Cultural Enrichment

(as usual, nothing to do with Islam. Except when it does: ‘its the sunnah of the profit’)

The number of cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) reported in London has risen and some procedures are taking place in the city, a doctor has said.

BBC/thanks to the RoP

Dr Comfort Momah, who runs a clinic in Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, said she sees 350 women and children a year.

The Met said it was aware that FGM was taking place in London and had intervened in 122 cases since 2008, including 25 times this year.

But it said that as it was a “taboo” subject there had been no prosecutions.

FGM is illegal in the UK and anybody convicted for it can be jailed for up to 14 years. The law protects British citizens even if they undergo the procedure abroad.

Dr Momah, who runs one of the 11 African Well Women Clinics in London, said a majority of the cases she saw were from African countries, including Somalia, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

‘Need to prosecute’

She said: “In London FGM is widely spread and in my clinic we see about 350 women and children with FGM related problems every year and do reversal in about 100 cases every year.

“We do have people calling me or calling other clinics saying I know a circumciser in Leytonstone, I know a doctor who is performing it within the community, but they won’t give you the information.”

She added that more cases are being reported since 2005.

British girls undergo horror of genital mutilation –

“I see a lot of teenagers now, self-referring to the clinic and getting information from the internet,” the doctor said.

“We need to prosecute somebody if obviously a child is at risk.”

The procedure can cause urinary infections, kidney failure, infertility and death.

Salimata Knight, who underwent the procedure in Senegal, said: “I was forced on the floor and I felt something being cut in me and even at that time I did not know what (it) was because at four-and-half years you are not really aware of what it is.

“It makes people suffer, and suffering has no identity, no race and no culture.”

The Met said the number of interventions had risen from 38 in 2008 to 59 in 2009.

Its Project Azure, which engages with the community, said London clinics see about 600 women a year.

Det Con Jason Morgan, from Project Azure, said: “It affects girls, often as young as seven-days-old, so the girl might be too young to remember exactly what happened, where it happened and who did it to them.”

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Look, I don’t know if the following  posting is from a prankster or not. In my years of blogging I have received all kinds of bizarre stuff from Muslims and non Muslims alike, but this one deserves a full blog post.

morris Wise said…

Freedom loving women should disobey sharia law and prevent themselves from being fully circumcised. Granted that circumcision will stem the heat of passion and make a woman more loyal to her husband, but it also makes life less enjoyable. A fair compromise would be if only the tip of theclitoris was removed allowing some sensitivity to remain.

It is wrong for Western nations to condemn Islamic law that allows female circumcision. It has reduced promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies and has benefited the social structure of society. Modification of the clitoris will lower a woman’s desire for sex, and in doing so will reduce STD. A woman with a modified Clitoris is desired by older men who are not be able to match a younger woman’s sex drive. Clitoral surgery will reduce nervousness in in those who lack clitoral release and help lonely housewives. Western sexologists are now exploring Islamic cultures who have been using clitoral surgery for hundreds of years, it would not be surprising if a full clitoris become a rarity in the West.

Thousands of enlightened men in the west are demanding that their future brides undergo Clitoral surgery, It is a way of guaranteeing their fidelity. There is no advantage for a man to have a horny wife, only an obedient one. Upon command she should be willing to satisfy her husbands sexual needs even if she receives no clitoral pleasure. Another plus of having a wife with a modified clitoris is the guarantee that she will be a life long partner, her desire to meet a new husband will be gone.

The opportunity for a woman to cover her face has proven to be a big advantage for Muslims. It protects the woman against those that would exploit her for sexual reasons and gives her the freedom to go out past midnight without any fear of being molested. Rarely has a woman in a burka been raped or physically abused. Men also have an advantage of having the women in their family wearing a burka. It gives a man the feeling that his family is safe behind a cloth wall of protection.The punishment for a disobedient woman would be to take away her burka and let her roam the streets. She will shortly return with tears in her eyes after being sexually abused.

Those in the West that fear the expansion of sharia law should relax. It will return family values to a decadent society and make every man a king in his castle and every women a protected and cherished servant.

Posted on Atlas Shrugs, Sunday, July 11:

• Woman Raped and Murdered by Iranian Police For “Bad Hijab”

Tim Blair: MUTILATION NATION

FORMER sex discrimination commissioner Pru Goward says genital mutilation of girls is widespread as doctors here consider the practice.

By Padraic Murphy and Kate Sikora/Daily Telegraph

“There’s not been one prosecution. People coming here as a refugee or a migrant need to have it explained to them it attracts a jail sentence, we will prosecute you and if they don’t like that they should apply to go to another country.”

The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians will next month discuss backing “ritual nicks”, a modified form of genital mutilation.

With the rise in Somali and Sudanese living in Australia, doctors are seeing more cases of young girls, and women, needing surgery after illegal operations. Backers of “ritual nick” said it was a superficial procedure leaving no long-term damage.

RANZCOG secretary Gino Pecoraro said the policy would be discussed at next month’s Women’s Health Committee meeting.

“We will need to start to think about [its introduction] but we would have to speak to community leaders from Australia,” Dr Pecoraro said.

“If a nick could meet the cultural needs of a particular woman, then it might save her from going through what can really be drastic surgery.

“But we need to make sure we do not legitimise the ritualistic maiming of children.”

But many are outraged, some saying a “ritual nick” is still child abuse and legitimises female mutilation.

Read it all

Related links:

• Editorial: Cruel and barbaric
• Call to legalise genital mutilation
• Doctors consider ‘ritual’ procedure
• Cruel, brutal and barbaric
• Readers’ Comments: Genital mutilation is ‘culturally sensitive’
• Push to let Australian doctors mutilate genitals of baby girls | Courier Mail

Just a little “NICK”, right?

Warning: Graphic Stuff!

American Academy of Pediatrics reverses course, no longer accepts “symbolic” female genital mutilation

Good news — on a subject that should not have been up for any form of compromise in the first place — but good news, nonetheless, in an update on this story. “Pediatricians now reject all female genital cutting,” by Stephanie Chen for CNN (thanks to JW):

(CNN) — The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral “pricking” procedure.

Harmless? Compared to infibulation or clitoridectomy, but what about the psychological impact of what remains a ritualized sexual assault at the hands of one’s community — and almost with the approval of the AAP?

And then there are the principles that are at stake: Equal protection under the law (where “culture” is not an excuse for trauma), and of course, that tenet of the Hippocratic Oath: “First do no harm.” And cutting without a medical reason certainly constitutes “harm.”

