At 03:28 AM 12/25/2012, [email protected] wrote:
Lomax,
You said ask. Well if Muslim law were adopted in the US, would this
include requirements of FGM for all young girls as practiced today
in Muslim countries? See " Egypt Demographic and Health Survey
(EDHS). EDHS also showed that 91 percent of all women in Egypt
between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone FGM. ".
Student
FGM, or Female Genital Mutilation is obviously a term used by
political activists. It may be appropriate in some cases. A more
neutral term would be female circumcision. Nobody advocates
"mutilating" their children!
"Muslim law," first of all, does not bind non-Muslims, and law in
Egypt does not require women be circumcized. Muslim or non-Muslim.
Female circumcision was a pre-Islamic practice, and it was *limited*
by the Prophet, if the tradition we have is accurate. He said,
reportedly, "If you cut your women, cut only a little."
Note that in Jewish and Muslim tradition, men are cut *a lot*! (But
not as much as with infibulation, see below.) And that practice has
gone back and forth, over the years, in the United States. I was
circumcized, routinely, when I was born, 1944. My first son was born
in a hospital in 1969 and was routinely circumcized (and we were not
Jewish or Muslim). Hoever, my next two sons were born at home and
were not circumsized. When they started to have certain problems, our
pediatrician recommended circumcision, and it was done. There were
complications, they were much older, and, in hindsight, it would have
been better to do it at birth.
Male circumcision is also called "mutilation" by activists.
However, some forms of "female circumcision" are severe, so severe
that "mutilation" isn't simply political polemic.
Nevertheless, that there are a wide range of practices, ranging from
a symbolic "pinprick", doing no significant harm, to infibulation,
the removal of all the external genitalia, makes it tricky to
understand statistics about how many women have been "circumcized."
Such as the 91 percent figure from Egypt.
The implication in the question is that this is a Muslim practice,
per se, and further that it is a legal "requirement" as "practiced
today in Muslim countries." Not so.
FGM is a hot topic, so the Wikipedia article may not be so reliable,
but it has this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation
In Egypt, the health ministry banned FGM in 2007 despite pressure
from some (though not all) Islamic groups. Two issues in particular
forced the government's hand. A 10-year-old girl was photographed
undergoing FGM in a barber's shop in Cairo in 1995 and the images
were broadcast by CNN; this triggered a ban on the practice
everywhere except in hospitals. Then, in 2007, 12-year-old Badour
Shaker died of an overdose of anaesthesia during or after an FGM
procedure for which her mother had paid a physician in an illegal
clinic the equivalent of $9.00. The
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar>Al-Azhar Supreme Council of
Islamic Research, the highest religious authority in Egypt, issued a
statement that FGM had no basis in core Islamic law, and this
enabled the government to outlaw it
entirely.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#cite_note-60>[
The age at which the procedure is performed varies.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_Momoh>Comfort Momoh, a
specialist midwife in England, writes that in Ethiopia the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falashas#Falash_Mura>Falashas perform
it when the child is a few days old, the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_people>Amhara on the eighth day
of birth, while the Adere and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_people>Oromo choose between four
years and puberty.
I quoted this section because I have an Ethiopian daughter, and
female circumcision is common there. When we adopted her, we were
concerned that she might have been circumcized, she left her home in
the Southern Tribal Region when she was two and a half years old. We
later concluded that she was within normal variation without
circumcision. She has what could be considered tribal markings on her
eyelids, three neat scars on each eye. It's beautiful. The
grandparents, who arranged for the adoption since the mother was
absent, were Protestant Christian.
Did she suffer from Female Eye Mutilation? (No. For starters, the
practice is done with boys and girls. Secondly, it is apparently
tribal medicine for conjunctivitis, to cut the eyelids so that the
bleed into the eye. Might work! We saw one kid with scars that were
irregular, but our daughter's eyes were clearly cut very neatly and
carefully, so that the marks are symmetrical and beautiful. Anyone
who knows Ethiopia could probably identify where she comes from,
seeing her features and her eyes.)
The Falasha are a Jewish tribe, the Amhara are generally Christian
(the most ancient Christian church, actually), the Oromo are about
half Christian and half Muslim, and the Adere are almost entirely
Muslim. And the type of circumcision done is not mentioned.
You can get an idea of the problem by reading this part of the
Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Female_genital_mutilation&oldid=529561815#Colonial_opposition
The Kikuyu people mentioned as the main ethnic group in Kenya have
mostly become Christian. They were not Muslim.
FGM preceded Islam and was simply not *eliminated* by it. A minor
form was allowed, not required. So any requirement for FGM was
certainly not coming from Muslim law, as the ruling from al-Azhar emphasized.
Nevertheless, I consider it shameful that too many Muslims did not
act strongly enough to prevent the harm of serious FGM (which should
be prohibited entirely because of the great harm.) It's said that
female circumcision originated in Egypt, infibulation is called
"Pharaonic circumcision." However, because of the widespread tribal
usage in Africa, I doubt Egypt as an exclusive origin. Nevertheless,
it's claimed to be quite common there. Is that only among Muslims?
Apparently not.
I found this:
http://observers.france24.com/content/20120518-egyptians-debate-female-circumcision-religion-tradition-female-genital-mutilation-FGM-parliament-law-ban
You can see there Muslims speaking out against the practice, and
comment that Egyptian Christians and Muslim communities both practice
FGM (but, again, no comment discriminating between the forms, which
is crucial -- though I don't think any form of female circumcision is
ordinarily necessary), and evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood, a
conservative Muslim party currently dominant in Egypt, officially opposes FGM.
No, FGM is certainly not a "requirement" of Islam for anyone, much
less something that Muslims, if we somehow managed to get Muslim law
established in the U.S., would impose on anyone. Of course, the only
Muslims that would even think of imposing anything on anyone would be
the fundamentalists. Essentially fundamentalists resemble each other
across religious lines. There is something about it that rots the
brain in similar ways.
