Dear all, I have been following the discussion on culture and violence against women. I am working with UNFPA Office Sudan as a gender national expert.
We are dealing with FGM in all our sub-programme activities because FGM is one of our major concerns in dealing with reproductive health issues. FGM is a harmful traditional practice and against women's and child's right. It is a form of violence against women and girl-child. It is not an Islamic practice. Some Islamist groups support one form of FGM (Sunna type), they claim that it is mentioned in "Hadith" (Hadith is what had been said by Prophet Mohammed (Alihe El Salat w a Salam), but many religious leaders declared with evidence that the Hadith concerning FGM is weak and some religious groups interpret it in many different ways and according to their own interest. The second thing is that in most Muslim Countries people do not practice FGM, and that is a good justification that it is not an Islamic practice because if it is an Islamic practice all Muslims should do it. It is a cultural issue and in Sudan Muslims and non-Muslims practice it. Therefore, we need to talk, argue and convince the people that FGM is not in Koran. In Sudan there is a big movement going on now by the civic -societies against all forms of FGM. As there are some groups who are trying to support, justify and convince the people to practice the Sunna type by relating it to Islam, we need to make a strong argument to justify that, historically it is a cultural issue and not a religious issue. Afaf Rehiman, UNFPA/Sudan ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
