, were arabized — and adopted fbd marriage — comparatively late. the far flung islamic nation, indonesia, manages democracy fairly ok since they’ve hardly adopted fbd marriage at all, although they’ve probably been marrying their mother’s brother’s daughters for a while like other east asian populations.

previously: consanguinity and democracy

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voting patterns and clans in egypt

so the elections are underway in egypt. i wish them luck (i really mean that!).

i quoted this article (now behind a paywall) once before, mostly ’cause i thought the guy being interviewed was pretty funny:

Key Clans Hold Sway in Egypt Elections

“TOMIYA, Egypt — In this rural hamlet 100 miles southwest of Cairo, farmers turn their fields with ox-pulled plows and ferry their daily harvest to market on carts pulled by swaybacked donkeys. Nine months after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, this village’s politics remain similarly stuck in a previous era.

“Here, as in much of rural Egypt, two political forces appear poised to dominate Monday’s parliamentary vote, just as they have for much of the past century: the Muslim Brotherhood and a small clique of powerful families, feudal landowners with longstanding ties to the former ruling party and security services….

‘Tribe, family, and religion — this is how people vote here,’ said Micheil Fayek, a candidate in Fayoum governorate, which includes Tomiya, for the liberal-leaning, but pro-military Wafd Party….

“At sunset, on the eve of Monday’s vote, a group of local farmers sat sucking on a water pipe on the roadside near Tomiya. Asked what they thought of their local candidates, they named the Muslim Brotherhood candidates and, like everyone here, candidate Yussuf Abu Talab, whose father and grandfather have represented the district in parliament for as long as anyone can remember. The rest of the ballot was a mystery to them.

“‘Abu Talab’s father was very powerful, anything you needed, he would give you,’ said one of the farmers, Taha Abu Shaaban, 40 years old. ‘He was in the ruling party, but the people loved him….’

“The likes of Mr. Abu Talab, whose family owns the vast swaths of farmland these men all toil each day, are old political hands, masters of Egypt’s rough and tumble and often corrupt electoral politics. Mr. Abu Talab couldn’t be reached for comment. But Moataz Mahmoud, the head of the Hurriya (Freedom) Party he is running with said that such well-known figures such as Mr. Talab around Egypt are expected to win seats because they have a long history of looking after their constituents.

“Though these elections look poised to be freer and fairer than past Egyptian elections, the same dirty tricks that have been fixtures of past elections are already evident.

“Mr. Fayek, the Wafd Party candidate, said he has been approached by a number of paid vote bundlers who muster a chunk of guaranteed votes in exchange for cash. In Fayoum, Mr. Fayek said he had received offers from such hustlers to sell 1,000 vote bundles for between LE50 and LE100 ($10 and $20) a vote, with results guaranteed by cell phone pictures of the checked ballot snapped by each voter inside the voting booth.

“That the Muslim Brotherhood is expected to make a strong showing in these elections has never been in doubt. But the role of these powerful families has received comparatively little attention and could end up being a strong and unpredictable force in the next parliament, giving it a more counterrevolutionary hue than many democracy activists hoped….

“‘Egyptian Election is based on individuals with strong tribal and family connections rather than on ideologies or programs of parties, and the only exception to this is the Islamist voters,’ said Mr. Mahmoud, the head of the Hurriya Party, which includes ex-Mubarak regime members from around the country and who is also a candidate from a prominent family from southern Egypt. ‘It doesn’t it matter if I was a part of the ruling regime. Even if I was a member of the Israeli Likud, I would still win.’”
_____

see? funny. (^_^)

here’s how elections and voting normally work in clannish egypt (although i’m not sure how applicable this is to the presidential voting that they’re doing today in egypt — the following is more about how parliamentarian elections work). from Development and Social Change in Rural Egypt [pgs. 150, 151-54]:

“The unequal distribution of economic resources in the El-Diblah district [pseudonymous district representative of upper or southern egypt] means that political relations in the area are dominated by one type of relationship: the patron-client relationship. Rich peasant patrons, who own over ten feddans of land, remain the principal source of employment, credit and brokerage services for the large number of poor peasants in the district. To be sure, the gradual reduction in the size of rich peasant landholdings means that many wealthy patrons no longer possess the monopoly of resources needed to permanently support their poor peasant clients. In most cases poor peasants seeking wage labor must now circulate between several rich patrons in order to survive. Yet the majority of these poor peasants still look to one particular wealthy patron for brokerage and intercessionary services with the government. By effectively mediating the demands of their poor peasant clients with the outside political world, rich peasant patrons can dominate political life at the local level….

