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Cracked.com whitewashes Islamic character of female genital mutilation

Aug 3, 2017 10:26 am By Robert Spencer

Female genital mutilation is Islamic:

“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

Why is it obligatory? Because Muhammad is held to have said so: “Abu al- Malih ibn Usama’s father relates that the Prophet said: ‘Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honour for women.’” — Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 5:75

“Narrated Umm Atiyyah al-Ansariyyah: A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: ‘Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.’” — Abu Dawud 41:5251

“Do not cut severely,” but not “Do not cut.”

That’s why it is so common around the world, and why it is certain to become increasingly common in the United States as well. But the imperative to exonerate Islam of all responsibility for the crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings is so all-pervasive now that even a publication that presents itself as a humor magazine feels it necessary to go out of its way to assure readers that the practice has no basis in Islam, and that only greasy Islamophobes think otherwise.

Why Cracked’s editors and article author Saundra Sorenson thought this was in keeping with the mission of a “humor magazine” is not clear. But they do not mention these Islamic justifications for the practice, and they misrepresent its prevalence among non-Muslims. Non-Muslims only practice FGM in countries where there is a significant Muslim population and much contact between the Muslims and non-Muslims; its practice among non-Muslims is a product of Muslim cultural influence.

Cracked also goes out of its way to hit “Islamophobes” for opposing this practice, and does so in a particularly ham-fisted manner. It quotes Mariya Taher, a victim of FGM who has told her story, lamenting: “That’s something I didn’t realize — I was unintentionally contributing to adding fear, or to Islamophobia.”

Imagine the inverted moral calculus here: a victim of a barbaric procedure sanctioned by Islam regrets coming forward because her doing so has possibly made people think ill of Islam. For Cracked and Mariya Taher, the first and highest priority is to make sure that everyone thinks Islam is wonderful, no matter what suffering and pain it causes.

“And it’s never pleasant,” Sorenson complains, “to find that your testimony and mission have been taken out of context by the likes of Jihad Watch.”

Click on that link. It goes to a May 23 post, “Religious freedom defense planned in landmark Detroit FGM case,” by Christine Douglass-Williams. Mariya Taher is indeed mentioned in it, but not by Christine. Mariya’s “testimony and mission” appear only in the Detroit Free Press article upon which Christine is commenting.

But Cracked’s nasty little swipe at Jihad Watch, as baseless as it is, is also in keeping with standard journalistic practice nowadays: Job One is to make sure that no one thinks the slightest negative thought about Islam. Job Two is to smear and demonize anyone who dares to tell the truth about the Islamic character of practices such as FGM.

“It Happens Here: The Reality of Female Genital Mutilation,” by Saundra Sorenson, Cracked.com, July 31, 2017:

This April, two Detroit doctors were arrested on charges that they performed female genital mutilation — in this case, they were accused of cutting the clitoris or clitoral hood to stop girls from experiencing sexual pleasure. It is obviously a complicated topic, further politicized by the fact some of its practitioners are Muslims. We sat down with Mariya Taher, who was “cut” at age seven and went on to co-found Sahiyo, an organization that hopes to prevent other girls from enduring the same pain. She told us …

5. It’s Not Just A Muslim Thing

…But as Mariya explained, vigorous masturbation was only the nice treatment for hysteria. It was not the only one. “People don’t recognize that clitoridectomy, a form of genital cutting, was performed in Europe and the U.S. up until the 1950s. It’s a practice that you were able to find in medical books. There’s one American woman, Renee Bergstrom — she was born in the Midwest, a white American woman, and underwent it when she was three years old by a Christian doctor. She went to see the doctor because she was touching her genitals and her mother was concerned. The doctor recommended she undergo it because a clitoridectomy was supposed to prevent masturbation … But that knowledge that clitoridectomy was once accepted in the U.S. has been forgotten completely.”

Further back, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, America’s blandest mad cereal scientist, recommended removing the clitoris as a legitimate treatment for nymphomania. And it’s still a global problem: “In the last couple years, there’s been a lot of evidence has been gathered to show that it’s happening also in other places, such as Russia, Colombia, and parts of Asia like Singapore, Malaysia.”

