The Republic of Cousins

"The social position of women in many of the countries ringing the Mediterranean is notoriously inferior. Across North Africa and along much of the Mediterranean's eastern shore, the 'crime of honour' - in which a woman suspected of having violated a stringent code of sexual behaviour is murdered by members of her own family - is rarely punished severely. Women spend their entire lives under the formal control and 'protection'of their fathers, brothers, husbands ... Germaine Tillion argues that this extreme form of oppression is not an aberration specific to Islam, but part of a legacy from pagan prehistory that weighs upon Christian and Muslim society alike. The rise of the Republic of Cousins was a unique Mediterranean social innovation whereby the immemorial incest taboo was relaxed and marriage between first cousins in the paternal line became common. It set the stage for the debasement of the female condition and for much else besides, from economic expansionism to high birthrates. In the hinterlands of the Mediterranean's northern shore, the Republic of Cousins ultimately gave way to the modern Republic of Citizens, though not without leaving deep traces in European and eventually American society. On the southern shore it still persists widely to this day, and many of its practices have been absorbed into Islam so profoundly that they are considered Islamic in origin by the peoples of Morocco and Algeria themselves. In support of her thesis Tillion draws upon authors as diverse as Herodotus, Saint Paul, and Ibn Khaldun, on legend and literature, ethnography and personal history, sociological investigation and fascinating anecdote."