Free Republic

Egypt's Muslim religious hierarchy issued a decree on the state MENA news agency on Tuesday outlawing female circumcision as un-Islamic as the authorities prepared to submit a total ban to parliament. "The traditional form of excision is a practice totally banned by Islam because of the compelling evidence of the extensive damage it causes to women's bodies and minds," said the decree issued by the office of the mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa. The Egyptian government announced plans on Thursday to impose a total ban on female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris, but the draft law still faces a...

Young girls born in Europe to immigrant families from Africa are being subjected to ritual genital mutilation, and authorities are doing little to discourage it, a leading women’s rights activist warned. Somalia-born supermodel and best-selling author Waris Dirie, who has campaigned to end the disfiguring practice she suffered at age five in her homeland, said yesterday that she estimates one in every three African families living in Europe is secretly carrying out the ritual on their daughters. No official figures exist. The procedure – illegal in most European countries – is especially prevalent in Germany and the Netherlands, as well...

Why don't left-leaning Western women speak up about abuses in the Islamic world, asks Pamela Bone. 'They'd blanch at foot binding, but for stiletto-smitten New Yorkers, surgical reshaping makes perfect sense," said an introduction to a story in Good Weekend last week. The story was about women in New York paying $A8000 to have their second toes shortened to make them look better in open-toed stiletto shoes. Some American women might have more money than sense, but what they are doing should not be compared to the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding, in which the feet of little girls...

Islam’s Hatred of the Clitoris FrontPageMagazine.com | October 19, 2001 Editor’s Note: The following article contains graphic descriptions of female genital mutilation, which some sensitive readers may wish to avoid. IF YOU HATE WOMEN, and you hate their sexuality, and you are terrified that you cannot control it, the most effective thing you can do is to mutilate female sexual pleasure. This can be done by a sexual lobotomy, which will destroy an essential and sacred part of a woman’s natural makeup. In achieving this feat on all women, you will become able to ruthlessly dominate them. Make Comments ...

Set on an arid plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time. Sheep amble past mud-brick houses and the odd sickly palm tree shades children's games. There is no electricity. Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it. "We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken,...

LONDON (Reuters) - Sacdiya Hussein Ali was 7 years old when she was taken to a stranger's house in her native Kenya and held down on a mat by 10 women... WARNING - ARTICLE IS ABOUT INHUMAN CHILD ABUSE

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. Prosecutors say a suburban Atlanta man circumcised his 2-year-old daughter with a pair of scissors to avoid bringing shame on his family. The defense blames his wife, her mother and a nasty divorce case. Khalid Adem, who is on trial this week in Gwinnett County, could face 40 years in prison if convicted. Assistant District Attorney Marty First acknowledged that Adem, who was born in Ethiopia, is from a culture that practices female circumcision.

The American authorities appear to be backing away from a threat not to allow into the United States Somali refugees who have genitally mutilated their daughters. A group of about 12,000 Somali Bantus are currently waiting in a refugee camp in northern Kenya and have been given the right to emigrate en masse to the US. But earlier this week the American embassy in Nairobi confirmed that some of those refugees had been rushing to circumcise their young daughters, having learned that the practice is illegal in the US. An embassy spokesman said those involved would be investigated and the...