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“I protect women’s honour”

Kirkuk Now 4.5.2013.

Pura Gullstan is well known outside of Kirkuk city due to her profession, as she performs female genital mutilation and according to her statement, she has so many stories about FGM to tell but she does not want to let people know about them.

Pura Gullstan - Photo: Hawlati

Photo: Hawlati

Female genital mutilation is a stain on reputation of the Kurds in their treatment of women.  There are very few women agreeing with FGM, and Gullstan claims herself to be the saviour of the women when she talks about her profession.  If there are not numerous clients, how has Pura Gullstan managed to continue what she has been doing for so long?

Read more

Female Genital Mutilation Still Widespread in Egypt

Voice of America 30.4.2013 by Elizabeth Arrott

CAIRO — Egyptian activists are concerned that the rise of Islamist politicians could undermine years of work to discourage female genital mutilation. The practice, and the movement against it, however, have far deeper roots in the country.

To its supporters, it is a sign of purity, community and religious devotion. To its opponents, it marks the physical manifestation of a woman’s degradation. Read more

Moves to medicalize female mutilation could destroy ‘Stop FGM’ advocacy

WNN SOAPBOX 17.4.2013

By Faiza Jama Mohamed

(WNN) Nairobi, KENYA: Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a severe form of discrimination against girls.  It is an extremely violent act of control and an utterly invasive and destructive assault of the female sexual organs.  It promotes the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with girls, which needs to be changed.  It is often carried out for cultural or supposedly religious reasons, even though it is not referred to in any major religious text.  FGM is most prevalent in parts of Africa and the Middle East.  However, it is a global problem, which has already affected 100 – 140 million women and girls around the world.

One of the most worrying recent developments relating to FGM is the shift towards permitting it to be performed by medical professionals in a supposedly ‘safe’ environment.  We have recently been calling for urgent action in Indonesia, one of the first countries in the world to attempt to ‘legitimize’ FGM in this way.  As Indonesian girls are usually less than six weeks old when this is carried out, they have absolutely no say in this decision, which transforms their entire future.  We are also concerned about recent development in Malaysia, which could see something similar happening there.  The Malay Minister for Health is keen to formalize and legitimize the ‘medicalization’ of FGM, despite the fact that there is absolutely no benefit or necessity to do so.  This ignores both UN and WHO guidelines, which recognize it as a severe form of violence and child abuse against girls. Read more.

Times of India: NID student’s film on female genital mutilation

30.3.2013. What is it like to have undergone female genital mutilation, asks NID student’s film

When a 24-year-old student of film and video communication at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad received a special mention at the 60th National Film Awards, it was for showing nerve. Although devoid of sting operations and hidden cameras, Priya Goswami’s 27-minute documentary goes where no one has. In A Pinch of Skin, the young filmmaker gets a string of women to openly share the horror of female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice so secretive, often brothers aren’t aware their sisters have undergone it. The one-million strong community of Dawoodi Bohras, a sect of Ismaili Shias concentrated in trade-focused centres of Maharashtra and Gujarat, carry out the practice citing ‘faith’ as reason, although Islamic scholars say Islam doesn’t sanction it. Original article

More background on the film on kracktivist and DW Blog Women talk Online.

The film on Facebook

Indonesia denies mutilation in circumcision traditions

Thrashing wildly, five-year-old Reta wails as she is hoisted onto a bed during a circumcision ceremony in a school-hall-turned-clinic on Indonesia’s island of Java.

“No, no, no,” she cries, punching and kicking as her mother cups her tear-soaked face to soothe her.

Doctors clap and cheer encouragingly. One of them gently swipes her genital area with antiseptic and then swiftly pricks the hood of her clitoris with a fresh sewing needle, drawing no blood. Read More…

Islamic Pluralism: The Global Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation Continues

23.3.2013 by Irfan Al-Alawi

A global campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation [FGM], often misnamed “female circumcision,” continues. While foreign NGOs have made Iraqi Kurdistan a center of the effort to do away with this practice, many observers have argued that it is not a “Kurdish” problem.

FGM is also not just a “Muslim” phenomenon. However widespread it may be among Iraqi Sunni Kurds, its acceptance in Islam is limited. According to the German relief organization WADI [The Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation], in the four provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan, only the farthest north, Dohuk, which borders on Turkey, shows little evidence of FGM at any age. Among the remaining three “governorates,” in the province of Erbil, named for the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), 63% of women have undergone the atrocious custom; in Suleymaniya, 78%; and in Garmyan/New Kirkuk, the southernmost, 81%. Read more…

“A Tiny Cut”: Female Circumcision in South East Asia

The Islamic Monthly, 12.3.2013

I am a Muslim of Malay ethnicity, who was born in Singapore, where Malays are an ethnic and religious minority today, and lived there until I was 24 years old. The Malays, of whom 99 percent are Muslim, are the indigenous people of Singapore and the Malay archipelago. Until the arrival of the British colonizers in the early nineteenth century, this area (which covers what is south Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and south  Philippines today) shared many cultural and linguistic similarities.