“We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world,” said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey.

The contentious policy statement, issued in April, had condemned the practice of female genital cutting overall. But a small portion of statement suggesting the pricking procedure riled U.S. advocacy groups and survivors of female genital cutting.

In the April statement, the group raised the idea that some physicians should be able to prick or nick a girl’s clitoral skin in order to “satisfy cultural requirements.”The group likened the nick to an ear piercing.

So, if it’s that much of a harmless non-event, did everyone at the AAP who thought that would be okay line up to get their “nick?”

On Thursday the AAP stated the group will not condone doctors to provide any kind of “clitoral nick.” The AAP also clarified nicking a girl or woman’s genitals is forbidden under a 1996 federal law banning female genital mutilation.

“I cried and told them how grateful I am,” said Soraya Mire, a Somali filmmaker and survivor of female genital cutting. “Thank you for understanding us survivors and hearing our voices.”

Equality Now, an international advocacy group fighting to end female genital cutting, echoed a similarly appreciative response.

“We welcome the AAP’s decision to withdraw its 2010 policy statement on FGM,” said Lakshmi Anantnarayan, a spokeswoman at Equality Now. “This is a crucial step forward in the movement to raise awareness about female genital mutilation….

Female genital mutilation “is part of the Sunna of the Prophet”

H/T JW

“Cutting” doesn’t describe it. “Circumcision” doesn’t, either. It is mutilation, plain and simple, and must be recognized as such. But at least this story doesn’t entirely tiptoe around the prevalence of the practice in Muslim countries.

It may be a millennia-old practice, but the fact remains that Islamic law embraced it, and that is the reason for its persistence — it is not at all merely “cultural.” From the Shafi manual of Islamic jurisprudence, Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveler), certified as “reliable” by the Misunderstanders of Islam Al-Azhar University in Egypt:

“Circumcision is obligatory (O: for both men and women. For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Ar. bazr) of the clitoris (n: not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert). (A: Hanbalis hold that circumcision of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere courtesy to the husband.)” — ‘Umdat al-Salik e4.3

Regional variances of the practice in Muslim communities depend just as much on the justification of the principle in Islamic law. Those who would defend “just a little” cutting as somehow more acceptable — including the American Academy of Pediatrics, with their approval of a “ritualized nick” (background and commentary here and here)– miss the point: Mutilation is mutilation, and must not be allowed to happen on U.S.soil. Period.

“Pressure for female genital cutting lingers in the U.S.,” by Stephanie Chen for CNN, May 21:

(CNN) — Fatima Mohamed, a 45-year-old Somali immigrant living in America, was faced with a question most parents will never worry about: Should my daughter be circumcised?

The United States has outlawed female genital cutting, but cultural and religious pressures to circumcise girls linger among some African and Muslim immigrant families. Mohamed says the decision was an easy one for her to make after going through the painful experience herself in Africa as a child. She strongly opposes the idea of cutting her 11-year-old daughter, an American-born Somali with long curly hair, who plays soccer and likes watching “American Idol.”

But not every family in her African community in Massachusetts feels that way. Nor can they they swiftly make the decision to reject circumcising their daughters, because it’s a cultural ritual integral a woman’s identity, she says.

“They say they don’t want to hear it,” Mohamed says. “Some think I’m disrespecting my own culture. Some will say, ‘You act like an American now. You forgot about who you are.’ “

In the U.S., an estimated 228,000 women have been cut — or are at risk of being cut — because they come from an ethnic community that practices female genital cutting, according an analysis of 2000 Census data conducted by the African Women’s Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The Census reports there are roughly 150 million women living in the United States.

The World Health Organization estimates up to 140 million women and children worldwide have been affected by female genital cutting. The WHO defines female genital cutting as a process that alters or injures female genital organs for nonmedical purposes.

There are several types of female circumcision. The most severe types require the inner or outer labia to be sewn together, a procedure performed in parts of Somalia and Egypt. Other forms include excising the entire clitoris or part of the clitoris.

Genital cutting dates back at least 5,000 years, says Marianne Sarkis, a professor of international development at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Some women desire the procedure because they believe they are dirty or unmarriageable if they are not cut, she said. There are cultures that begin cutting women as early as infancy, while some wait until adolescence.

Communities divided

Not all families in communities where female genital cutting is commonplace will want to participate. In Mohamed’s immigrant community in Massachusetts, families are divided, she says. Some refuse to allow the procedure, as she does. Others say they want it, and many remain silent.

Occurrences of the practice have been documented in the U.S. In March, a Georgia mother was charged with female genital mutilation after the father noticed an infant’s genitals “appeared to be have been circumcised,” according to the Troup County Sheriff’s Office. Officers wouldn’t comment further on the family.

Several advocacy workers say the more common scenario involves sending girls back to their home country to have the ritual performed. Over the past few years, Taina Bien-Aimé, president of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now, has heard several anecdotal stories of girls being sent back to have the procedure.

With summer vacation approaching, one 34-year-old mother from Senegal, living in New York City, says she knows several African families in limbo about genital cutting. One of her female friends abandoned her husband earlier this year when he asked for their 6-year-old daughter to be cut in Africa this summer. The friend, who speaks little English and is jobless, fled to a shelter with her daughter….

Read it all.

There is no compromise with barbarism, only surrender

Andrew Bolt

If it’s all right to mutiltate girls for the greater good, what else might be excused?

The review by a prestigious US medical academy of its policy on female genital cutting has triggered a storm of protest from lobbyists, women’s groups and feminist bloggers.

The Academy of American Paediatrics has been accused of sanctioning child abuse and of behaving unethically…

‘’Have you all gone nuts?’’ one paediatrican demanded of the academy’s bio-ethics committee in a website exchange.

‘’Just a little female circumcision? There’s no reason to do this procedure and to condone any form of it is not acceptable.’’…

The offence was not caused by the committee’s final recommendations, which endorsed the academy’s previous opposition to female genital cutting, last reviewed in 2007.

Rather, the outrage was invoked by the committee admitting in its report the quandary of some paediatricians who argue that offering a form of ‘’ritualistic genital nick’’ might help dissuade families from taking their daughters overseas where they would be more likely to undergo life-endangering surgery and mutilation.

As each month goes by, it becomes clearer that we’re seeing precisely what Raspail described nearly 40 years ago in his prophetic masterpiece – a novel so prescient today, when for Europe it’s almost too late:

Clit-cutting in Indonesia.

