“Did my children die because I married my cousin?”
No, they died because your gutter religion encourages cousins to marry.
Genetic Russian roulette.
+1
It is actually worse than that. There’s a bad tendency to MULTI-GENERATIONAL cousin marriage.
There are several factors pushing it.
When you marry a father’s brother’s daughter, she doesn’t have to veil in front of in-laws and family because they’re all legal guardians.
Your cousins are the only people you can both marry and go out in public with - i.e. date.
Since families tend to live together with paternal kin, she remains close to or next door to Mom, Dad and brothers - so she can actually get help and support from them instead of being at her husband’s mercy.
And there really isn’t a bride-price when cousins marry, whereas you have to pay for a bride you’re not related to. No money changes hands, either, when two relatives exchange two daughters so that each of their sons has a free bride. Thus economics is a MAJOR determinant. The next generation has cousins prone to marry each other, the very intertwined family tree making bad recessives likely to pop up.