When I published Islam Unveiled, which included some discussion of FGM, several commentators criticized my mentioning FGM. They said it was only a cultural African practice and had nothing to do with Islam. Of course, in the book itself I quoted Muslim authorities praising, and here is more evidence that I was correct in discussing it all along, as it is a practice with deep Islamic roots. This Christian Science Monitor piece (thanks to Bev and Satinder) details how FGM is now being found in Iraq and elsewhere in the Islamic world:
KIRKUK, IRAQ - Set on an arid plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time. Sheep amble past mud-brick houses and the odd sickly palm tree shades children's games. There is no electricity.Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it.
"We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, director of a German nongovernmental organization called WADI, which has been based in Iraq for more than a decade.
Of 1,554 women and girls over 10 years old interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907, or more than 60 percent, said they had had the operation. The practice is known to exist throughout the Middle East, particularly in northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, and Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest it is present in Syria, western Iran, and southern Turkey.
But while this practice was suspected in the region, there was never solid proof that the procedure was so prevalent.
Controversial findings
When WADI presented the results of its survey in Vienna this spring, Mr. Osten-Sacken recalls, various Iraqi groups accused the group of being an agent of the Israelis. Even the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, who have backed efforts to combat FGM since the late 1990s, were rattled....
But it's not just obstructionism that has held up awareness of the phenomenon. Unlike in parts of Africa, where FGM is practiced relatively openly, in the Middle East it is veiled in secrecy.
"You can't just walk into a village and ask people if they circumcise their daughters or not," says Germian social worker Hero Umar. "These people only talked because we've been bringing them medical help for over a year."
Women in Hasira and the surrounding villages are reluctant to talk. But after long negotiation, Trifa Rashid Abdulkerim agrees to answer questions.
A farmer's wife from the village of Milkhasim, she says she learned the techniques from her neighbor, and took over when she stopped performing the operation. "June is the best time of the year," she says, "and the best age for patients is between 3 and 8."
Anti-FGM campaigners point out that FGM crosses religious and ethnic boundaries.
But as a cleric in Sulaymaniyah puts it, "Islamic scholars have complex views on the phenomenon."
Sitting in his office in the Kurdish city, Mohammed Ahmed Gaznei explains.
"According to the Shafii school, which we Kurds belong to, circumcision is obligatory for both men and women. The Hanbali say it is obligatory only for men."
Personally opposed to female circumcision, Mr. Gaznei has helped in campaigns to stamp it out.
In 2002, he and other senior Kurdish clerics issued a religious edict, or fatwa, supporting the Hanbali practice. He has since appeared on TV several times to preach against FGM.
In Germian, however, information is slow to filter through the population. Women are still thought to be promiscuous if they are uncircumcised, some people here say.
"They say the food an uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean," says Shirin Ali, "and that a circumcised girl has more affection for her family."
WADI workers said that four months ago in a village just north of Hasira, a newly married - and uncircumcised - woman was so badly treated by her in-laws that she performed the operation on herself.
She performed the operation on herself!
Talk about Stockholm Syndrome!
Man this stuff makes me sick to my stomach. Woman are treated badly enough in these backward barbaric countries, but this of course is the iceing on the cake.
So what exactly do woman get to enjoy in life while being an Islamic slave? It seems their lives are pointless and they are only considered proporty and breeders...that is about the extent of a womans life in Islam.
Bodily mutilation is sick anyway you cast it. Bodily mutilation without consent is plainly immoral. Therefore bodily mutilation of infants is sick, immoral, and a primitive tribal act.
I am of the opinion that both male and female genital mutilation should be outlawed internationally. The fact that this primitive, medically unsound practice is tolerated and perpetuated on either sex in the free world is a crime.
The fact is, once done it can never be undone. You have taken the choice from the individual and made a decision for him or her that you will not have to live with for the rest of your life, they will.
Have mercy on your children and stop the barbaric practice of genital mutilation on either sex.
f.g.
Well, if the most holey Quran and Hadiths say that is your place in life, and you're real fanatically religious, which Muslims are, then to question your life becomes blasphemy.
That is how good Islam is. Ignorance is Islam except for the TaqiyyaMasters and the elites (Arabs, the 'professionals'), who enjoy the best of life, on top as it should be. Beligerence is bred into Islam over the centuries, as only the beligerent thrived. It's all about submission. Infidels must submit. Daughters must submit.
If one examines islam and its practices, it is more akin to slavery. Islam and those who convert to it, effectively become slaves. Islam = submission = subjugation, is not coincidence. Wherever islam dominates, slothful attitudes start to dominate. Free thinking stops, and people become mere cogs, almost children, dependent on the cleric on matters of any substance. Muslims are thus the first victims in this institution of slavery. I would therefore term Islam as the "religion of institutionalised slavery". It is no surprise that muslim countries are intellectual deserts. Free thinking can only occur in Free societies.
Some points worth considering
1. The institution of slavery, crushed the spirit of slaves. They were unable to think originally for themselves as a consequence. A striking feature of islamic societies.
2. Another striking feature of islamic societies is that they blame everyone else for their acts or predicaments.
In what may be consider as a traditional slave society, a similar situation holds. The slave has no power over the direction of his life, and no sense of responsibility to himself, the civic society or the state. This leads, quite naturally in my view, to blame others for his predicaments.
3. The subjugation of women and the view that women were simply chattels, i.e. slaves.
4. Runaway slaves used to be beaten, and oft executed, as a lesson to other would be runaway slaves. The same punishment is koranically sanctioned for the muslim apostate. Is it mere coincidence?