Look out for ‘defenders of Islam’ who’ll pop up to tell us its all ‘cultural’ and has ‘nothing to do with Islam’. 30 years ago virtually unheard of in this formerly Hindu nation, female genital mutilation is now common like the hijab. According to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision genital mutilation by the time they reached 14.   Islam, the gift that keeps on giving….

Farahat Sa’id Al-Munji: The Prophet said that circumcision is obligatory for men , and is noble for women. … She said: Yes. He said: “Trim it, but don’t cut it off. ……

Bagus BT Saragih ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Makassar, South Sulawesi/thanks to Mullah

Some of our readers requested to post the photos below the fold, since they cause nightmares. Although these pictures were originally printed in the NYT, it seems their horror is

The butchers of Indonesia

Warning: the following images are VERY GRAPHIC!

Cleric: Don’t cut too much female genital to avoid sexuality loss

A Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) cleric said on Friday that circumcision on women was not supposed to cause the loss of their sexuality.

“Don’t cut too much. Just cut the small skin on the tip of the clitoris. Otherwise, a woman would lose her sexuality, and you males don’t like that to happen, do you?” prominent cleric Mohammad Masyhuri told a press conference.

Masyhuri, also a member of NU Suriah (lawmaking body), said that a proper female circumcision should not cause any damage to woman genitals. “No bleeding, if you do it properly.”

He suggested that circumcision genital mutilation was conducted on a female baby at the age of 7 days.

One of the topics during commission meetings at NU’s 32nd national congress in Makassar, South Sulawesi on Friday was the Islamic legal perspective on female circumcision.

Masyhuri said the meeting concluded that female circumcision “could be sunnah (recommended) but also could be mandatory.”

“The main point is that it is not haram [forbidden],” he said.

Masyhuri took an example of mass female circumcision in Bandung in the past which had triggered opposition from many Islam communities, some of which then considered female circumcision haram.

“That was not a good example of the way to conduct a female circumcision. The bad thing was that the media had blown the issue out of proportion,” he said.

Although the meeting concluded female circumcision was recommended, Masyhuri said NU would not force all female followers to undergo circumcision.

Any questions? Answers here:

Reliance of the Traveller, a classical manual of Islamic sacred law in Arabic with facing English text, commentary and appendices edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller (1994) re ‘circumcision’ we find the Arabic actually says -

“Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris (this is called HufaaD). “ (p59) (Shafi’I jurisprudence)

(Note the English version is falsely translated as ‘prepuce ‘ of the clitoris!!)

Are you sending money to any of the 5 big aid organizations?

Chances are your help does more damage than good:

400,000 sponsored girls who are marketed by the big development organizations PLAN International, World Vision, Kindernothilfe and ChildFund do not receive protection from female genital mutilation. We have started a new campaign, at sponsoredgirl.com, to protect the girls from female genital mutilation. We invite our readers to come join us.

Update:

Will Naomi Wolf fight female genital mutilation?

2nd Update:

Female Genital Mutilation, Islam and Leftist Complicity /(FrontPage Magazine)
“Within the context of Islamic FGM, the barbarity is kept alive and legitimized by Islamic theology.”

As our readers will be familiar, Wolf went on a political pilgrimage to Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt and found a “thriving sexuality behind the veil.”

Obviously Wolf was not at all concerned about what state women’s vaginas were in within the sexual paradises that she visited and praised, seeing that the barbaric crime of female genital mutilation is perpetrated with high frequency in the areas she visited.  Read more from JW

How much female genital mutilation is okay?

“Lets do it for them here so they don’t have to go back to the home country” doesn’t cut the mustard. We can’t allow this, period. Not a nick and not a cut. But here’s an article which tries to “balance pro’s and con’s.” What could be more important? Spero News

Will You Help Save a Girl From Mutilation? – by Jamie Glazov

These children are marketed in order to acquire money from trustful donors. The donors pay about 30 Euros per month – which means 360 Euros per year, in the belief that the organizations do all they can for providing a better life — including health for the sponsored children. PLAN International for instance, acquires about 72 million Euros every year, just by marketing the 240,000 concerned girls.

But asked about female genital mutilation on the sponsored girls, these organizations openly and publicly claim that demanding the safe protection of the girls would be against their approaches and against their policy.

So, by failing to demand, to stipulate and to control the protection of the sponsored girls from FGM, the organizations must be considered complicit in every single crime perpetrated against a little girl in this regard.

We are The Alliance for Protection of Girls from Female Genital Mutilation. We consider this simply scandalous and unacceptable. It is a crime against the girls and also a system of defrauding the donors.

That’s why we launched this campaign. It is suited to go the largest step forward in the direction of an end of FGM since the beginning of the fight against these practices. It could lead to true and immediate protection of a few million girls.

Read the whole thing, here

Related Links:

• Australia: Female Genital Mutilation is “Culturally Sensitive”
• Egypt pretends to do something about FGM
• FGM DownUnder: Girls’ hidden agony
• Europe’s Helping Hand To Female Genital Mutilation
• Female Genital Mutilation, Update
• We got mail: a Muslim poster praises Female Genital Mutilation as “yet another gift Islam gave to women like many others during Europe’s Dark Ages”
• Female genital mutilation “is part of the Sunna of the Prophet”
• Canuckistan: Mosque Teaches Female Genital Mutilation is Fine- Whishing Infidels “Merry Christmas” Same As Murder…
• Yusuf Rubs It…
• Female Genital Mutilation: Every Muslimah’s Entry Ticket To The Civilized World? Hell No!
• Genital Mutilation in Switzerland
• Al Reuters calls Genital Mutilation in Norway “Rite of Passage”
• “Female Genital Mutilation has nothing to do with Islam” Update
• “Reduce the size of the clitoris but do not exceed the limit, for that is better for her health and is preferred by husbands”
• Separating Facts from Fiction: The Terror of Female Circumcision in Islam

Update:  Austria

Between 6,000 and 8,000 women in Austria have been forced to undergo genital mutilation, according to Social Democratic MP Petra Bayr.

Austrian Times

Forever deluded dogooders:

Greens’ women’s spokeswoman Judith Schwentner called for asylum for all prospective victims of genital mutilation, “a serious assault on the physical and sexual integrity of women and a serious violation of human rights.”

