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About 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations, with some medics in the country offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported. The Sunday Times' investigators claim to have secretly filmed a doctor, dentist and alternative medicine practitioner who were allegedly willing to perform circumcisions or arrange for the operation to be carried out. The practice, involving the surgical removal of external genitalia and in some cases the stitching of the vaginal opening, is illegal in Britain. It can invite up to 14-year-imprisonment, the Daily Mail reported. It is...

A two-week-old infant died at a Brooklyn hospital in September after contracting herpes through a controversial religious circumcision ritual, the New York Daily News reported. As part of the ultra-orthodox Jewish circumcision ritual—known as metzitzah b’peh—the rabbi or mohel removes blood from the wound with his mouth. The brit milah (pronounced bris), otherwise known as circumcision, is a rite of passage in the Jewish faith, though different groups follow different sets of procedures. The Rabbinical Council of America endorses the practice of using a sterile glass tube between the mohel’s mouth and the baby’s wound for the more orthodox metzitzah...

CHICAGO—A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics. It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones. An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, "I a boy" and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a...

AS many as 3000 women in Scotland may have suffered female genital mutilation. inShare1 Custom byline text: Lucy Adams Chief Reporter Organisations working with female victims told The Herald there are now more women in Scotland from communities where the practice is widespread, and that it may even be happening in this country. Traditionally girls were mutilated before moving to the UK, or were taken abroad to undergo the practice. The revelation comes on the international day marking Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Alison Davis, manager of a mental health organisation for ethnic minority women in Edinburgh, said: "The brick wall...

West Java. Guidelines on how to perform female genital mutilation/cutting issued by the Indonesian Ministry of Health could cause an increase in the practice, medical experts and rights groups fear. “This will give doctors a new motivation to circumcise [girls] because now they can say the Ministry of Health approves of this, and the Indonesian Council of Ulema [MUI] approves of it,” said Jurnalis Uddin, a doctor and lecturer at Yarsi University in Jakarta. Though FGM/C was banned in 2006, two of Indonesia’s Muslim organizations, including the largest and mostly moderate, Nahdlatul Ulama, ultimately condone the practice advising “not to...

The city of San Francisco finally weighed in on a local ballot measure that asks voters to ban the circumcision of male children, saying its attorney claim the proposed law would be unconstitutional if applied to Jewish mohels. The city attorney's office made the argument in response to a lawsuit by a coalition of Jews and Muslims that has asked a California court to remove the initiative from this year's November 8 ballot. The lawsuit, which names both the city and the anti-circumcision activist who qualified the measure, argues that state law bars local governments from restricting medical procedures. If...

A circumcision ban measure on the November ballot contains clearly anti-Semitic campaign material and targets members of the Jewish faith, according to a press release Thursday from the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. Jewish groups, along with some Muslim individuals, filed a lawsuit over the measure last week against The City’s director of elections and Lloyd Schofield, the San Francisco resident who gathered more than 12,000 signatures to get the proposed ban on the ballot. Groups that filed the suit argue that state law prevents local jurisdictions from restricting medical practice by “healing arts professionals” and that the ban would...

Colorado will end coverage for routine circumcisions under Medicaid next month, adding to what's become a national debate over the once widely-accepted procedure. The change will take effect July 1. Lawmakers agreed to end funding as part of a package of cuts to balance the budget.

Radical secularists, for whom Judaism is a target of choice, wish to portray religion as so barbarous that it excises any pleasure in sex, reducing copulation to a cold and sterile act. Talkbacks (11) The growing number of anti-Semitic caricatures associated with the attempt to ban circumcision in San Francisco is disturbing. These include the highly inflammatory “Foreskin Man” comic, depicting a superhero saving innocent boys from evil circumcisers, which The Jerusalem Post reports was produced by Matthew Hess, “one of the central backers of the anti-circumcision measures.” Indeed, the attempt to ban circumcision in San Francisco smacks of a...