“It is possible to examine the local-level powers wielded by rich peasant patrons like Zaghlul in terms of two broad patterns of political dynamics. These two patterns related to the ‘big-man small-boy’ syndrome identified by Robert Price in his analysis of political culture in Ghana. Price draws a sharp distinction between big men and small boys: ‘Big men are those of social weight, worth and responsibility; while small boys are, like children, of little consequence in the affairs of the community. Big men are expected to make decisions, give orders and look after the material well-being of their social inferiors. In turn, small boys are expected to exhibit unquestioning obedience and obsequious public deference toward big men’ (1974: 175).

“While villagers in the El-Dibah district do not explicitly differentiate between big men and small boys, these two terms bear a striking resemblance to the actual manner in which they view political reality. Villagers expect aspiring political leaders to seek positions in accordance with their acknowledged social status and worth. This means that rich peasant patrons or big men seek positions at the upper levels of Egyptian government, especially in the National Assembly. However, small peasants or small boys, who are the obsequious clients of big men, serve on the relatively insignificant elected councils that have been created in recent years at the village, district and governorate levels….

“The whole modus operandi of National Assembly (Parliamentary) elections favors the selection of big men. For example, a total of ten candidates participated in the 1979 parliamentary election in the El-Diblah district. According to informants, only three of these candidates were ‘serious’ contenders for the two paliamentary seats from the district. Two of these candidates were prominent rich peasants; the third was the scion of a leading extended family in the area. During the weeks immediately preceding the election these candidates did absolutely no public campaigning. The only campaigning that occurred took place between the big men themselves. The leading candidates, and their supporters, spent most of their time visiting village headmen and extended family leaders in the area. In the words of one local politico, ‘No one spends much time distributing campaign material around here because not all that many villagers can read. Most of the muwazzafin will vote for the [government] party candidates, while the fellahin who vote will vote as their ‘umdas and family leaders tell them to.’

“In the El-Diblah district a successful paliamentary candidate typically campaigns by distributing ‘vote money’ to the headmen of smaller villages, and to the heads of leading extended families in larger areas. Depending on the financial resources of the candidate, a village headman or family leader may receive between £E100 and £E400 (U.S. $143 and $572 [in 1986, h. chick]). These rich peasant leaders are then expected to distribute their vote money among the client members of their village or family unit in order to deliver as many votes as possible to the candidate.

“The practical dynamics of this method of campaigning can be seen by referring to the case history of ‘Ahmed,’ one of the successful candidates in the 1979 parliamentary election in El-Diblah. In the eyes of most villagers, Ahmed is the personification of a big man. His family owns about 90 feddans of land, including the largest grape vineyard in the area. His father served in the Egyptian Parliament in the 1950s, and Ahmed himself has represented the El-Diblah district in the National Assembly for the past 12 years. Ahmed’s brother is the headman of a key village in the district, and he is also related by marriage to several other headmen in the area. Thus, at election time Ahmed does not need to distribute vote money to many local village headmen since they are expected, on the basis of kinship ties, to deliver the votes of their villages to him. During the last couple of parliamentary elections, however, Ahmed has given ‘vote money’ to two of the four family leaders in the village of El-Diblah. These family leaders have responded by delivering to Ahmed the votes of their extended family units. The staunch opposition of other family leaders in the village of El-Diblah presents Ahmed with no particular problem. While women in the area have the right to vote, but rarely exercise it, Ahmed has seen to it that all of the women in his village are registered to vote. Since women here vote as their husbands do, through this little strategem Ahmed has been able to effectively ‘double’ his vote output, and so to overcome the opposition of certain family leaders in El-Diblah.