This is, of course, absurd and idiotic. We cannot solve all the problems of the third world and especially not those caused by Mohammedanism. Besides, it is cultural chauvinism to believe that we bear responsibility for their well being. We don’t.

Lawmakers plan new law and tough sentences for genital mutilation

The upper house of parliament has announced plans to impose strict punishment for genital mutilation of women.

Members of the Bundesrat wants tough jail sentences for individuals found guilty of female genital mutilation.

The upper house has decided that the practice should constitute a specific legal crime under German law.

Under current legislation, genital mutilation is merely classed as aggravated assault with a maximum prison sentence of six months. The Bundesrat now wants to raise that to a minimum of two years.

Thousands of women in Germany, most of them immigrants, have suffered genital mutilation, which is still an active ritual in some parts of Africa and, to a lesser extent, Asia and Latin America.

High numbers of victims meant that Germany had to take action said the justice minister for the state of Hesse, Joerg-Uwe Hahn.

The scales of justice would weigh up mutilation as a new crime

“The victims suffer all their lives from the physical and psychological effects of female genital mutilation,” Hahn said.

The women’s rights organization Terres des Femmes says some 20,000 cases of genital mutilation are known in Europe, with between 4,000 and 5,000 of these in Germany. Deutsche Welle has more>>

Update:

Video on FGM in Islamic communities

• Female Genital Mutilation update: as usual, it has nothing to do with Islam, its just the “sunna of the prophet”…
• Female Genital Mutilation, Update
  

By: Jamie Glazov /FrontPageMagazine.com

How European governmental and non-governmental development-policy bolsters a horrific crime against hundreds of thousands of girls.

Update: A 19-year-old girl in Gothenburg has been awarded compensation after having been subjected to genital mutilation in Somalia as an 11-year-old.

More>>

Warning: graphic image(s)

FP: Ines Laufer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to build on our last interview about your efforts to save migrant girls in Europe from FGM (Female Genital Mutilation).

Can you talk a bit about the situation in African, Arabian and Asian countries and how female genital mutilation is affected their by European development policies?

Laufer: European governmental and non-governmental development-policy widely undermines and hinders the efforts to eradicate FGM in African/Arab/Asian countries.

Since the early 1980’s, there have been numerous initiatives, networks and organisations on the African continent that are committed to the eradication of FGM in their countries. The largest network – that is still active today – is the InterAfrican Committé (IAC) which was  founded in 1984. At that time, the majority of development-agencies, as well as the WorldHealthOrganisation, UNICEF and other UN-agencies, refused to put the problem of FGM on their agenda and to support initiatives like the IAC, because they did not want to “interfere into a cultural custom.”

Mali Not Yet Ready to Ban FGM, Female Activists Told…

Dhimmi Watch: Yemeni Parliament votes down bill to outlaw female …

Female Genital Mutilation and Underage Marriage Continue…

Female Genital Mutilation: An Islamic Problem

Balkan Muslims Shun Organ Trafficking Investigator…

In the 1990s, organisations like UNICEF realised that FGM is very well suited to be exploited for raising funds. They created projects and called for generous donations within the Western population. It worked. For instance, to UNICEF Germany, the German people donated more than half a million D-Mark alone in 1994, for a FGM-project in Ethiopia – after a TV-broadcast and big article in STERN-magazine witnessed the live-mutilation of an Ethiopian girl-victim.

Today, 15 years later, UNICEF Germany still requires money for this project – that is likely to have yielded a few million Euros over the time (which is only an estimation, because UNICEF refuses to disclose the true amount). Only recently asked for measurable results of this concrete project – within such a long time – UNICEF is not able to give concrete answers. Obviously, because there aren’t lasting results. This would not even be a big surprise – because so-called “education-campaigns” which are destined to teach the mutilating families and mutilators about the devastating effects of FGM, generally widely failed.

And of course, they had to fail – because FGM is not an “exotic custom” that people perpetrate because they “don’t know better” – no – FGM is a very specific and very systematic kind of legitimized violence against a certain group of members (female children) in the concerned societies.

The consequences of the sexual mutilation of little girls are very well known and realised in all mutilating ethnic groups – but they are knowingly accepted while the girl’s individual health and well-being are subordinated to the male’s claim for sexual control.

So, while millions of donations are gathered and partly invested into disputable, unsuccessful projects, UNICEF knowingly accepts that the girls in all projects which are funded by the UN-agency – continue to be mutilated.

UNICEF – as well as all large development-agencies – refuse to integrate the abandonment of FGM in the project-areas into their support-conditions.

FP: Doesn’t all of this violate some kind of law?

Laufer: This policy of tolerance and acceptance towards FGM – and other forms of violence against children – strictly contradicts the UN-convention of Children’s Rights which has been created in 1989 and signed by all countries except Somalia and the USA and which could be a strong instrument to call for the respect of children’s rights within every single project.

By neglecting to consequently demand the girl’s protection from FGM,UNICEF and Co. must be considered complicit for the mutilation of thousands of little girls in the projects.

Furthermore, in ingratiation to the US-development-concern USaid for monetary reasons, UNICEF now consequently trivialises FGM as “Female Genital Cutting”, in German even as “Circumcision” and so paternalistically overrides the call of African activists to maintain the proper terminology “Female Genital Mutilation” – and even threatened to refuse funds to African groups who named the practice “FGM.”

Other non-governmental development-agencies like PLAN International, WorldVision, Kindernothilfe and CCFKinderhilfswerk work with a very lucrative system: They market so-called “sponsored children” to open the wallets of empathetic donors: They promise to use the money for guaranteeing a “better life” to the children. Up to 100 Million Euros, they acquire each year.

But none of these organisations is willing to protect the sponsored girl-children from FGM by including this point into the conditions for the project-partners:

Up to 400,000 sponsored girls in countries where FGM is practised are submitted to FGM – in front of the eyes of those hypocritical organisations, while they carry a yield of hundreds of millions to the organisation’s accounts.

We have documents where – the 100% avoidable – death of sponsored girls after FGM is reported. The donors of course are not told about the girl’s death-cause and that it has easily could have been avoided.

By financially and materially supporting those villages, communities and male decision-makers who are not willing to respect a least standard of children’s rights, who insist that the female children in their communities are mistreated by FGM, the repressive structures which largely hinder any chance of lasting development, are strengthened.

This hinders and undermines the serious work of initiatives like IAC and makes their efforts much more difficult.

The damage that is caused by this policy can not be compensated by the peanut-amounts which are spent by these organisations to a few selected projects who mainly aim to fight FGM.