Several Christian sects, and even one group of Ethiopian Jews, also practice cutting. “I think people like to ‘other’ it, saying it happens only in religious places and Africa, so you don’t think about the fact that it’s happening in medical settings, or that it’s happening in the U.S., or it’s happening in Ontario. That’s why I always try to emphasize it is a global issue … the large-scale data [gathered] by organizations such as UNICEF unfortunately only report FGM prevalence for 30 countries at this point, but there are many other countries where it’s been reported.”

And due to increases in immigration from regions where FGM is practiced, more than 500,000 women have undergone it, or are likely to be subjected to it, right here in the U.S. The largest risk groups live in California, Minnesota, and New York. When somebody brings up female genital mutilation, don’t think rural Africa — think Duluth….

The Quran makes no mention of female genital mutilation. Neither does the Bible or the Torah. Yet Muslims, Christians, and Jews around the world still do it. W-why?

“I found that there were so many different reasons for why it was carried out, from hygiene to sexual control — I’ve actually heard justifications that it is done to decrease your sexuality as well as increase your sexuality, or that you have to undergo it because it is an identity marker in a way …”…

1. There’s Even Backlash To The Backlash

…Unfortunately, the increased awareness of these crimes is also fuel for a certain species of bigot. Take, for example, the response when Mariya related her experience to The Detroit Free Press earlier this year. The article specified that Taher and the two arrested doctors in Detroit were from a small sect, and emphasized that genital cutting “affects girls of all socioeconomic backgrounds and occurs in all parts of the world, not just in remote villages in Africa or Asia, but here in the U.S., too.”

And now here’s a small sample of the many, many Islamophobic responses to the article…

So Mariya, and other women with similar experiences, are caught between a rock and Breitbart.com:

“That’s something I didn’t realize — I was unintentionally contributing to adding fear, or to Islamophobia. That was never my intention — my intention was to talk about violence and share the story of what’s happening in your community, because previously it wasn’t publicly acknowledged that it was occurring.”

Mariya often finds her interview quoted by websites devoted to ending the “Islamization of America.” Like this one, courtesy of career Islamophobe Pamela Geller:

Geller ReportKind of a long-winded way to say “Everything proves me right.”

Or this Federalist column that sails right past the point, arguing that “Fear Of Islam Should Not Enable Female Genital Mutilation Inside The United States.” In all of these pieces, Mariya’s interviews are quoted (read: copied and pasted); she’s never directly interviewed. And it’s never pleasant to find that your testimony and mission have been taken out of context by the likes of Jihad Watch….

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", Featured, female genital mutilation, journalistic bias, Useful idiots Tagged With: Cracked.com, Mariya Taher, Saundra Sorenson


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Comments

  1. Walter Sieruk says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 11:27 am

    This brutal ,cruel and malicious Islamic tradition of FGM is part of the vicious misogyny that is so much part of the essence of Islam. . As explains in the book by Brigitte Gabriel, who is the founder and head of http://www.actforamerica.org , which is entitled THEY MUST BE STOPPED on page 172 informs the readers “Women in Islam are considered unclean , deemed inferior even to dirt..”
    Further on page 178 it reads “One of the most devastating practices to young girls of the Islamic world is female genital mutilation. . Young girls have their clitoris removed without anesthesia ….”
    How heinous ! How savage and primitive , indeed they must be stopped !

    • mortimer says

      Aug 3, 2017 at 8:13 pm

      CRACKED staff are IN FAVOR of FGM, unless they VOCIFEROUSLY OPPOSE FGM.

    • John Forbes says

      Aug 4, 2017 at 7:40 am

      More evidence of the WEST BOWING to ISLAM & EXHIBITING COWARDICE ! Despite there being laws against this practice in the WEST few if any are followed up despite there being good medical evidence that this has been done !
      THE LAME excuse is – it is too sensitive a subject – when in reality the AUTHORITIES are COWARDS & refuse to tackle the issue !

      This CONTINUAL APPEASEMENT & COWARDICE & REFUSAL to face the ISSUE which is ISLAM will lead us all to DEFEAT & a LOSS of DEMOCRACY !!

  2. Karen says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    The writer makes a number of false comparisons/arguments.

    It’s possible that certain Christian groups practice FGM, but it’s not endorsed or enforced by the Bible.

