Female Genital Mutilation Still Widespread in Egypt

Egypt criminalized all forms of FGM in 2008 and rights monitors say the number of girls undergoing the operation has dropped by about one third.

But Nehad Abud Komsan, director of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, said the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and more conservative Salafist politicians threaten those gains.

“They come to say ‘we may have a law to make it [legal] in a certain condition, or to say it is good for protection. They are destroying years of efforts to protect girls and women in Egypt and, unfortunately, by using religion,” said Komsan.

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The Global Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation Continues

A global campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation [FGM], often misnamed “female circumcision,” continues. While foreign NGOs have made Iraqi Kurdistan a center of the effort to do away with this practice, many observers have argued that it is not a “Kurdish” problem.

FGM is also not just a “Muslim” phenomenon. However widespread it may be among Iraqi Sunni Kurds, its acceptance in Islam is limited. According to the German relief organization WADI [The Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation], in the four provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan, only the farthest north, Dohuk, which borders on Turkey, shows little evidence of FGM at any age. Among the remaining three “governorates,” in the province of Erbil, named for the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), 63% of women have undergone the atrocious custom; in Suleymaniya, 78%; and in Garmyan/New Kirkuk, the southernmost, 81%.

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The long road to the first « FGM-free villages » in Iraq

By Arvid Vormann

According to a large survey conducted in 2009, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is prevalent in all provinces of Kurdish Northern Iraq, except in the far northern Duhok region. More than 72% are affected, in villages and cities alike, among illiterates and, to a lesser extent, among academics. FGM is almost everywhere.

The area, heavily struck by Saddam’s genocidal poison gas attacks in the late 80s, by civil war in the 90s, and threatened by Saddam’s army and Islamic groups until 2003, is also marked by very high rates of honor killings, domestic violence, forced marriages and other gender-related crimes. Mobile health teams of the German-Iraqi relief organization Wadi first reported the existence of FGM in 2004. After the toppling of Saddam Hussein, time seemed to be ripe. The first few women started to talk about all the pain and agony caused by the physical and psychological consequences of the mutilations forced on them as little girls. Since then, democracy and freedom of the press, despite all their immense shortcomings in this autonomous region, have laid ground for a successful public campaign against FGM. “Stop FGM in Kurdistan” was a grass root initiative – something hitherto unheard of, as usually everything is controlled from above. The feedback was overwhelming. Human Rights Watch further promoted the cause.Nowadays

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Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation; Too little action taken against FGM

Press Release by HIVOS and WADI

 

The Hague, Suleimania 5 February, The 6th of February was introduced by the United Nations as The International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Since then public awareness worldwide has grown. In a time when women’s rights and violence against women are discussed more than ever before, especially in the Middle East, Hivos and WADI – frontrunners in the battle against FGM – call upon the Secretary General and the General Assembly of the United Nations to step up efforts to end this practice.

 Scale

Currently one hundred and forty million girls and women are estimated to have undergone an FGM procedure. This is a very large and deplorable number, albeit an estimation mainly focusing on Africa. Considering growing evidence which proves that FGM is not only an ‘African problem’ but also widespread in various parts of Asia including the Middle East, a much higher number may be closer to the truth.

Time to act NOW
On the international level the passing of a resolution calling for a ban on FGM by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2012 was a milestone. Although the resolution is not legally binding, it will enhance the moral and political incentive for governments to act on FGM. And it will encourage activists worldwide to speak out against a fatal ‘tradition’.

It is time to act now. And to ask a question: In 2003 the United Nations proclaimed the imperative of eliminating female genital mutilation. However, so far no action has been taken by the UN bodies to stop FGM in the Middle East. Why, for instance, have they not become active in Iraq, yet? What is done in Yemen where FGM levels in some regions are known to reach 50 percent?

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Religion Is Key In Combating Female Genital Mutilation According To Activists

Female circumcision is not mentioned in any of the holy books of the three Abrahamic faiths. But one disputed hadith, or story about Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, seems to condone, or at least not object to, a cutting of the clitoris. That hadith is cited by Hatem al-Haj of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America, a conservative organization, in a 2010 opinion that condoned a type of FGM that involves the cutting or nicking of the clitoral hood. (…)

Many Muslim scholars, however, say the authenticity of this hadith is suspect, and say it should be rejected. A growing number of Islamic scholars have condemned the practice. In Egypt, where both Muslim and Coptic Christian communities perform FGM, the country’s highest Muslim leaders issued fatwas against the practice in 2007 and 2010.