The same critics against the FGM-tolerating policy of NGOs also needs to be addressed to the governmental development-aid:

Germany is the world’s second largest donator of development-aid. Those governments who propagate, perpetuate and tolerate FGM in their countries, who disrespect the most fundamental human rights – and therefore largely hinder their societies from lasting development – are generously supported. In 2007, more than 700 millions of German taxpayer’s money have been flowing to these governments, mostly to fulfil their economical requests.

Egypt alone, which just comes from re-legalising FGM, received 100 million Euros. And Ethiopia, whose government in 2008 adopted a law that will lead to a major “famishment” of most human rights-organisations in the country,  received not less than 70 million Euros. Alone from Germany.

No conditions, no call for the respect of Human- and children’s rights are linked to such generous support.

This policy again strengthens political leaders and governments who are far away from caring about the violent oppression of their female members in the society. This makes true development impossible.

Just recently, Günter Nooke – commissioner for human rights within the German government – had called to stop payments to countries who do not respect fundamental human rights He has roughly been answered back by the German ministry of development.

As long as in the governmental development-policy obviously is interested in very own objectives which seem to be more linked to economical and political influence than to true development – and as long as the tax-payers do not really care about the doubtful usage of their money, this situation will not change.

FP: Ines Laufer, thank you for bringing awareness to this issue.

Notes:

 

In 2000, when the African Women’s organisation in Vienna run the first (and still only) study on FGMamong migrants in Austria, it could be proven for the first time, that there is no link between the knowledge about the harmful consequences of FGM and the will to abandon the practice: It “has been shown that 56,8 of the interrogated migrants know that FGM has “side-effects” to girls and women, and 54,4% can not give any positive effect of the procedure. This knowledge doesn’t seem to have any influence on their attitude towards FGM: only 24,4% of group (60 people) support the complete abolishment of FGM. The majority of almost 76% is against its entire abandonment. See page 26.

Frontpage Interview’s guest is Ines Laufer, founder of the Task Force for Effective Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation, a network of Human-Rights-organisations and activists that is committed to measurable, broad prevention of genital mutilation among migrant girls in the EU. With the Task Force’s prevention-programme, for the first time true protection of minor girls from this violence comes into reach.

Update:

African genital cutters face fatwa, jail

Laurent Prieur and Abdoulaye Massalatchi, Reuters

To be taken with a grain of salt. These announcements are frequent, but change is far away:

Efforts to eradicate female genital circumcision in West Africa have taken a step forward with a fatwa against the practice in Mauritania and sanctions in Niger against mothers who subject their daughters to it.

Known also as female genital mutilation (FGM), the tradition involves removing external parts of a girl’s genitals and sometimes narrowing the vaginal opening. Bleeding, disease and problems in urinating and childbirth can result for millions of victims each year in Africa and the Middle East.

In many parts of West Africa, cutting has been presented as a religious obligation for Muslim women, leading many to believe that if they are not circumcised they are unclean and that their prayers will not be heard.

“Are there texts in the Koran that clearly require that thing? They do not exist,” the secretary general of the Forum of Islamic Thought in Mauritania, Cheikh Ould Zein, told Reuters of the fatwa signed by 34 imams and scholars.

“On the contrary, Islam is clearly against any action that has negative effects on health. Now that doctors in Mauritania unanimously say this practice threatens health, it is therefore clear that Islam is against it,” he added.

The fatwa, or religious ruling, was signed on January 12 but became widely known only this week in a country where some 72 percent of women are estimated to have undergone FGM and where practitioners charge an average 25 euros a time.

“The fact that the religious leaders in Mauritania are standing up and doing this is quite amazing,” said Molly Melching, executive director of Tostan, a Senegal-based organisation working in Mauritania on FGM.

MOTHERS FACE PUNISHMENT

The fatwa in itself is not binding, and would not have an impact on those communities practising FGM for centuries-old cultural reasons not linked to the arrival of Islam in Africa.

Yet it follows other tentative indications of a trend away from FGM in West Africa.

A Save the Children-backed campaign has seen 40 villages in Mali abandon the practice in a country where over 80 percent of the women have undergone FGM. In Senegal, the practice has been widely stopped since a law against it was passed in 1999.

In a sign that authorities in Niger are implementing a 2003 ban, 45 mothers in the southwestern town of Kollo received fines and suspended jail sentences of eight months this week for complicity in allowing their daughters to be cut.

Welfare specialist Moussa Hassane told Reuters that aside from the usual forms of excision, practioners in Niger used the technique to facilitate sexual relations with child brides.

Niger has one of the highest rates of early marriage in the world, with nearly 60 percent of women married between 15-19.

UN agency UNICEF statistics show a sharp fall in Niger in the incidence of FGM in the past decade masking stark ethnic differences, with three percent of Arab women circumcised but nearly two-thirds of some other tribal groups.

“A law is not what will change a social norm. For it to be sustainable it has to come from the people, a decision made by the people, because they really believe in it,” Melching said.

* Regular Winds of Jihad readers are well aware that  our post “Female genital mutilation is part of the Sunna of the Prophet”- has attracted thousands  of readers, many, if not most of them Muslims, who are clueless about the teachings of the the Koran and the sunnah, the sayings of traditions of the meshugga prophet pretender Muhammad.  Here is an update:

Saving Girls From Mutilation: 

European activist Ines Laufer discusses how migrant girls in Europe are defenselessly delivered to Female Genital Mutilation. 

By: Jamie Glazov /Frontpage

Dutch news

In Haarlem a man has been arrested on suspicion of having genitally mutilated his five-year-old daughter. The man of Moroccan origin was taken into custody at the end of October after the girl’s foster parents had made a report to the police. The case has only now been made public. Doctors have confirmed that the girl’s genitals have been mutilated, but the father denies responsibility. He has been charged with grievous bodily harm. The case is expected to come to trial in May.

Here’s more: Female genital mutilation “is part of the Sunna of the Prophet”

Between summer 2007 and spring 2008, 44 reports were made to child abuse hotlines about girls thought to have been genitally mutilated, or at risk of being so. Deputy Health Minister Jet Bussemaker is concerned that this may only be the tip of the iceberg. 

Ms Bussemaker recently proposed measures aimed at protecting girls whose parents come from countries where genital mutilation is prevalent, such as Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia. Parents would be asked to sign a contract before visiting their country of origin, promising not to have their daughter genitally mutilated. If on their return the girl were found to have been mutilated, they could then face a prison sentence.