You have to wonder very seriously if these people are insane. The San Diego-based group that is laboring to get circumcision banned in San Francisco has perpetrated a comic book. In it, a superhero named Foreskin Man saves a baby boy from being circumcised by the evil Monster Mohel, a vicious-looking Orthodox Jewish rabbi who could have been drawn by an acolyte of Joseph Goebbels. Indeed, Foreskin Man has a distinctly Hitlerian “Aryan” look to him. It’s crystal clear from the dialogue that the perpetrator of this literary opus intends to depict the Judaic religious view of circumcision as evil...

Brad Sherman, congressman from California, plans to introduce law to keep cities from banning male circumcision. WASHINGTON (JTA) -- US Rep. Brad Sherman will introduce a bill to prevent cities from banning male circumcision, the California lawmaker's office said. Sherman's bill, which his office announced Tuesday, comes in response to a measure that qualified recently for the November ballot in San Francisco that would outlaw the circumcision of males under the age of 18, making it punishable by a $1,000 fine and a one-year prison term. RELATED: Male circumcision ban proposed in Santa Monica San Francisco to put circumcision ban...

Russell Crowe, the Gladiator star, has sparked outrage after describing circumcision as barbaric in an angry four-letter outburst on the social networking site Twitter. The Oscar-winning actor laballed the practice “barbaric and stupid” during a row with his Twitter followers, telling them to “f--- off” if they disagreed with him. The 47-year-old engaged in an angry exchange with one follower, whom he branded a “moron”, before imploring Jewish people to “stop cutting your babies”. The debate followed a question by one of his fans called @picknic11 who asked him: “My son is due soon. Do you think I should get...

ON THE BALLOT in San Francisco this fall will be a proposal making it a crime to circumcise male children. If the measure passes, anyone convicted of circumcising a baby boy could be fined up to $1,000 and sentenced to a year in prison. Even for San Francisco, this is madness. The circumcising of newborn boys is perhaps the most familiar type of surgery in the United States. According to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, US hospitals perform the procedure more than 1.2 million times each year. While there are wide variations by ethnicity and region, and...

It's a personal story, but let it also serve as a public health rebuttal to the proposed ban on male circumcision that will be on the San Francisco ballot this November. San Francisco's ballot initiative would prohibit circumcision on all males under the age of 18. It would allow no religious exemptions, and it apparently gives no regard to the numerous studies demonstrating that male circumcision can substantially reduce—by more than 50%—the transmission of the HIV virus during sex. "Communities, and especially women, may benefit much more from circumcision interventions than had previously been predicted, and these results provide an...

"Five young boys in the nude, a police line-up so that you can identify his tallywhacker. Please, please can we call it a "tallywhacker"? Penis is so ppp... penis is so personal."  ---Principal Carter from “Porky’s.” The most recent episode of “South Park” featured the characters obsessed on the subject of penis. It was funny but I thought it was a bit over the top....until I read a news story about a San Francisco circumcision ban ballot initiative shortly after the show aired:SAN FRANCISCO — A proposal to ban the circumcision of male children in San Francisco has been cleared to...

A group seeking to ban the circumcision of male children in San Francisco has succeeded in getting their controversial measure on the November ballot, meaning voters will be asked to weigh in on what until now has been a private family matter. City elections officials confirmed Wednesday that the initiative had received enough signatures to appear on the ballot, getting more than 7,700 valid signatures from city residents. Initiatives must receive at least 7,168 signatures to qualify. If the measure passes, circumcision would be prohibited among males under the age of 18. The practice would become a misdemeanor offense punishable...

SAN FRANCISCO -- In November, San Francisco voters will be asked to weigh in on what was until now a private family matter: male circumcision. City elections officials confirmed Wednesday that an initiative that would ban the circumcision of males younger than 18 in San Francisco has received enough signatures to appear on the ballot. The practice would become a misdemeanor.

San Francisco voters in November will be asked to weigh in on what was until now a private family matter: male circumcision. City elections officials confirmed Wednesday that an initiative that would ban the circumcision of males younger than 18 in San Francisco has received enough signatures to appear on the ballot. The practice would become a misdemeanor. Supporters of the ban say male circumcision is a form of genital mutilation that should not be forced on a young child. But opponents say such claims are alarmingly misleading, and call the proposal a clear violation of constitutionally protected religious freedoms.