According to a 2011 United Nations report, 61 Islamic scholars from 10 African countries also issued a fatwa against FGM. The same report said more than 4,100 religious leaders have taught followers that FGM is not sanctioned by Islam, while nearly 1,000 religious edicts called on Muslims to abandon the practice.

“The role of religious leaders is extremely important,” said Eyega, who was born in southern Sudan. “It’s important to get them involved.”

Imam Mohamed Magid, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, agreed.

“Having the imam on board to address this issue is very crucial,” Magid told a State Department audience last February to mark an International Day of Zero Tolerance for the practice. “We would like to have an imam coalition, Imams Against FGC, and it will be a movement across the Muslim world to have the imams say we will not accept this practice.”

The first step in stopping FGM is understanding why it’s done in the first place, which can vary from society to society. For example, the idea of enforcing the cultural value of female sexual purity by removing the clitoris has been interpreted by some Muslims as consistent with Islamic law. If women suffer health consequences as a result, those are often attributed to God’s will.

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Kurdistan: A small village tries to stamp out FGM

Tutakal is a remote village nestled in Kurdistan’s parched mountains, accessible only through its dusty mountain tracks. Here in this village, female genital mutilation was a common norm practiced by almost all families. But residents this year agreed to stop the brutal practice, in exchange for assistance with the basic services and a small classroom they said they badly needed, as alarabiya.net reported on Sunday

It is a promising model for the eradication of FGM, activists involved in the campaign say. “Now the people can understand very well that this is a crime and they can´t practice it anymore”, said Suaad Sharif, a member of WADI organization campaigning against FGM.

More than 40 percent of women and girls in Kurdistan have been subjected to FGM. One year ago, the Kurdistan parliament passed a law criminalizing the practice. But the implementation proved difficult and the numbers of victims have not reduced.

“We now feel the pain of the woman. The woman feels incomplete because when they do this, they cut a piece of flesh from a woman,” said village headman Sarhad Ajeb, explaining the reasons why they stopped. And he stressed: “There is no mention of this practice in the holy Quran.”

Source

Islamic Law schools and FGM

A summary about the position of the four Islamic Law schools on FGM:

1. In the Hanafî school of law, female circumcision is permissible within itself but not considered to be a Sunnah. (i.e. no religious virtue). (Shami Fatawaa Rahimiyyah, Page 261, Vol. 6)

2. It is considered a preferred act (Mandub) for women in the Maliki school of law. They rely upon the Hadith of Umm `Atiyyah for this ruling. ( Bulghah al-Salik li-Aqrab al-Masâlik and Ashal al-Madarik Sharh Irshad al-Salik)

3. In the Shaf’i school of law, circumcision is considered an obligation for both men and women. This is the official ruling of that school of thought. Some Shaf`i scholars express the view that circumcision is obligatory for men and merely Sunnah for women. ( al-Majmu`)

4. In the Hanbali school of law, circumcision is obligatory for men and merely an honorable thing for women. It is not obligatory for them. The Hanbali jurist Ibn Qudamah observes: “This is the view of many people of knowledge. Imam Ahmad said that it is more emphatic for men.” (al-Mughni (1/115))

Study about Female Genital Mutilation in Iraq

Mutilated women rediscover sexual pleasure

Pioneering reconstructive surgery has brought new hope to a small number of the 140 million women worldwide who have suffered the pain and sexual desolation of female genital mutilation. Newly published feedback from hundreds of women who have had the reparative surgery reveals that it worked for most of them, easing pain and improving sexual pleasure.

“The real news is that it’s feasible to give back pleasure, feasible to reconstruct the clitoris, and possible to give women back their lost identities,” says Pierre Foldès of the Saint Germain Poissy Hospital in France, who developed the procedure.

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Determination to end FGM in Middle East

The Hague / Suleymaniah June 11, 2012 The silence on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the Middle East needs to be broken. To end this brutal violation of human rights that is systematically applied in the region, NGOs Wadi and Hivos are expanding their pioneering work in Iraq to eleven countries.     

FGM was regarded for decades solely as an “African problem”. But it is not just that; several indications and first pilot surveys now shed light on a topic that was never spoken about: FGM is present everywhere in the Middle East.

After a first key conference in Beirut in January with FGM-activists from several Middle Eastern countries, Hivos and Wadi decided to jointly engage in a programme to combat FGM in the region. The first phase of the programme is to raise awareness about the problem of FGM in the Middle East and initialize a public discourse about it. An important aspect is also to strengthen and enlarge the regional network in combating the practice.

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