I can’t find any other source for this or discussion of it so far; I hope it won’t be ignored.
They can’t be against the mutilation of the genitals of girls and women? Why not? Aren’t girls and women people too, as entitled to the protection of the state against violence as any other people? Is it because the practice is considered religious? Is it ok to cut people’s arms off if it’s a religious practice? Is there any limit on what religion is allowed to do to people?
Carving up girls like so much deli meat is “culture” in Somalia (and elsewhere).
The father of a 10-year-old girl who died after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia has defended the practice.
Dahir Nur’s daughter died of blood loss on 17 July, two days after being taken to a traditional circumciser.
But he told Voice of America (VOA) “people in the area are content” with FGMeven considering the dangers, adding it is the country’s “culture”.
Cultures can change, though. It’s possible to examine particulars of a culture and decide that some of them are bad and have to go.
Efforts to criminalise FGM in Somalia have been stalled by politicians, who fear it will alienate voters who believe it is a religious requirement, while girls who have not undergone it are reportedly taunted for not being cut.
These “religious requirements” that are supposed to originate from a god who can not now be asked to explain or justify or reform or terminate said requirements are one of the worst inventions humans have come up with.
Mariya Taher writes about FGM among Asian immigrants in the US:
Female Genital Cutting (FGC). Some refer to it as Female Circumcision; others call it Female Genital Mutilation. As a child, I knew it as khatna. No matter the name, it is the process of removing part or all of the female genitalia. Within the Dawoodi Bohra religious community, a ritual performed on girls. I never knew it violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let alone was a practice criminalized in the United States by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
According to the United Nation’s Children Fund, more than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in Africa and the Middle East. As many as 30 million girls are at risk of being cut over the next decade.[i] Within the United States, the Center for Disease Control, found that in 1990 an estimated 168,000 girls and women were living with or at risk for FGC. In 2000, it was found that an estimated 228,000 women had undergone the procedure or were at risk, resulting in a 35% increase from 1990.[ii]
The practice is categorized as violence against women, yet the community I was raised in, often praising themselves for emphasizing women’s education, practiced it. In graduate school, for my thesis, I sought to answer the question of why FGC continued in this day and age.
When she started her research she was dismayed to find that reports on FGM [I don’t like to call it cutting, which obscures that it’s cutting off] included only women from African countries.
Excluded from statistics were women like me, born in the United States, growing up in a community whose origins were from Asia and knew FGC to be an important tradition. Further, few qualitative studies, depicting the stories of women, American women, who had knowledge of the practice within this country existed. Here then is my story and the story of six women interviewed for my thesis, who live in the United States and underwent khatna.
Her story:
The summer before I began second-grade, my family visited relatives in India. One morning, my mother and aunt took me to an apartment inside a run-down building located in Bhindi Bazaar, a Dawoodi Bohra populated neighborhood in south Mumbai. Inside the apartment, several elderly ladies dressed in saris greeted us. Initially there was laughter and much chatter. Then I was asked to lie on the bare floor. The frilly dress I wore was pulled up to reveal my midriff and my underwear pulled down, revealing parts I had been taught were to remain private. I couldn’t see what it was, but something sharp cut me and I began crying out in pain.
Once the procedure was complete, my mother embraced me and the elderly ladies, trying to be friendly, handed me a soft drink called Thumbs-Up to chase away tears streaming down my face. We then left the dilapidated building and I hid the memory from my conscious[ness] for the next several years.
Originally a comment by Anne Fenwick on FGM in the US.
It is frustrating that neither society nor the statistics seem good at separating 1) women who arrive as immigrants having undergone FGM in their previous countries; 2) their daughters who may be considered at risk; 3) those daughters who actually undergo FGM in a western country or ‘on vacation’. I’m glad this article seemed to get the problem – though I do wonder about their choice of age range, I think we would use a different one in the UK.
What seems to be important is that the arrival of a large number of women in category 1 is going to necessitate a response. In the first place, they’re going to have specific health care needs which the country isn’t used to meeting. I do wonder how that’s going to work out in the US (not that the UK has distinguished itself recently, or anything). It frustrates me when people complain about the necessity of dealing with this as though it was a terrible imposition. That strikes me as practically victim-blaming.
Then there’s the information campaign to make sure the girls in category 2 don’t end up in category 3. That’s very important, because the next stage should be a last resort, after every effort has been expended here. And lastly, the criminal justice stage for people who do put girls into category 3. I just wish people would stop mentally jumping through the first two stages as though they didn’t exist.
What were we saying about FGM? Egyptian cleric Sheikh Yussef al-Badri sets us straight, explaining to the Beeb’s Aleem Maqbool why it’s such a great idea.
I transcribed the heart of it. The ellipses represent his pauses to hunt for the word; he’s not fluent in English so make allowances for that.
Allah gives us orders, we don’t understand them.
But we have no real reason to think it is “Allah” giving us the orders. We have better reason to think it was a human being writing down either hallucinations or his own ideas dressed up as those of “Allah”.
This make the girl control her common sense about sex. Because the woman is quickly… feel…sex. Before man, for this. If we make Islamic circumcision, it will control her common sense, sex common sense, then she cannot be…feel…in need for man.
It’s clear enough what he means – women can get aroused quickly because of those pesky dangly bits, so if you shave them off, it’s much harder to arouse her – hey, maybe even impossible! Score! So that way she won’t be just wandering around feeling the need to grab a man all the time.
Maqbool: Man feels need for woman, as well.
Sheikh: Oh, Allah control this with marriage. [beams] Marriage! [beams more broadly]
Maqbool: Why would God make a woman like this if he wanted an operation?
Sheikh: [beams again] Ohh, I cannot ask Allah!
No, you cannot, and that’s exactly why you should shut the fuck up about it!
But I am his servant! I should obey! Because…in the [inaudible] of doom, he will give the punishment!
If you cannot ask Allah, then how the hell do you think you know any of that? It’s not something to laugh off as a jolly good joke, it’s a total deal-breaker. But of course he doesn’t see that, and he thinks this contradictory mess is a perfectly valid reason to shave off the genitalia of small girls.