When I was about six years old and attending a kenduri, or ritual feast, for two male cousins who had just been circumcised, I whispered to my mother, “Are girls circumcised too?” Growing up in Singapore in the 1990s, boys were commonly circumcised before puberty (around eight or nine) – making it seem like a rite of passage into adulthood. The six year-old me observed the fuss and attention they got: they were not allowed to eat certain foods, they could only bear to wear a kain sarong for up to two weeks due to the pain, and had to be fanned at night to keep the wounds dry. These ritual feasts to celebrate a boy’s circumcision are less common today, partly due to the increasing use of doctors to carry out circumcision, and usually on infants a few weeks old.

Read more

Trust Law: Activists press Indonesia to ban genital mutilation

12.2.2013. By Emma Batha

ROME (TrustLaw) – Indonesian campaigners fighting to end female genital mutilation (FGM) have told their government it must ban the practice in the light of the new U.N. General Assembly resolution on eradicating FGM.

It is believed to be the first case where campaigners have used the U.N. resolution to exert pressure on a government.

Indonesia banned FGM in 2006, but the Health Ministry issued a regulation in 2010 which allows the practice if it is carried out by medical professionals, such as doctors, midwives and nurses.

Indonesia’s National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) told an international FGM conference in Rome last week that it had written to the health minister urging him to revoke the regulation. Read more

Huffington Post: De-linking Female Genital Mutilation From Religion

by Ufuk Gokcen (Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, United Nations)

Female genital mutilation has long survived, hidden under the cloak of religious, cultural, and tribal practices, but this week, as we commemorate the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), it is time for every leader whether political or religious, whether male or female, to unequivocally stand in opposition to FGM. We can no longer allow the ignorance surrounding women’s rights and FGM to be perpetuated by traditions and rituals disguised as religious teachings.

As the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Ambassador to the United Nations, I personally find it important to combat any notion that FGM is in the true nature of Islam. OIC Secretary General Professor Ihsanoglu recently stated that FGM “is a ritual that has survived over centuries and must be stopped as Islam does not support it.” Yet, despite statements from political and religious leaders and studies such as the Frontiers Program report put out by USAID de-linking FGM from Islam, the practice continues at an alarming rate. This can be explained by the fact that the practice takes its roots primarily in tribal culture, not religion; though some misguided local religious scholars might contest otherwise. Read more

Female Genital Mutilation: Many Pakistani women’s painful secret

A good insight into the situation in Pakistan gives the Express Tribune’s Sub-Editor Farahnaz Zahidi Moazzam. In Pakistan, female circumcision is known to be practiced by a few communities along the Iran-Balochistan border, and a few isolated tribes, as well as the Dawoodi Bohra community.

“I don’t want my daughter to have to go through it. I have been through it; my mom has been through it and so has my naani (grandmother).

We have been going through this forever.

It’s a custom – the done thing, but I can’t imagine my baby having to go through the same!

I am 34 and I still remember it distinctly. I felt humiliated even as a seven-year-old. It was not very painful, but I felt slighted at how they held me down, how embarrassed I felt. But most of all I feel resentment – even today – over the fact that we never talked about it before or after that. Everyone pretends like it never happened.”

This is the story related by a Pakistani mother whom I talked to today about Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), practiced in her community.

Today, as the world observes the “International Zero Tolerance Day to FGM/C”, many remain blissfully unaware that this custom, often referred to as female circumcision, is also practiced in Pakistan.

According to the World Health Organisation, FGM/C is a procedure that “intentionally alters or injures female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

The reasons are cultural, traditional and religious. Predominantly, the reason traditionally given for FGM/C is almost inconceivable – that it ensures a woman will remain chaste and guard her against promiscuity, as depending on the degree of the procedure performed, she may not be able to experience sexual pleasure as fully as a woman whose genitalia remain unaltered.

In Pakistan, female circumcision is practiced by a few communities along the Iran-Balochistan border, and a few isolated tribes, as well as the Dawoodi Bohra community. Having said as much, here it is mostly not done very invasively, as opposed to some African countries where FGM/C may involve removal of the entire clitoris and labia.

Read more.