There’s a good article in the NY Times on the growing and vibrant anti-Female Genital Cutting ((AKA Female Circumcision, Female Genital Surgery, AKA Female Genital Mutilation or FGM.)) movement in Egypt in the Times. (Curtsy: Feministe and Sly Civilian).
Previous “Alas” posts on FGC: 1 2 3 and 4.
From the Times article:
“The Koran is a newcomer to tradition in this manner,” she said. “As a male society, the men took parts of religion that satisfied men and inflated it. The parts of the Koran that helped women, they ignored.”
It is an unusual swipe at the Islamists who have promoted the practice as in keeping with religion, especially since the government generally tries to avoid taking on conservative religious leaders. It tries to position itself as the guardian of Islamic values, aiming to enhance its own wilted legitimacy and undercut support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned but popular opposition movement.
But the religious discourse concerning genital cutting has changed, and that is credited to Ms. Assaad’s strategy of reaching up to people like Mrs. Mubarak and out to young women like Fatma Ibrahim, 24. When Ms. Ibrahim was 11 years old, she said, her parents told her she was going for a blood test. The doctor, a relative, put her to sleep and when she woke, she said she could not walk.
The memory haunts her now, and though she says that her parents “will kill” her if they find out, she has become a volunteer in the movement against genital cutting, hoping to spare other women what she endured.
“I am looking to talk to the young, the ones who will be parents in 10 years,” she said. “This is my target group. I talk to the young. When I get married, inshallah, I will never, ever circumcise my daughter.”
Wow. I’d always assumed that Egypt was progressive enough to have dealt with this already. How widespread is that mutilation anyways? I mean, I’d always figured it was something practiced in the backwaters of Afghanistan.
Read the other articles linked in the post.
Wow. I just did. I had no idea the problem was that widespread.
I completely agree with your point about using more strategic approaches than outright bans.
Being a recent father in Canada, I was surprised how much information public health nurses will pile on you about every iota of public health. Throughout the process, they provide stacks of info trying to convince you that
a) male circumcision is unnecessary and unhealthy,
b) breastfeeding is important,
c) pacifier use should be delayed until 6 weeks,
d) the baby should sleep on his back in a spartan, bumper-less, toy-less cradle.
They don’t _tell_ you to do anything. They argue, they compare, they use statistics. They try to convince you. This seems far more effective than the brute-force ban, particularly if that ban felt like it was coming from outside, colonial forces. If bumpers were banned because China said bumpers were a violation of the rights of babies, would we care? No.
Still, obviously, it’s not perfect (we gave up and brought in a pacifier after 3 weeks), but still, we did the right things because we understood they were the right things to do, not because we were told to.
Now, obviously, I’m not trying to compare the importance of any of those decisions to trying to stop something as violent as FGC. I’m just saying that it seems like a better method of convincing people on what they should do with/to their kids.
If a man had a lengthy conversation with his doctor about the merits and flaws of a procedure, rather than a foreign-imposed ban in his face leading him to simply go to his friend the barber who does FGC all the time, it would be far more effective.
Silenced is foo,
What you described regards information about public health. But this issue, I think, is far more about culture. Everywhere genital cutting is practiced I think the question must be, what can lead the culture to value the intact human body? It’s complex and bound up with other aspects of culture.
Silenced,
I think those are good observations.
Brick,
Thanks for bringing up your concerns in a way that is respectful, and allows us to work together, rather than pitting the issues against one another.
I think I’m very much in agreement with Silenced @ 3 — though there is the problem of different cultures being habituated in different ways of absorbing and rejecting information.