Consanguinity Amoung Arab families

The following information is from a website called "Exceptional Arab Families" (link below)

Inter-family marriages (consanguineous marriage) have been among the main causes for birth of children with special needs.  A Bahraini study reported that: " The rate of cousin marriage was 39.4% in the present generation and 45.5% in the previous generation, indicating a high rate of consanguinity, decreasing significantly over time. 

The rate of first cousin marriage was 21%. Interestingly, while 53% 
of respondents were in favor of consanguineous marriage, 62% 
agreed it could cause genetic disease and 47.8% agreed it could cause social problems.

 http://www.exceptionalarabfamily.dmsindex.com/


From my research about this topic; it seems that marriage to a first cousin is not the problem. The problems surface when your parents, grand parents and great grandparents all have married their first cousin. This causes for hereditary issues to increase because of the small pool of genes, which would be similar or the same.