“To many poor peasants Ahmed’s conspicuous use of ‘vote money’ during parliamentary elections serves only to confirm his status as a big man. Egyptian peasants expect such a demonstration of big-man worth during parliamentary campaigns, because they widely suspect that the main motivation for seeking such a leadership post is that of personal gain. Peasants believe that big men such as Ahmed have achieved their wealth and prominence by one of two means, inheritance or theft. While the fellahin find theft reprehensible, they do not find it completely intolerable as long as the personal aggrandizement of their elected officials provides them with an occasional share of the spoils.

“In Ahmed’s case service in the National Assembly has indeed provided peasants with what may be termed a ‘politics of largesse’ (Hyden 1980: 90). While his powers at the national level are quite circumscribed, at the local level Ahmed has become an effective ‘gatekeeper’ over the flow of national resources into his district. He has, for example, played an important role in determining the location of certain social services in the area: schools, warehouses and consumer cooperatives. Through this process Ahmed has been able to reward his followers through the creation of new jobs, new titles, and perhaps most importantly, new means of graft. In El-Diblah, as well as other rural areas, easy access to government warehouses and cooperatives provides villagers with the chance to purchase (or pilfer) those government-subsidized products (for example, wood, iron, meat) that can be sold for a handsome profit on the black market.”
_____

any and all analyses of the egyptian political situation that you (we) get via western newspapers and media sources will be seriously lacking in insight if they don’t take into account the role of extended families and clans at really every level of egyptian society including the political. and they don’t usually include this, so we really don’t understand what the h*ck is happening there.

here are a few more tidbits about voting patterns and clans in egypt:

Onetime Mubarak foes move closer to power as Egyptians vote again
January 03, 2012

“There were indications in some provinces, especially in tribal areas, that former members of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party might win a number of seats. The party has been disbanded but its onetime members have benefited from clan and family allegiances that heavily influence voting preferences….”
_____

Egypt votes in third round of elections
03 Jan 2012

“‘Overwhelmingly we are hearing people tell us that they will be voting for the Salafi Nour party or the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party Freedom and Justice, so it’s very much a lot of grassroots support for the Islamist parties here,’ Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reported from El-Arish, in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

“‘When it comes to the individual candidates, people are not talking to us about policy and issue and what the individual candidates stand for; it is very much on tribal and clan lines, that’s how people are voting here….‘”
_____

Tribes and Elections in Upper Egypt

“One of the central features of politics and elections in the southern part of Egypt is the tribal organization. In many areas, tribes have for the past decades had a decisive influence on elections and their outcome. During the upcoming elections this power is going to be challenged by the new political parties, but the question is whether they will be able to overcome the already well-established system.

“From south of Cairo to the most southern city of Aswan, tribes are central for the political process and important to take into account when discussing elections. In some areas tribal influence is so strong that no one will think about elections without thinking about tribal alliances and tribal politics. In these areas, elections are not seen as a competition between parties and political ideas, but as the tribe of Ababdah against the tribe of Ja’afra – to mention two of the larger tribes in the most southern parts of Egypt….

“The tribes are essentially to be understood as very large extended families that are distinct politically, but not culturally, from their neighbors….

“That the tribes constitute a political force has been the case during all times, but it seems as if their importance as political entities has been strengthened during the last decades….

“That tribalism has been revitalized within the past decades is something people testify to. Earlier, one would hear older people say that tribes had grown less important. During the years of Gamal Abd al-Nasser, when the Egyptian government promoted an ideology of equality and Arab Socialism, the idea that some people should have a specific status due to their pedigree was in conflict with the ideology. The existence of tribes or ‘clans’ in Upper Egypt was seen as reflecting a backwardness that the Free Officers were trying to curtail. To many, citizenship in a modern state does not fit with the notion of tribes, which in principle encroaches upon the relationship between the individual and the state and creates opposing fields of loyalty.