Egyptian Parliament Okays Female Genital Mutilation (again)

* Well, it was never really ‘outlawed’, was it? Take a look here

* and here: Female genital mutilation “is part of the Sunna of the Prophet”

(IsraelNN.com) Conservatives in the Egyptian parliament have made female genital mutilation (circumcision) legal again in Egypt. The conservatives succeeded in striking several laws that had been passed by the parliament’s religious Shura Council in the past. The laws canceled also include a law limiting marriage age to 18 and up, a law permitting a mother to register a child on her name and a law allowing neighbors of a family that beats its children to report the beatings to the police.

One of the parliament’s members said that the law permitting a mother to register a child on her name “encourages adultery.”

A Cairo appellate judge who is also the legal advisor to the Council for the Mother and Child said that the decision to strike the laws contravened international agreements signed by Egypt.

* Here’s more from Dhimmi Watch

* dont be afraid: you won’t lose your clit reading it!

Female Genital Mutilations: Islamic Agonies on Women

Islam Watch

Female Genital Mutilation that afflict mostly Muslim women today is one of worst horrors suffered by today’s women…

“Religion: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs and practices; a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith” — Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

In today’s world, an estimated 130 million Muslim women, averaging nearly 6,000 a day, have undergone sexual mutilations. This gruesome act is performed in many African countries, including Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Chad. It is also a tradition among Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia, in Pakistan, and also in a number of countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, the UAE, and parts of rural Saudi Arabia. Coptic Christians in Egypt and animist tribes in Africa, as well as Muslims, undergo the rituals. Subincision is also practiced by some Amazonian tribes and by the Bohri sects in the Indo-Pak regions.

It appears to be driven originally by man’s desire to have power over woman’s sexuality, to remove fear of paternity uncertainty by keeping women chaste, and uninterested in love affairs, but the lasting practice has become so rooted in those societies that it is now perpetuated even by women upon women all over the world…

Female circumcision is frequently described as an “age-old Muslim ritual”; in fact, it predates Islam, and is even believed to be pre-Judaic. Strabo claimed that “the Egyptians circumcised their boys and girls as do the Jews”. The Virgin Mary was likewise said to have been circumcised (Briffault R76v3 324). Islamic traditions say that it was practiced by Sarah on Hagar, and that afterwards both Sarah and Abraham circumcised themselves by the order of Allah (the Old Testament makes no mention of female circumcision, while making it mandatory for men). There is no evidence that any of Muhammad’s wives or daughters were ever circumcised? While there is no mention of it in the Koran, an authentic hadith states: “A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet said to her: Do not cut severely, as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband”. Because of this hadith, some scholars of the Shafi’i school of Islam (found mostly in East Africa) consider female circumcision obligatory. The Hanafi and most other schools of Islamic thoughts maintain, ‘it is merely recommended, not essential’ (Goodwin).

The majority of the rural Egyptian women are still circumcised: they normally undergo removal of the clitoris, not do the more extensive procedures. Even then, there are many complications: infections, bleeding, urinary tract damage, sepsis, and in some cases even death…

More than 90% of the Sudanese women undergo the most severe forms of circumcision, known as “pharaonic” or “infibulations”, done at the age of seven or eight; it removes all of the clitoris, the labia minora and the labia majora. The sides are then sutured together, often with thorns and only a small opening, of the diameter of matchsticks, is left for urine and menstrual flows. The girl’s legs are then tied together and liquids are heavily rationed until the incision is healed… During this primitive yet major surgery, it is not uncommon for girls, who are held down by their female relatives, to die from shock or even hemorrhaging of the vagina, urethra, bladder, and rectal areas may also be damaged, and the massive keloid scarring can obstruct walking for life…

After marriage, Muslim women who have been infibulated must be forcibly penetrated by their husbands. This may take up to forty days, and when men are impatient, a knife is used to slit it open… Special honeymoon centers are built outside these communities so that the screams of the brides will not be heard. Sometimes the husband traditionally runs through the streets with a blood-stained dagger to show that he had conquered his maiden…

Waris Dirie had to be operated on as an adult before she could have sexual relations with her husband. Dirie’s mother, believing that she was doing the best thing for her daughter, walked her into the brush, held her down and told her to bite on a root. A gypsy woman then cut at the lithe girl’s genitalia, using a dirty, broken razor blade. “I heard the sound of the dug blade sawing back and forth through my skin”. The woman used thorns from an acacia tree to puncture holes in her vaginal skin and sew her up, leaving only a tiny hole for the urinal and menstrual flows. “My legs were completely numb, but the pain between them was so intense and excruciating that I wished I would die”! Five-year-old Waris was left in a hut to recuperate her infibulations. Her two cousins died from severe infections.

Uncircumcised Muslim girls in those societies are seen as unclean and treated as outcasts by their family. For more than 20 years, Dirie suffered health problems from her radical circumcision. Menstruation was a long and agonizing process each month, as the menstrual blood backed up in her body. It’s when we touch on the subject of sex that Dirie becomes agitated. “Please,” she implores, “let’s not talk about that. Just use your imagination. I will never know the pleasures of sex that have been denied to me. I feel incomplete, crippled and knowing that there’s nothing that I can do to change all this, which is the most hopeless feeling of all”.

“When I met Dana (husband), I finally fell in love and wanted to experience the joys of sex with a man. But if you ask me today, ‘Do you enjoy sex?’ I would say not in the traditional way…! I simply enjoy being physically close to Dana, because I love him. It never gets easier. It is emotionally draining to talk about something, which has been locked deep for so long. The hardest part is to start somewhere”… “Everybody is waiting; they don’t know what to do. The West is aware of the problems. But they’re told to back off, and it’s none of your business”…???

Hawa Adan Mohamed was born and raised in Somalia. At the age of 8 she underwent the most radical forms of FGM practiced infibulations performed by her aunt in a small village. The procedure was carried out without anesthetics, using basic cutting tools and thorns. She lost an older sister, who died after the operation. In Somalia, circumcision is such a deeply rooted part of a Muslim girl’s life. “From the moment we are crawling, we know about circumcision; we know that our grandmothers and mothers and sisters are circumcised, and we look forward to it being done to us also”…. Back then, no one would have even dreamt of not being circumcised??? “If a mother doesn’t get her daughter(s) circumcised, her daughter(s) will be an outcast, no one will marry her, and everyone would think she is a prostitute; so it is a very difficult situation; we can’t be angry at anyone, because the mothers’ intentions are always good”.