Should western governments describe “honor killings” or female genital mutilation as “barbaric”? The son of the late Canadian colossus Pierre Trudeau thinks such terms have unfortunate pejorative overtones: Liberal MP Justin Trudeau said the government should not call honour killings “barbaric” in a study guide for would-be Canadian citizens… “There’s nothing that the word ‘barbaric’ achieves that the words ’absolutely unacceptable’ would not have achieved,” Trudeau, the Liberal immigration critic, said. “We accept that these acts are absolutely unacceptable. That’s not the debate. In casual conversation, I’d even use the word barbaric to describe female circumcision, for example, but in...

For the world’s billion-plus Sunni Muslims, al-Azhar University in Cairo is the center of the theological universe, its faculty and scholars the most authoritative voice on the meaning of Islam. It is not very far from Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt’s revolution. It was in Tahrir Square last Friday that the Muslim Brotherhood began shunting aside other opposition leaders, including Google executive Wael Ghonim. The million Muslims jamming the square hadn’t turned out to hear a good corporate citizen of the Left. In this nation, where a strong majority of the population desires the implementation of sharia, Islam’s legal...

In 1799, the French artist Vivant Denon, accompanying a team of scientists traveling to Egypt with Napoleon (who excused his invasion with the logic that he was bringing democracy to the Arabs) was touring some ancient sites along the upper Nile when he came across an 8-year-old girl in severe pain. Writing in his journal, Denon noted that “a cut, inflicted with equal brutality and cruelty, has deprived her of the means of satisfying the most pressing want, and occasioned the most horrible convulsions.” Denon was referring, of course, to female genital mutilation. The Frenchman quickly pulled out a knife...

It's not every day we phone an average San Francisco resident to ask about foreskin. In fact, it's no day. Ever. Until now. But Lloyd Schofield's used to such calls because he's collecting signatures to get a circumcision ban on the city ballot in November 2011. "Someone else told me they were calling me at 11 o'clock for an interview," he said. "I might have to - I hate to say it - cut you short." We love it when interview subjects make our jokes for us! Schofield's ordinance would outlaw the procedure throughout San Francisco, even for religious reasons....

the measure would change San Francisco's police code “to make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the foreskin, testicle or penis of another person under the age of 18......... Lloyd Schofield, San Francisco resident is proposing a ballot measure that would ban circumcision in the City, according to the San Francisco Examiner. If passed in November 2011, the measure would change San Francisco's police code “to make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the foreskin, testicle or penis of another person under the age of 18.” The punishment up to a $1,000 fine and...

The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, hung upside down by their feet from a bridge near a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a leafy city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes. The victims' genitals, index fingers and heads had been cut off, according to a statement from the attorney general's office in Morelos state, which includes Cuernavaca. Their heads and genitals were found nearby, along with a handmade sign, the statement said. "This will happen to everyone that helps the traitor Edgar Valdes," the placard read, referring...

Iraqi Kurdistan: Girls and Women Suffer the Consequences of Female Genital Mutilation Kurdistan Regional Government Should Outlaw the Practice June 16, 2010 (Arbil) - A significant number of girls and women in Iraqi Kurdistan suffer female genital mutilation (FGM) and its destructive after-effects, Human Rights Watch said today in a new report. The Kurdistan Regional Government should take immediate action to end FGM and develop a long term plan for its eradication, including passing a law to ban the practice, Human Rights Watch said. The 73-page report, "‘They Took Me and Told Me Nothing': Female Genital Mutilation in Iraqi Kurdistan,"...

Islamic Genital Mutilation: A Barbaric Atrocity. Islamic Genital Mutilation:  A Barbaric Atrocity.140 million women have suffered genital mutilation. 140 million woman have been forced to undergo Islamic GENITAL MUTILATION While Islam condones SLAVERY, the BEATING OF WOMEN, and HONOR KILLINGS (the murder of children), one of the most barbaric atrocities practiced by Islam is GENITAL MUTILATION.In Islam, young girls are forced to undergo a CLITORECTOMY, which removes the clitorus.  This deprives women of any kind of enjoyment of sex during their lifetime. There are 140 million victims of this barbaric practice.Truly, to be a woman in Islam is to suffer...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has taken the bold step of retiring it’s earlier statement in support of female genital mutilation in the name of multiculturalism. The diversity driven blowhards at the Academy had previously proposed that giving little girls a “ritual nick” to appease parents prone to barbaric misogyny might be a reasonable compromise. The sages at AAP point out that such a harmless little “nick” would be preferable to the traditional genital mutilation done by mere dilettantes with household implements as described by Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Female circumcision is a custom in many African and Asian countries...