“During the era of Anwar Sadat and especially the former president Hosny Mubarak, the idea of tribalism, of emphasizing the importance of one’s pedigree, once again became legitimate and got official approval….”
_____

previously: mating patterns in egypt and family type in egypt and corporations and collectivities

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father’s brother’s daughter marriage

or fbd marriage (or patrilateral parallel cousin marriage). i mentioned this before (and i’m sure i’ll mention it again).

cousin marriage is pretty common in the world. but most peoples prefer to marry their cross cousins, i.e. (from the point-of-view of a son) father’s sister’s daughter or mother’s brother’s daughter.

however, a few groups of peoples preferentially follow the fbd system. korotayev (2000) convincingly showed that those peoples are mostly to be found in those areas of the world that were a part of the eighth century islamic caliphate. or, here:

he said (in that same article):

“Islamic law does not prohibit FBD marriage, nor does it impose (or even recommend) it (Schacht 1964; al-Jazi:ri: 1990:60-61). But most traditional cultures have a clear perception that marriage between a man and his FBD is incestuous. This is evident in the fact that in most languages a kinship term for FBD (or MSD) would be identical with a kinship term for one’s sister. This normally implies that marriage with a FBD (or MSD) would be perceived as equivalent to marriage with a sister (Korotayev 1999). There appears to be something here that Kronenfeld (pers. comm.) called a ‘cognitive problem’….”

i think fbd marriage is considered incestuous by most peoples because it creates strongly endogamous lineages. look here — here’s fbd marriage versus fzd (father’s sister’s daughter) marriage. look what happens: in fbd marriage, the men and the women all stay within the same clan. that’s hyper-endogamy if you ask me. in fzd marriage, in contrast, the women move between clans. (the straight lines are men, the dotted lines are women, and the big dots are, well, the union of a man and woman.)

continuing with korotayev, where on earth did fbd marriage come from?:

“At the time of its origin, FBD marriage had nothing to do with Islam. The cognitive problem solution seems to have occurred somewhere in the Syro-Palestine region well before the birth of Christ. Rodionov (1999) has recently drawn attention to the fact that this marriage pattern is widespread in the non-Islamic cultures of this area (e.g., Maronites or Druze) and that it has considerable functional value in this non-Islamic context in facilitating the division of property among brothers after their father’s death (Rodionov 1999). Like Rodionov (1999), I believe that this marriage pattern could hardly be attributed to Islamic or Arab influence here. It seems, rather, that this marriage pattern in the Islamic world and the non-Islamic Syro-Palestinian cultures stems from the same source.

“But prior to the time of Islam, the diffusion of the FBD marriage pattern was rather limited. The only adjacent area where it diffused widely was the Arabian Peninsula (Negrja 1981; Kudelin 1994), where its diffusion can be linked with a considerable Jewish influence in the area well before Islam (Crone 1987; Korotayev 1996; Korotayev, Klimenko, and Proussakov 1999). In any case, by the seventh century, preferential parallel-cousin marriage became quite common among several important Arab tribes (Negrja 1981; Kudelin 1994). In the seventh and eighth centuries, an explosive diffusion of this pattern took place when Arab tribes, backed by Islam, spread throughout the whole of the Omayyid Khalifate. Although preferential parallel-cousin marriage diffused (together with Islam and Arabs) later beyond the borders of the Omayyid Khalifate, the extent of this diffusion was very limited. Hence, the present distribution of FBD marriage was essentially created by the Muslim Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries….”

interesting, huh?

i mentioned over here that i thought the practice should really be called father’s brother’s son marriage — not ’cause i’m a raving feminst who wants everything to be considered from the point-of-view of women (you should know me better than that by now!) — but, rather, because it seems to me to be the father-of-the-bride [“C” in chart below] who really wins out here genetically speaking (which is all that matters, right?). the father-of-the-bride gets to “reunite” his y-chromosome (that he shares with his nephew, his brother’s son) with a quarter of his autosomal dna (his daughter carries half of his autosomal dna) in any male grandkids that he has. what other grandfather gets to do that?:

so what?, you say. here’s what, says i (i.e. relatedness matters).

