How come arabs prefer or force their daughters to marry their cousins?

Arab here, and this is about to get long, so I hope you don't mind.

To answer your question, there are Arabs that marry their daughters off to their cousins, but usually, they aren't first cousins because, while it's not considered incest here, it's still considered kind of weird.

The reason they do this, though, is because Arabs mainly marry their children off to others whose parents they can actually trust. So like, for example, Amina's dad wants Amina to marry Murad, whose dad is Amina's dad's first cousin. This would be bcause Amina's dad knows Murad's dad is a person he trusts and can vouch for Murad being a good match for Amina (due to upbringing, social class, political views.... etc.)

A lot of Arabs, though, (or at least in my family) actually avoid marrying their children off to their cousins, and put them through an arranged marriage process where (using the same example as before) Muhammad and his parents will visit Amina and her parents, and that way Amina and her parents can gauge whether Muhammad comes from a proper upbringing and is a good match for Amina.

And just to correct a small misconception on your part, most Arab daughters are not forced into marriage (only fucked up people do that). Most do go through an arranged marriage process, but the bride herself is the final say on whether or not she's getting married.

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