Editors' note: This column contains graphic description of surgical mutilation.For many years, Africans and immigrants from the Middle East have secretly remained faithful to cultural rituals and rights of passage that have been designed to keep their young women chaste and eligible for marriage. Partial or total female circumcision is one of these practices. In an alarming reversal of protocol and wisdom, this dehumanizing practice is gaining acceptance within the US these days. In fact the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has recommended that American doctors be given permission to perform “ceremonial” female circumcisions. Once again American leaders are fearfully...

In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision. The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended...

Dr. Marci Bowers slipped into a chair in Exam Room 3, folded one long leg over another, looked at her patient — a young woman with wide eyes and a nervous smile — and got to the point. "We want to help make your life better," Bowers said. Mariama is as tiny as the 5-foot-10-inch Bowers is formidable, as soft-spoken as Bowers is confident. Mariama speaks softly and smiles easily, but a few hours with her make clear that her determination is as strong as it is quiet. She is 26 and lives with her husband and daughter in Virginia,...

Freelance journalist and photogrpaher, Linda May Kallestein, has produced a short documentary, The Cut, aimed at raising awareness of the sufferin to women caused by female genital mutilation. The Cut is a 12 minute documentary about Mary (fourteen years old) and Alice (early twenties) from Kenya. Both are affected by the traditional rite of passage into womanhood: genital cutting. Mary and her community are preparing for her ceremonial cutting. Alice is studying to be a social worker to work against female genital mutilation. As the first in her community to refuse the practice, she has paid a high price for...

Enraged at being two-timed, a Queens woman poured boiling water on her unfaithful husband's groin as he slept Monday, police said. In a twisted act of revenge, Oyinda Ojofeitimi, 67, a registered nurse, carried out the crotch-scalding attack to ensure her spouse stopped cheating, cops said. "She was hurt and angry that after all this time married, he was stepping out on her," a police source said. "She wanted to shut down that possibility forever because he had treated her with such contempt." The painful wakeup call left Emmanuel Ojofeitimi, also a nurse, screaming in the bedroom of the couple's...

"Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised. There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned. As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let...

Pro-abortion forces that are so transfixed on preserving the status quo that they overlook statutory rape in our own country might want to avert their hyper-focus to help combat a truly inhumane custom practiced in other nations that was shown in disturbing photos in the Washington Post today. The tragedy of female genital mutilation (FGM) was captured in horrifying pictures that should be burned into the brain of anyone who wants to protect women worldwide from oppressive practices and rituals based in ignorance and male domination. Often forgotten is that the battles fought in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to...

At least 300 girls in south-western Kenya have fled from home and sought refuge in churches in a bid to escape forced female genital mutilation (FGM). The girls, some as young as nine, are at two rescue centres in rural Nyanza province, police told the BBC. Female circumcision is banned in Kenya, but remains common in some areas where it is considered to be part of a girl's initiation into womanhood. The traditional ceremonies take place between November and December. Security The girls in Kuria District are now in the care of the two churches and Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, a...

Cops save 45 girls from tribal abuse   By ANTHONY FRANCE Crime Reporter Published: Today     COPS rescued 45 British girls from horrific African tribal abuse in the past year, it has been revealed. Kids as young as four have had their genitals sewn up because parents believe it will protect their virginity until marriage. The practice is popular in many African countries but banned in the UK. Scotland Yard believes that 6,500 girls in London are at risk. Ages of victims rescued range from a few days old to 16. The total saved by the Met’s Project...

