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200 million women have undergone genital mutilation — 70 million more than previously thought

Feb 6, 2016 8:42 am By Robert Spencer

“The 30 countries” in which female genital mutilation is prevalent are “mainly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.” Hmmm. What could they possibly have in common? Why is this so widespread? The answer is that FGM is sanctioned by Islamic law: “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 bazr ‘clitoris’ [this is called khufaadh ‘female circumcision’]).” — ‘Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64

According to Reza Aslan, female genital mutilation is “not an Islamic problem. It’s an African problem….It’s a Central African problem. Eritrea has almost 90 percent female genital mutilation. It’s a Christian country. Ethiopia has 75 percent female genital mutilation. It’s a Christian country. Nowhere else in the Muslim, Muslim-majority states is female genital mutilation an issue.” Aside from his idiotic view that Eritrea and Ethiopia are in Central Africa, Aslan is wrong in claiming that “nowhere else in the Muslim, Muslim-majority states is female genital mutilation an issue.” Does he think Indonesia is in Central Africa as well?

FGM

“Almost 70m more women than previously thought are estimated to have undergone FGM,” Telegraph, February 5, 2016 (thanks to all who sent this in):

At least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries are estimated to have undergone female circumcision – half of them in Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia, the U.N. children’s agency said in a report released on Thursday night.

The UNICEF statistical report said the global figure includes nearly 70 million more girls and women than it estimated in 2014. It said this is due to population growth in some countries and new data from Indonesia.

The U.N. General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution in December 2012 calling for a global ban on female genital mutilation, a centuries-old practice stemming from the belief that circumcising girls controls women’s sexuality and enhances fertility. One of the targets in the new U.N. goals adopted last September calls for the practice to be eliminated by 2030.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta said in a statement coinciding with the new report that “determining the magnitude of female genital mutilation is essential to eliminating the practice.”

While there has been an overall decline in the prevalence of female genital mutilation over the last three decades, UNICEF said it isn’t enough to keep up with increasing population growth. If current trends continue, it warned that the number of girls and women undergoing FGM “will rise significantly over the next 15 years.”

UNICEF statistical expert Claudia Cappa, lead author of the report, said the estimate of 200 million circumcisions comes from household surveys on the prevalence of female genital mutilation, and statistical modelling.

The 30 countries, mainly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, “have large-scale representative data,” she told AP. “We still think this is a conservative estimate because we know there are many more countries where the practice exists, but we couldn’t report on it with the same level of care because we don’t have available data.”

Cappa said the practice exists in other countries not in the study, where large-scale data was not available, like India, Malaysia, Oman, Saudia [sic] Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, as well as in pockets in Australia, North America and Europe where immigrants from countries with a large number of female circumcisions live.

In the 30 countries, UNICEF said the majority of girls were circumcised before reaching their fifth birthdays. “In Yemen, 85 per cent of girls experienced the practice within their first week of life,” the agency said.

According to the data, girls under the age of 14 represent an estimated 44 million of those who have been cut, with the highest prevalence in this age group in Gambia at 56 per cent, Mauritania at 54 per cent and Indonesia where about half of girls aged 11 or under have undergone the practice.

Countries with the highest prevalence among girls and women aged 15 to 49 are Somalia at 98 per cent, Guinea at 97 per cent and Djibouti at 93 per cent, UNICEF said.

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Filed Under: Featured, female genital mutilation, United Nations Tagged With: UNICEF


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Comments

  1. celticwarriorcanada says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 9:08 am

    Did I Miss Something !!! Or Is this what Hillary Clinton ( THE DEFENDER OF WOMEN ) CONSIDERS PROGRESSIVE !!! Are not some of the countries who Practice this BARBARIC RITUAL TORTURE , Supporters of THE CLINTON FOUNDATION ! AND AMERICAN WOMEN WILL ACTUALLY VOTE FOR HER !!! AND here I thought the CANADIANS who voted for JUSTIN were INSANE !!!

  2. Judy Jones says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 9:21 am

    I agree with the first comment. Where are the feminists, the great women saviors of down trodden women of the world. Clinton will do nothing for these girls/women. She will be too busy taking bribes a/k/a gifts and turn a blind eye. Allowing even refugee muslims into our nation is a disgrace, if this is the custom we will have to allow to happen to get along. Where are the world leaders in this?

    • Angemon says

      Feb 6, 2016 at 10:08 am

      Judy Jones posted:

      “I agree with the first comment. Where are the feminists, the great women saviors of down trodden women of the world.”

      “Feminists” are too busy making up issues to justify their existence to actually care about real victims of real problems.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hydgpgm8xw

      .

      • Jay Boo says

        Feb 6, 2016 at 7:57 pm

        Muslim may not be the only ones doing FGM.

        However, Muslims and those who will not criticize their bad behavior are easily by far the biggest obstacle to stopping FGM.

    • nicu says

      Feb 6, 2016 at 12:51 pm

      When it’s about Muslims – or poor women – nobody speaks up for them !

      That’s a big shame !

      This is why Europe accepts rape culture , too !