The most public manifestation of our acceptance of institutionalised slavery in the West is the burqa. It is a symbol, that we as a Western society, have recognised the institutionalised slavery of women in islam, as legitimate in the West. Thus FGM, the beatings, multiple wives, muslim women having no choice in the matter of their lives, are symbolised by the burqa. The burqa is like a bridle on a horse. It signifies his slavery to his master.
This is absolutely absurd. Freedom and slavery are mutually incompatible. It is a tragedy that we have allowed in, into the domain of Freedom, a society that practices slavery, and worse we give it legitimacy under the guise of multiculturalism.
So here we are, in the 21st century, right here in the domain of Freedom, and we have allowed islands of slavery to become established and even legitimsed it in an indirect way, within this domain of enlightenment. This is absurd.
"This is absolutely absurd. Freedom and slavery are mutually incompatible. It is a tragedy that we have allowed in, into the domain of Freedom, a society that practices slavery, and worse we give it legitimacy under the guise of multiculturalism.
So here we are, in the 21st century, right here in the domain of Freedom, and we have allowed islands of slavery to become established and even legitimsed it in an indirect way, within this domain of enlightenment. This is absurd."
Beyond absurdity, DP111, it's serious social
pathology and suicidal behavior.
o/t
On a lighter note..heard on Fox that a muslim
McDonalds goin up in France(halal)..goat burgers
and such
"They say the food an uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean," says Shirin Ali, "and that a circumcised girl has more affection for her family."
Yep, wisdom from the religion that brought us the huge black spiders "big as this chair!"
There are two recent (long) entries and two older ones at http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com for those who can get through them. Some people actually argue in favor of FGM, and not just Muslims. Worse is that with that kind of attitude we could well have it happening in our own neighbourhoods and people might shrug it off as "culture."
I don't have any answers. Best I can do is demand a stop to whimmitude, the fascist pandering that some Western women do in apologizing for this evil practice. What good does that do? I'm lost. I have no idea what to do. Maybe you do.
Along with sonofwalker's site, remember
http://www.6thcolumnagainstjihad.com/
Cubed's site.
ello sir , may i take your order..
..yes pleeze i would like 2 McGoatburgers with falafel..
would you like to supersize?
..yes pleeze,,
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Sonofwalker -
whimmitude, the fascist pandering that some Western women do in apologizing for this evil practice
What a fantastic coinage. If it's OK with you, I'm going to use the word 'whimmitude' when talking about Western women who bang on about the hijab being 'liberating', or Western female converts to Islam who go the whole hijabbed hog.
Borrowing shamelessly a word coined by Granny W, I've called the latter, the Marie Antoinette hijabettes, on the grounds that they are playing at being subjugated, and unlike their 'sisters' in Iran or Saudi Arabia, could stop if they chose.
Sonofwalker -
whimmitude, the fascist pandering that some Western women do in apologizing for this evil practice
What a fantastic coinage. If it's OK with you, I'm going to use the word 'whimmitude' when talking about Western women who bang on about the hijab being 'liberating', or Western female converts to Islam who go the whole hijabbed hog.
Borrowing shamelessly a word coined by Granny W, I've called the latter, the Marie Antoinette hijabettes, on the grounds that they are playing at being subjugated, and unlike their 'sisters' in Iran or Saudi Arabia, could stop if they chose.
whimmitude I like.
Marie Antoinette hijabette ditto.
I think Ayaan Hirsi Ali called this the paradox of feminisim. And is the main reason I no longer call myself a feminist. I knew FMG was practised in some parts and among some but not all families of Saudi Arabia but not in Iraq. I picked up in Smiths, but did not buy, as you do, the memoirs of a Saudi princess (one of the multitude) who wrote of her husbands tentative inquiries when their marriage had been arranged as to whether or not she had been cut, and his relief when the answer was no. Presumably he was either very enlightened, or had had his tastes formed by western ladies of negotiable affection.
SuperGran;
"negotiable affection"
Oh my achin'.....you are just too, too funny!
you have absolutely made my day. just when i thought i was braced for the serious matters at hand here, you go and blindside me and i crumple like a cheap stroller/pram.
ok sir..ulululul;ulululu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: otterfisher
LOL
That's a phrase coined by Terry Pratchitt the author. I hope I didn't seem to make light of such a very serious subject.
When I think of the little girls in our holiday club of "the best age... between 3 and 8." with all their potential, and think what is denied their sisters in Islam....
Re: "They say the food an uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean," says Shirin Ali, "and that a circumcised girl has more affection for her family."
This piece of wisdom must have been passed down from Islam's "Golden Age" of scholarship.
Islam's dogma, itself, it the essence of Female Genital Mutilation.
Spiritually, legally and morally, it "un-sexes" (to use Lady Macbeth's word), or it 'castrates', Woman. The Koran is Misogyny Incarnate.
It is an inverted apotheosis ('apo-daemo-sis'?) of the idea. A crude notion raised to the demonic level by giving it a 'religious' imprimatur.
Islam IS FGM.
Something related here ... As you are aware, Female Circumcision has been outlawed and even male circumcision is being look upon as a health hazard as well as undermining the liberty of minor, I have proposed to have circumcision done online instead ...
VIRTUAL CONEVANT: Circumcise without knife ... no blood, no pain, no complication!
Appreciate any comment you may have … email: divinetalk@gmail.com or at my Site