We need to talk about FGM
An extreme form of gender-based violence
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the practice that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The practice has no health benefits for girls and women and can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. It can also significantly decrease sexual desire and pleasure for women, and increase pain and discomfort during sex.
If you think that this brutal and archaic practice is of little concern in modern day society, you are dead wrong.
In 2024, nearly 4.4 million girls – or more than 12,000 each day – are at risk of FGM around the world. Over 230 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to female genital mutilation1 . Organisations will tell you that FGM is performed due to a mix of cultural and social reasons, such as social pressure and convention, beliefs that FGM has religious support or ideas of beauty and purity. But the truth is far more sinister. FGM is just a tool for men to control women. In many societies, FGM has been used to make men the masters of female sexual function, and to reinforce the idea that wives are their husbands’ property, as is typical of patriarchal societies. This can include controlling her sexuality to promote premarital virginity and marital fidelity.
The practice in Islamic countries is more covert. Many Islamic websites will tell you that FGM is not sanctioned by Islam, and has nothing to do with their faith. However the control and subjugation of women and girls, along with the cultural insistence that girls be pure, clean, untouched and responsible for the honour of the whole family – where there are no such rules for boys – is but one of many gender inequality issues faced by Muslim women. When researching this piece I came across an Islam ‘question and answer’ forum, which presented the question of the benefits of female circumcision, to which Dr. Haamid al-Ghawaabi replied “For us in the Muslim world female circumcision is, above all else, obedience to Islam”, and that it “It takes away excessive libido from women”2. Girls from strict Islamic families are taught that they are ‘unclean’ or ‘unfit for marriage’ until they have FGM performed. FGM is erroneously seen as a way of complying with the Islamic requirement of chastity and morality, and is also believed to enhance women's ritual cleanliness to enable them to pray. Girls or women who refuse FGM may be outcast socially, disowned by family and deemed unfit to marry. In some communities in Uganda, a woman who hasn't undergone FGM is not allowed to get food from the store, collect water, or even speak in public.
In a recent report by UNICEF, Executive Director Catherine Russell reported "Seeing a worrying trend that more girls are subjected to the practice at younger ages, many before their fifth birthday.” Female genital mutilation violates girls' and women’s human rights and can leave enduring physical, psychological, and social consequences. Many if not most FGM procedures take place with no anaesthetic, without medical practitioners and with no effective follow-up medical care.
“There are three sorrows of womanhood. The first is when a girl has her genitalia cut... the second is when she is married and has to have her vagina opened... the third is when she gives birth.”
Jenifer, traditional birth attendant, Tangulbei, Kenya
FGM is not just a problem in developing countries. It is also found in Western Countries such as the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. Often young girls are taken back to the country of the families origin – that have little to no protection for girls or women – to have the procedure take place.
Laws against female genital mutilation are most common in the African continent with 55% of total laws globally coming from the 28 countries in Africa that have enacted specific laws or specific legal provisions against female genital mutilation. However the practice is still disturbingly common. In the Middle East only Iraq and Oman have specific laws against FGM. And in Asia, not a single country has enacted a specific legal prohibition against female genital mutilation.
The idea that according to cultural relativism, FGM is neither right nor wrong, and may only seen as being wrong according to western standards is absurd, and is nothing more than the racism of low expectations. Many women and children are striped of their right to choose, through cultural and societal pressure. Female genital mutilation is an extreme form of gender-based violence, a specific violence against women and girls, a sexual assault, a domestic violence, a child abuse, a human rights violation, and a development impediment that affects more than 230 million women and girls in the world and counting, with long-lasting and irreversible consequences.
UNICEF
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/45528/medical-benefits-of-female-circumcision
I believe it is wrong to cut any child unless for medical reasons.
Be it FGM or MGM.
Women are just as culpable as men are in this barbaric practice.
The vast majority of this horrible stuff in our modern world comes from Islam.
There's absolutely no reason for it to take place.
I'd just like to mention that while the intuition is to push to ban FGM (you note that some, but not most, countries have laws against it). Unfortunately this is not necessarily effective. When people believe in FGM, either for religious or (false) medical reasons, they will likely defy the law to do it. I believe the only way to really get rid of FGM is to convince people, beginning with their religious leaders, that it is a bad idea, and that can be very difficult to do.