In 1995, Hawa returned home despite ongoing civil turmoil, to help her countries women deal with the menace of circumcision. “I was devastated by what I saw. It seems that we have gone back 40 years. Girls were being infibulated every day with razors and thorns. Two young girls recently died following the procedure, and yet still many don’t question it? My dream is that, in my lifetime, there will be young girls living in the heart of Somalia, who can run free and play without pain, without the cruel and devastating effects of FGM circumcisions…. Even just a few, even 10…!!!” (NZ Herald 25 Nov 98)

At the age of 18 Zebebu Tulu, was kidnapped by her future husband, Getachew (Getu) Moneta, and taken to his brother’s home. Such forced unions are not uncommon in Ethiopia, where men often have near-total control over Muslim women’s lives. Traditions forbade tearful Zenebu from returning to her parents’ house, and the pair was married after negotiations between the two families (NZ Herald).

Nawal el Sadaawi has been a prominent campaigner against female circumcisions, which has earned her the ire of the mullahs.

The Naked Face of Eve contains several commentaries on female circumcision:

My blood was frozen in my veins. It looked to me as though some thieves had broken into my room, and kidnapped me from my bed. They were getting ready to cut my throat, which was always what happened with disobedient girls like myself in the stories that my old rural grandmother was so fond of telling me… I strained my ears trying to catch the rasp of the metallic sound. The moment it ceased, it was as though my heart stopped beating with it. I was unable to see, and somehow my breathing seemed also to have stopped. Yet I imagined the thing that was making the rasping sound coming closer and closer to me. … At that very moment I realized that my thighs had been pulled wide apart, and that each of my lower limbs was being held as far away from the other as possible, gripped by-steel fingers that never relinquished their pressure. I felt that the rasping knife or blade was heading straight down towards my throat. Then suddenly the sharp metallic edge seemed to drop between my thighs and there cut off a piece of flesh from my body. I screamed with pain despite the tight hand held over my mouth, for the pain was not just a pain, it was like a searing flame that went through my whole body. After a few moments, I saw a red pool of blood around my hips. I did not know what they had cut off from my body, and I did not try to find out. I just wept and wept and I wept, and called out to my mother for help. But the worst shock of all was when I looked around and found her standing by my side. Yes, it was her, I could not be mistaken, in flesh and blood, right in the midst of these strangers, talking to them and smiling at them, as though they had not participated in slaughtering her daughter just a few moments ago…

Elizabeth Lloyds in making a case that ‘female orgasm is just for women to have fun with and no reproductive values’, has claimed that FGM has little effect on fertility:

1. “Women who have had FGM do suffer a significantly increased fertility risks. Women who have had the procedure are more likely to need Caesareans and the death rate among their babies is up to 50% higher” WHO said in a new report. The study, reported in the Lancet, involved 30,000 African women (BBC “Female circumcision ‘birth risk’ 2 June 2006).

2. A study by Jones et al. in Burkina Faso also found that women who have been cut are more likely to experience obstetric complications, a 1998-1999 NHRC study found that women who were circumcised and married off earlier than uncircumcised women, and that circumcised women had greater total fertility than the uncircumcised women (Reason 2004).

3. Another study based on DHS surveys in the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tanzania found that, “when controlling for confounding socioeconomic, demographic and cultural variables, circumcised Muslim women, grouped by age at circumcision, did not have significantly different odds of infertility nor of childbearing than uncut women” (emphasis added, Larsen and Yan).

4. “The Relationship between Female Genital Cutting and Fertility in Kassena-Nankana District of Northern Ghana“, noted a Paper presented by Elizabeth F. Jackson, Philip B. Adongo, Ayaga A. Bawah, Ellie Feinglass, and James F. Phillips  at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Philadelphia, March 31 – April 2, 2005)

It is clear that, patriarchal societies that diminish or eliminate the Muslim women’s capacity for orgasms, by genital cutting or any other means, also have an agenda to make the Muslim women bear more children—i.e. more ‘reproductively successful’. FGM also occurs because men fear, not without good reason, that female arousal does influence reproductive choice. See also the Dogons, the Shipibo and the Sunnah.

In 2004, an international conference on FGM—female genital mutilation—has ended in Kenya with a fresh call to ban these inhumane practices amongst Muslims. The campaigners urged more Muslim countries to ratify the ‘Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa’ adopted in July 2003. It has so far been ratified by just three states, Rwanda, Libya and Comoros. Although, female circumcision is banned in 14 Islamic African countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana and Togo, the practice is still widespread…

Further reading:

1. Female Genital Mutilation PSA co-produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Egypt. 

2. FGM –how it is done…

Yemeni Parliament votes down bill to outlaw female genital mutilation

* While Islamic spokesmen lie and deny and even blame ‘ indigenous pre-Islamic practices’,  clit-cutting continues and increases, wherever the prophets followers pitch their tents:

 Yusuf Irfan: “Perhaps our imams can remind Indonesian imams that not all vestiges of Indonesia’s indigenous pre-Islamic customs are worth holding onto.”

We keep hearing from Islamic spokesmen in the West how this practice has nothing to do with Islam – and yet Yemen now votes down attempts to outlaw it. Jordan did the same thing a few years ago on another practice that is supposed to be solely cultural: the Parliament voted down attempts to stiffen penalties for it, on Islamic grounds. And here a Yemeni pol explains that since religious authorities haven’t forbidden genital mutilation, they can’t very well outlaw it.

“Yemen’s MPs debate female circumcision, pre-marriage tests,”

from the Yemen Times via DW

*
SANA’A, April-13 — Preventing female circumcision and pre-marriage medical tests evoked turmoil and disagreement among Parliament members (MPs) in last week’s session.
The session ended with a unanimous agreement to cancel the term 3, which would prevent female circumcision, and delay the discussion of pre-marriage tests.

The two terms were part of a draft written by the Safe Motherhood Law Project, and introduced by the heath committee inside Parliament.

Najeb Ghanem, the Chairman of the Health Committee in Parliament, expressed his sorrow over the way Parliament discussed the two issues.

“These two topics are very important for guaranteeing women’s rights in Yemen,” he commented in a phone call to the Yemen Times after the session.