i also think it’s not a coincidence that, in these societies where fbd marriage exists, you also get these extremely paternalistic societies where women are shrouded in burkas or aren’t allowed to drive or whatever. also, the whole honor killing thing. like rs said here, the males in such societies become “super homies” with each other. exactly! why? ’cause they are really closely related genetically.

i suspect that both the degree and type of genetic relatedness in a society affect all sorts of behaviors of its members (especially those related to reproduction) as well as societal norms and even ideologies (again, especially those related to reproduction).

emmanuel todd seems to have gotten close to this idea as well, although i don’t think he got the genetic side of it (i haven’t actually gotten my hands on a copy of this book yet — gosh-d*rnit!). here’s a blurb about his book, “The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure and Social Systems (Family, Sexuality and Social Relations in Past Times)”:

“Some parts of the world are dominated by communism, others by Catholicism or by Islam and yet others by liberal doctrines. Why should this be? And why has communism triumphed in Russia, China and Cuba, yet failed in Poland, Cambodia and Indonesia? No one knows. Certainly no clear answer lies in variation of climate, environment, race or, even, economic development. The argument of this book is that world variations in social ideology and belief are conditioned by family structure. The author analyzes the distribution of family forms throughout the world, and examines the relations between particular structures, and (for example) communism, totalitarianism and individualism, as well as the links between these forms and a variety of social phenomena – illegitimacy, suicide, infanticide, marital stability and inheritance laws. He offers evidence to support the belief that family structures and kinship patterns lie behind the ideologies that have shaped the history of the 20th century.”

yes, kinship patterns. and what do kinship patterns reflect? mating patterns.

here’s a little hint at what todd had to say about kinship patterns in the once-part-of-the-caliphate muslim world from a helpful reviewer:

“Endogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, frequent marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian – equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Arab world, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan.
e. Representative Ideology: Islam.”

it’s not the family structure that matters, it’s the mating patterns i say.

relatedness matters. a LOT, i think.

previously: cousin marriage conundrum addendum and all cousins are not created equal

edit – a nifty diagram of father’s sister’s daughter (fzd) marriage:

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number of libyan tribes…

…is rising exponentially, apparently.

last time i heard, there were around “140 different tribes and clans in Libya.” now i read that the tribal leaders from 851 tribes and tribal factions just got together for a little pep-rally! and these are just the ones (supposedly) supporting gaddafi:

Libyan Tribes Call for End to Armed Uprising
06/05/2011

“Journalists were told that about 2,000 chiefs representing 851 tribes and tribal factions were in attendance, at the convention that was organised by the tribes, not the regime. However it seems that the convention drew only limited participation, with only tribal chiefs from three regions of western and central Libya were present….”

number of tribes in libya? a LOT. (guess it depends on how you slice it.)

previously: libya – land o’ tribes

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“tribes mean trouble”

yes. yes, they do.

“Tribes Mean Trouble”
March 13, 2011

“So far, the fight for Libya has been an armed showdown between Gaddafi and the rebels. This conflict is about to get much more complicated….

“The rebels, on the other hand, hope to win converts by showing they’ve got the momentum. In the east, that’s not much of a problem. Keeping them in line, however, seems more difficult.

“Last Monday tribal leaders gathered in an ornate conference hall with gold-colored chandeliers in Benghazi; some showed up in traditional robes and others in sleek business suits. Gen. Mohammed Massoud, a senior rebel military commander normally only seen in green fatigues, arrived wrapped in a white tribal blanket, sporting a red tarboosh. The group had gathered to express their support for the Interim Transitional National Council, the government-in-waiting in the east.

“But the gathering was hardly a show of tribal unity. At one point, a representative from the town of Bayda stepped up to praise his own tribesmen’s role in the uprising. A handful of angry attendees drowned him out with cries of ‘Libya! Libya!’ — a clear message that no tribe would be able to take credit above any other. The meeting descended into chaos. Many stormed out. A bewildered waitstaff was left behind, serving up dishes of lamb and rice to largely empty tables….”

so many rebel alliances just NEVER turn out like the one in star wars. wonder why?

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