The Muslim establishment in Egypt, represented by the Mufti of Al Azhar and al Qaradawi, are coming out against female circumcision (female genital mutilation/cutting), asserting its un-Islamic nature. According to them, it's against Islam because it injures women's bodies and denies them their natural right of sexual pleasure. (in Arabic)
Good stand, folks. Stick to it.
4 comments:
Amal, do you know if genital mutilation is at all practiced in palestine? Do you know of any instances?
It seems from the comments on that article that mutilation is practiced in the khalij and masr.
As far as I know, it doesn't exist in Palestine. I remember when I first mentioned it to my mother, she was scandalized. But I haven't done any research to back this up.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8561666&dopt=Abstract
This is the only study I could find about Palestine.
BTW, reading a few articles I found that genital mutilation exists among Ethiopian Jews in Israel, and 60% of Kurdish women in Iraq have been mutilated.
In the article about the bedouins they make it sound as if the "evolution" of the practice to a symbolic form is unique. It's not. From talking to some Egyptian women who have undergone the practice, this symbolic form seems to be quite common. No cutting is involved. This is why I think it's problematic to call it "mutilation" in such cases.
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