    Medical doctors used to perform all kinds of procedures ranging from ridiculous to lethal. These may have been horribly misguided attempts at cures, but they were not trying to destroy normal functionality. They were also not trying to enforce Sharia law, or any other religious law.

    Why would she be surprised that some mothers would impose FGM on their daughters? They’ve been properly conditioned for many years. Victims often look for new victims; it’s a part of the cycle for many generational ills and evils. Thank heavens that some lucky victims break free, and free their children from the cycle.

    FGM is illegal in the United States. Does that count for anything, in the post-Obama era? Perhaps not; why should anyone follow federal anti-FGM laws after 8 years of a president who treated the law of the land like a smorgasbord.

    • Matthieu Baudin says

      Aug 3, 2017 at 10:54 pm

      Good points Karen. And our main problem is that the law isn’t being applied with vigor to this brutal, backwards cultural practice.

  3. mortimer says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 8:10 pm

    QUESTION FOR CRACKED STAFF: “What is humorous about FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION?”

    Are you guys intelligent at all?

  4. gravenimage says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 8:38 pm

    Cracked.com whitewashes Islamic character of female genital mutilation
    …………………

    This is just nuts. The last time I saw Cracked, it was just a rather inferior but innocuous knockoff of Mad Magazine. I sometimes read it as a kid. What humor is there in FGM–especially for children? Good God.

  5. Sarah says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    Cracked is a site that used to be about humour. It has morphed in the last 3-4 years into a site that promotes Leftist identity politics, sometimes vaguely couched in humour.

    Their executive editor, David Wong (aka Jason Pargin) seems to be the driving force behind this, although they do seem to have a roster of writers these days, who share the same views anyway. There’s a reason why all the old writers of old on Cracked, no longer publish efforts on that site.

    Its a good thing their site is free, because they aren’t worth paying 5 cents to access.

  6. Matthieu Baudin says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 10:43 pm

    “… Why Cracked’s editors and article author Saundra Sorenson thought this was in keeping with the mission of a “humor magazine” is not clear…”

    Shame on you Saundra. It’s easy for you to treat this subject as something ‘out there at a distance’, but you haven’t had to give a moments thought to keeping your genitals in one piece throughout your childhood as you were protected by a truly caring society. This is about castration, and no matter how broadly you may wish to spread the responsibility for this atrocious practice, you ought to be publicly committing yourself to its speedy eradication and make a personal contribution to saving girls from the terror of the knife.

  7. gravenimage says

    Aug 3, 2017 at 11:56 pm

    Here’s another apparently knee-slapping article at Cracked, where they sneer at the idea that ISIS is really much of a danger:

    “Think Your School Is Rough? Mine Was Run By ISIS”

    There’s an important point in that; as terrifying as ISIS seems from our President’s tweets, they only ever had between 4,500 and 7,500 fighters in Mosul…

    http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2501-what-itE28099s-like-being-student-in-isis-controlled-school.html

    The most critical thing that Cracked says about ISIS is that they are “childish douchebags with guns”. That’s how I’d describe people who foolishly shoot off guns to celebrate New Year’s, not savages who use Infidels girls as sex slaves, crucify teenagers who snack during Ramadan, and stone women to death.

    Here’s another attempt at humor from the piece:

    I asked him, “Who were they teaching you to kill?” half expecting him to say, “Americans.” But he replied, “The police and Iraqi army guys.” Goddammit, ISIS. I thought we had something special? Is America not good enough for your hate now?
    …

    Wow–that’s a laugh riot. By the way, they go on to say that the US fighting against ISIS will just do more harm than good.

    I miss the days when Cracked just had bad jokes about sitcoms or about kid’s movies…

  8. Fair views TH says

    Aug 4, 2017 at 4:10 pm

    This Spanish laughs his head off about Islam : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbzwVn0cUBM&t=25s

  9. Linde Barrera says

    Oct 12, 2017 at 10:07 pm

    Cracked.Com is disgusting. The 2 doctors in Michigan are disgusting for performing FGM. And FGM is most disgusting of all. There is no justification for it anywhere. And lastly, I am praying that the 2 doctors get convicted and go to jail, at least for 3-6 months. That is a pretty light sentence compared to what they did to the girls who will have to live with FGM their whole lives.

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