      • mortimer says

        Feb 6, 2016 at 2:52 pm

        Judy Jones wrote: “Where are the feminists, the great women saviors of down trodden women of the world. Clinton will do nothing for these girls/women.”

        Sad, isn’t it? Very few Feminists are speaking out because the rest of them are actually cultural Marxists whose interest is to destroy Western civilization, rather than defend women.

        Those Feminists have supposed The State would defend women, but cultural Marxist state puts the interest of women behind the interest of multiculturalism…the gobbledegook that all cultures are basically equally in validity.

        • bernie says

          Feb 8, 2016 at 6:26 am

          Mortimer: true that. That same reasoning would posit that cultures which exalt cannibalism are equal to any others.

          In the photo, that wretched woman on the left has an evil grin that is reminiscent of Jack Napier (the Joker from Batman).

    • Edo says

      Feb 7, 2016 at 7:29 pm

      Where are the feminists and Clinton and others in the USA or EU?
      They are where they are paid and they do what they are paid for.
      Nobody cares because there is no business.
      They are NOT paid to take care and protect victims.
      Are you serious when you ask “where is Clinton”??

  3. Charli Main says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 9:44 am

    Its my understanding that most of these mutilations on baby girls are carried out by granny while mummy holds the child down.
    Women are perpetuating this vile practice on their own children. You would think that any sane woman, that has had to endure this vile practice, would say ” my children will never be put through this ”
    Even bringing these Muslim retards into civilised societies changes nothing—-FGM is rife among ” British ” Muslims. To paraphrase an old saying —-you can take a Muslim out of his shithole but you can´t take the shithole out of the Muslim.

    • H says

      Feb 6, 2016 at 3:18 pm

      Male circumcision in the US isn’t so different. Fathers want their boys to be cut so they look like them. They can’t come to terms with the fact that their own circumcisions were a mutilation inflicted on them so they don’t make the leap to make it stop with their kids.

      • Jay Boo says

        Feb 6, 2016 at 7:59 pm

        Yeah right uh huh —- you sure fooled me.

        The US — just the same blah, blah, double-blah

      • E Ward says

        Feb 6, 2016 at 10:28 pm

        I can’t say for sure, but i have not heard of circumcised men complaining for lack of sexual satisfaction. There is simply no comparison here. Circumcision for men helps prevent uterine and penile cancers. i won’t go into the details for the reasons here, but you can google it. Unfortunately, the only safe time to circumcise a male is when they are very young, and obviously cannot opine upon the issue.

        Unfortunately Muslim women perpetuate the custom, because Muslim men want a “cut” girl. Because they are obsessed with controlling women’s sexuality.

        • Just A Concerned Citizen says

          Feb 7, 2016 at 5:15 am

          If you cared to look into the matter, you might also find that the majority of these women and girls from such cultures similarly insist that they’re “just fine”, and would be greatly offended at the notion that they have been mutilated. It could be that you have never heard of men complaining because you simply do not want to hear. Male victims of genital mutilation are silenced in profound ways. (If you find yourself buckling at the use of mutilation here, congratulations, that’s rape culture.) Indeed, people don’t even want to use the word ‘mutilation’ because somehow it will discount the mutilation of females. Sorry folks, the dictionary doesn’t work that way. Mutilation is mutilation. Outcomes may be different for survivors of FGM simply because childbirth places a woman’s life at risk, whereas men will never push a human being out of their penises. But does that discount their assault?

          Simply because a man can’t birth a baby, does that mean he can’t be a victim of genital mutilation? Does the dictionary definition of mutilation change, simply because the organ is a penis rather than a vulva? And what about victims of FGM who suffered clitordectomies, instead of infibulation? The outcomes of those procedures are most certainly different, yet would we dare tell the victims of clitordectomy that they haven’t been mutilated, and they shouldn’t be outraged because some women have it worse? That would be pretty callous to say to a victim of genital mutilation, wouldn’t it?

          So why is it okay to have the same silencing rhetoric for male victims? And isn’t it perpetuating rape culture to have some standard of damage done before someone gets to identify as a victim of sexual assault? Because strapping a baby down to a board and cutting his sex organs is sexual assault, even if he doesn’t remember (more rape culture), even if he says that he’s fine and claims he likes it that way (of course, he has no control penis to compare it to, so this is a logical fallacy), or even if everyone around him agrees an altered penis must be better, because everyone they know has an altered penis. Someone needn’t identify as a victim to in fact, be a victim.

          But perhaps more men aren’t identifying as victims because of rape culture. Because rape culture ridicules and shames our male victims. Because rape culture silences the suffering of male victims. We have a cultural narrative which ridicules male weakness, and those who might identify as victims. Indeed, even when a man identifies as a victim and dare call his assault genital mutilation, rape culture silences him because he’s not a female, so it can’t possibly be as bad.

          Male cutting does nothing to prevent cancer of any sort. This has long since been debunked. I would defy you to “go into the details” here or anywhere, since they don’t exist. There is no excuse for ignorance on the topic in this day and age.

          There is no “safe time” to perform this. It is a misconception that it is simpler to perform on infants. As the most commonly performed surgery in the United States, and boy is strapped down and cut every few seconds in the free world, and maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but statistically speaking either today or tomorrow a boy will die as a result of the procedure.

