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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 25, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The Islamic Golden Age was really more of a Persian Golden Age than anything else given the backgrounds of most of its eminent figures, and even today Iran is no slouch when it comes to intellectual achievement, producing multiple Fields medalists, and sending many brilliant science and engineering students to study abroad (in the course of interacting with international students in graduate school, Iran was the country I came away with the greatest increase in respect for).

I think the clearest test of the cousin marriage IQ reduction hypothesis would be in South Asia, where we can directly compare Muslims who have practiced cousin marriage for several centuries now with their non-Muslim neighbors who should be otherwise genetically identical (controlling for caste origin and language group), but I don't know if anyone has done that particular experiment. Just looking at how dysfunctional Pakistan is I assume it must be bad for them somehow.

As for Arab Christians being smarter, that's the result of the least successful and poorest among them leaving the community each generation by converting to Islam in order to avoid paying the jizya tax. I think the amount of black admixture in Arab Muslims is 5% or less, similar to your average Mexican or Afrikaner, so not enough to affect appearance or much else.