According to Ghanem, who belongs to the Islah party, most of the MPs who disagreed with the terms represent the conservative attitudes of most Yemeni citizens. “The committee is aware of the Yemeni conservative community’s positions on these issues. So we [the committee] suggested applying the law of emphasizing pre-marriage medical tests after ten years… that is after we carry out extensive awareness campaign to educate people about the importance of such tests.”

Zid Al-Shami, an MP who suggested delaying the approval of the two terms, confirmed that such topics are “sensitive and need more awareness.”

“I suggested canceling term number three, about preventing female circumcision, for many reasons. First, the term, which was written in the draft, included inappropriate and shameful sentences. Second, female circumcision exists in few regions in Yemen, like in Hodeidah and Hadramout, so it not common practice. And finally, there is still religious debate regarding the issue, so as we have no directives by the heads of religion to forbid female circumcision, we do not have the right to ban it,” Al-Shami explained….

Update:

For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual

 ”We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 29, 2008; A09

TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor’s house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. “I do this in the name of Allah!” she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan’s genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan’s mother smiled with pride.

“This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq –and one of the few places in the world–where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.

The practice, and the Kurdish parliament’s refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.

“When the Kurdish people were fighting for our independence, women participated as full members in the underground resistance,” said Pakshan Zangana, who heads the women’s committee in the Kurdish parliament. “But now that we have won our freedom, the position of women has been pushed backwards and crimes against us are minimized.”

Zangana has been lobbying for a law in Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region with its own government, that would impose jail terms of up to 10 years on those who carry out or facilitate female circumcision. But the legislation has been stalled in parliament for nearly a year, because of what women’s advocates believe is reluctance by senior Kurdish leaders to draw international public attention to the little-noticed tradition.

The Kurdish region’s minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn’t think the issue required action by parliament. “Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it,” he said.

The practice of female circumcision is extremely rare in the Arab parts of Iraq, according to women’s groups. They say it is not clear why the practice — common in some parts of Africa and the Middle East — became popular with Iraqi Kurds but not Iraqi Arabs.

Supporters of female circumcision said the practice, which has been a ritual in their culture for countless generations, is rooted in sayings they attribute to the prophet Muhammad, though the accuracy of those sayings is disputed by other Muslim scholars. The circumcision is performed by women on women, and men are usually not involved in the procedure. In the case of Sheelan, her mother informed her father that she was going to have the circumcision performed, but otherwise, he played no role.

Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman’s sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares.

“I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure,” said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.

Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan’s eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said “Of course” and explained that the procedure is painless.

“They just cut off a little bit,” she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.

Women’s rights groups in Kurdistan are working eagerly to change the perception that the procedure is harmless and that it is required under Islam. They go to villages in rural areas where the practice is most ingrained and tell women and religious leaders of the physical and psychological damage the circumcision can cause. Health experts say the procedure can result in adverse medical consequences for women, including infections, chronic pain and increased risks during childbirth.

Ghamjeen Shaker, a 13-year-old from the Kurdish capital of Irbil, said she is still traumatized from the day she was circumcised. She sits with her legs clenched together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, as if protecting herself from another operation. Indeed, Shaker says she sometimes dreams that the midwife who circumcised her is coming back to perform the procedure again.

She was 5 when her mother sent her out to buy parsley and then locked her in the front yard of their home with six other girls. “I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn’t know exactly where they were going to cut,” she recalled. “My family just kept saying, don’t worry, this is a social custom we have been doing forever.”

“They pinned me to the ground, and I just cried and cried,” said Shaker, who spoke barely above a whisper. “I was just so astonished. But now I realize that they want to prevent women from living their lives normally.”

Her mother, Shukria Ismaeel Jarjees, a 38-year-old housewife, said she was forced by her relatives and elderly women in the community to have her daughter circumcised. “I made a huge mistake, and now my daughter is always complaining of pain in her pelvis,” Jarjees said. Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I now advise my daughters to never circumcise their children.”

Shaker hopes to become a social worker focusing on women’s issues, in particular other girls traumatized by female circumcision.

“I want to make sure the world understands they cannot silence girls like this,” she said.

Susan Faqi Rasheed, president of the Irbil branch of the Kurdistan Women’s Union, said that even in the cosmopolitan capital, as many as a third of young girls are circumcised. “When the Kurds hold on to something, they hold on to it strongly,” she said. “So now they hold to Islam more than the Arabs.”

One of the religious leaders who have been less vocal in demanding female circumcisions is Hama Ameen Abdul Kader Hussein, preacher at the Grand Mosque of Kalar and head of the clergymen’s union in Germian. Previously, he preached that female circumcision was required. Now he says it is optional, which Hussein believes has caused the area’s rate of female circumcision to drop from 100 percent to about 50 percent.

“If there is any harm in this exercise,” he said, “we should not do it.”

Despite the outreach efforts, a study of women in more than 300 Kurdish villages by WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, found that 62 percent underwent the procedure.

In Tuz Khurmatu, the most famous practitioner of female circumcision is Maharoub Juwad Nawchas, a 40-year-old midwife with traditional Kurdish tattoos covering her chin. She learned from her mother, who used to perform the procedure for free, though Nawchas now charges 4,000 Iraqi dinars, or just under $3.50, because her husband is disabled and can’t work. She has circumcised about 30 girls a year for the past two decades.

On the day she circumcised Sheelan, the midwife began the ritual by laying down an empty white potato sack to serve as her working area. AK-47 assault rifles hung from the wall of the dingy concrete house, and watermelons rested below.

When Sheelan entered the room, her mother, Nawchas and a local woman placed the girl on a tiny wooden stool the size of a brick. The midwife applied yellow antiseptic to her pelvic area and injected her with lignocaine, an anesthetic. Little children peeked through the window to see what the noise was about.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Sheelan’s mother whispered, as the girl screamed so loudly her face turned red. She tried to bunch up her skirt over her pelvis and shield the area with her hand, but the women jerked her arms back.

Then Nawchas uttered the prayer, made a swift cut, and immediately moved the girl over a pile of ashes to control the bleeding.

The entire ritual took less then 10 minutes.

Back home, Sheelan lay on the floor, unable to move or talk much. She clutched a bag filled with orange soda and candy and barely said anything except that she was in pain.

But she became more animated when asked whether it was worth it to have the operation so her friends and neighbors would be comfortable eating food she prepared. “I would do anything not to have this pain, even if meant they would not eat from my hands,” she rasped slowly.

“I just wish that I could be the way I was before the procedure,” she said.

Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondents Nian Ahmed and Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.