          Which brings us back to the point: genital mutilation isn’t a pissing contest, and the same rights are violated, regardless the continuum of potentially tragic outcomes.

      • DD says

        Feb 7, 2016 at 8:31 am

        Excuse me. Circumcised men can still have orgasms and make children. Mutilated women? Not so much.

      • Carolyne says

        Feb 7, 2016 at 10:36 am

        Male circumcision is nothing like FGM. Men who have been circumcised are able to enjoy sex, father children and are not left with a lifetime of physical pain. Cutting off the end of the male organ would be comparable to FGM.

  4. Daniel Triplett says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 10:01 am

    I can see why evil men would buy into Islam, which is a misogynistic men’s club, but I just don’t get the attraction of Islam to women. There’s absolutely nothing in it for them.

    They’re even forbidden to enjoy sex, the oldest and most natural form of human pleasure, and an incentive that God built into each of us to encourage reproduction. Without orgasm, what’s the point for women, except to simply submit to the will of their owners so he can get his jollies?

    • mortimer says

      Feb 6, 2016 at 3:01 pm

      Islamic Stockholm syndrome or ‘capture bonding’.

      Most converts to Islam leave before two years. They discover Islam is dysfunctional from the top down.

  5. Lee Hicks says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 12:13 pm

    Islam wages the real “war on women”, and no women’s rights groups in the West say a word. Huh! Go figure!

    • E Ward says

      Feb 6, 2016 at 10:35 pm

      I couldn’t agree more. As a feminist with some common sense, I roll my eyes anytime someone brings up a “war on women” in the US. They strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

    • Carolyne says

      Feb 7, 2016 at 10:44 am

      Could one of the reasons for the silence of the leading “War on Women” fiction proponent be that she receives millions from Saudi Arabia for her Presidential campaign? That’s a powerful incentive to be silent about the problem.

  6. citycat says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    Well, obviously God has made a mistake that needs correcting by sicko males. Again choice is stolen from God’s perfect creation. Tyrants that do this are sick in the head. God must have made a mistake there too, i suppose, so who is gonna correct that mistake?

  7. H says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    That picture makes me sick and upset. Those poor poor girls. I recently read an article about a midwifery school in north africa enforcing a policy on not performing FGM and it was working well.

  8. Mark Wellington says

    Feb 6, 2016 at 4:11 pm

    Muslim men don’t want their women to feel sexual pleasure because they don’t want to give sexual pleasure. They only want to take. Muslim men are takers — not givers…in all ways. Look at what they do in all countries they live in. They take…take…take…and they destroy anyone and anything that prevents them from taking.

  9. richard courtemanche says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    Sick bastards!

  10. quotha raven says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 1:22 pm

    “According to the data, girls under the age of 14 represent an estimated 44 million of those who have been cut, with the highest prevalence in this age group in Gambia at 56 per cent, Mauritania at 54 per cent and Indonesia where about half of girls aged 11 or under have undergone the practice”

    This can’t be right. The UN reported two years ago that 90% of females in Egypt had undergone FGM. All those operations were performed on girls younger than fourteen years old. The percentage of FGM victims under fourteen reflects the birth rate..

    Savage practice, carried on by the WOMEN.

    Cheers!

    quotha raven

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Feb 9, 2016 at 1:35 am

      And Gambia, Mauritania and Indonesia are all overwhelmingly Muslim.

  11. dumbledoresarmy says

    Feb 9, 2016 at 1:46 am

    From the article – “Countries with the highest prevalence among girls and women aged 15 to 49 are Somalia at 98 per cent, Guinea at 97 per cent and Djibouti at 93 per cent, UNICEF said.”

    And not coincidentally Somalia is 99.67 percent Muslim (so that the number of mutilated girls *exactly* corresponds to the Muslim percentage), Guinea is 88.33 percent Muslim (with the remainder comprising about 7 percent traditional/ ethnic African beliefs and 4.4 percent Christian), and Djibouti is 97 percent Muslim.

    So although there *are* non-Muslim Africans who perform FGM in varying degrees of severity, and it appears to have been a pre-Islamic custom *absorbed* into certain streams of Sunni Islam (most notably the Shafiite school of Sharia, which decrees that it is *obligatory*, whereas the other three Sunni schools *recommend* it without mandating it), the reality is that the highest percentages are in majority-Muslim countries … and the only places where FGM is practised **outside of Africa** are Muslim, i.e. Islam absorbed the practice in Africa and then… transported it to places where it *wasn’t* a pre-Islamic cultural practice.

    A further thing to reflect upon is that Muslim entities are generally pretty damn good at expunging Infidel pre-Islamic cultural practices that they disapprove of and deem incompatible with Islam. And even if assorted such practices do manage to persist or come creeping back, usually at some point there is a crackdown. So far as I know, *none* of the ‘back to the pure sharia’ revivalist movements that have bloodily convulsed Islam in the course of its history, in which revival movements assorted ‘slack’ Muslims – such as those engaging in music and singing in Mali – get forcibly reminded that what they are doing is ‘un-Islamic’, has EVER targeted FGM for eradication.

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