There is increasing discussion around the subject of Female Genital Mutilation and for that, I am very thankful. Although many Muslims claim that FGM is not Islamic, the fact remains that the majority of cuttings are on Muslim girls, and, that although FGM is not required in Islam, it is also an accepted practice since Mohammed did not forbid it.
From Australia: More than 120,000 migrant women in Australia have suffered genital mutilation – a brutal religious practice common in Islamic populations in Africa, South America, parts of Asia and the Middle East.
There is no data held on how widespread female genital mutilation is in Australia, but 7.30 has spoken to women who are voicing their concerns despite the fear of rejection from their communities.
Read the rest and see the video: Female Genital Mutilation in Australia.
From Indonesia: It’s 9.30am on a Sunday, and the mood inside the school building in Bandung, Indonesia, is festive. Mothers in headscarves and bright lipstick chat and eat coconut cakes. Javanese music thumps from an assembly hall. There are 400 people crammed into the primary school’s ground floor. It’s hot, noisy and chaotic, and almost everyone is smiling.
Twelve-year-old Suminah is not. She looks like she wants to punch somebody. Under her white hijab, which she has yanked down over her brow like a hoodie, her eyes have the livid, bewildered expression of a child who has been wronged by people she trusted. She sits on a plastic chair, swatting away her mother’s efforts to placate her with a party cup of milk and a biscuit. Suminah is in severe pain. An hour earlier, her genitals were mutilated with scissors as she lay on a school desk.
During the morning, 248 Indonesian girls undergo the same ordeal. Suminah is the oldest, the youngest is just five months. It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or “female circumcision” that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.
Read the rest of this excellent story: Female Genital Mutilation in Indonesia.
from Tanzania: Officials in Tanzania are facing calls to take more action to prevent female genital mutilation (FGM). The Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) has been holding meetings to garner people’s views on what rules and regulations they would like to see changed, the Tanzania Daily News reports.
Several women flagged up FGM as a particular concern, with some arguing the procedure is barbaric and archaic.
Read the rest: Female Genital Mutilation in Tanzania.
From Africa: A campaigner against FGM has welcomed efforts to clamp down on the procedure in Africa.
According to Efua Dorkenoo, advocacy director at Equality Now, several African nations are moving “in the right direction” with regards to stopping FGM, reports TrustLaw.
Read the rest: Campaign Reducing FGM in Africa
Female genital mutilation is on the rise in the United States, according to a