OSLO (Reuters) - Police in Norway have arrested a Gambian-born man and charged him and his wife with subjecting five of their six daughters to genital mutilation, officials said on Friday. ADVERTISEMENT The practice, also known as female circumcision, is outlawed in Norway and arouses horror among many people in the West but is a rite of passage for young women in many countries, predominantly in Africa. The youngest of the five mutilated girls, all born in Norway, is five years old, police officials said. The others are aged seven, 10, 13 and 14 and live in Gambia, national broadcaster...

PARIS, France (AP) -- Police said Friday that a body found in the River Seine was that of Katoucha Niane, a former top model for Yves Saint Laurent and other top designers who spoke out against female genital mutilation after quitting the catwalks. The body of former top model Katoucha Niane has been found in the river Seine. 1 of 2 Paris judicial police said her body was found Thursday near the Garigliano bridge in Paris. Police said an autopsy showed no signs of foul play, pointing to the possibility that she may have accidentally fallen into the river. She...

NAIROBI, Kenya - For two terrifying hours, the woman crouched inside her shop, watching as a gang attacked five men in the street, pulled down their trousers and sliced their genitals with rusty machetes. "The men were screaming and saying, 'Please don't kill me, don't cut me,'" the 35-year-old vendor told The Associated Press, asking to be identified only by one initial, K., because she feared reprisals by the gang. In the violence that has followed Kenya's disputed presidential election, a notorious gang has been mutilating the genitals of both men and women in the name of circumcision — inflicting...

Protests from female soldiers have led to the Swedish military removing the penis of a heraldic lion depicted on the Nordic Battlegroup's coat of arms. The armed forces agreed to emasculate the lion after a group of women from the rapid reaction force lodged a complaint to the European Court of Justice, Göteborgs-Posten reports. But although the army was eventually happy to make the changes in the interests of gender equality, the artist who designed the insignia was less than pleased. "A heraldic lion is a powerful and stately figure with its genitalia intact and I cannot approve an edited...

Maybe the finest example of Global Warming Derangement Syndrome to date is the claim by an Australian mammologist and paleontologist that climate change has reduced circumcision rates in Africa.

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,...

KAFR Al MANSHI ABOU HAMAR, Egypt — The men in this poor farming community were seething. A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor’s office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor. The girl died, but that was not the source of the outrage. After her death, the government shut down the clinic, and that got everyone stirred up.

Hanson cites Bible urination as reason to stop immigration Thursday Aug 16 10:00 AEST By Hal Crawford ninemsn http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=286783 A resurgent Pauline Hanson has called for an end to Muslim immigration to Australia in a fiery television appearance peppered with references to female genital mutilation, terrorism and urinating on Bibles. Ms Hanson, the 53-year-old former One Nation leader, appeared on Nine's TODAY to promote her new Pauline's United Australia Party.

Excerpt: ...This is not a choice," he said Friday. "It's something you try to deny and hide, but as time goes on, as you become more miserable in your own skin, you just can't take it anymore." Cummings said he was 3 when he realized he was born in the wrong body. His parents didn't understand. After they came to South Florida from Cuba, Maritza gravitated to boys' activities, like weightlifting, and she joined the Army. It didn't help. She abused drugs and alcohol, attempted suicide in her 20s. Then she found out that there was a medical explanation and...

LONDON - Female genital mutilation, commonly associated with parts of Africa and the Middle East, is becoming a growing problem in Britain despite efforts to stamp it out. London's Metropolitan Police, Britain's largest police force, hopes a campaign beginning on Wednesday will highlight that the practice is a crime here. To make their point, police are offering a $40,000 reward for information leading to Britain's first prosecution for female genital mutilation, Detective Chief Superintendent Alastair Jeffrey said. In Britain, the problem mostly involves first-generation immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

More than 250 girls and women have sought help from Oslo's largest hospital in recent years, because of physical problems resulting from female circumcision, also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).The mutilation, which many of the female patients were subjected to as young girls in several Muslim African countries and Northern Iraq, has left the women with severe urinary dysfunction, infections and problems after their vaginal openings were sewn shut. Sarah Kahsay, a midwife at Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, told newspaper Aftenposten that she and her colleagues have tried to help around 260 girls and women during the past...

From those omniscient clerics at Islam Question and Answer: Ruling on female circumcision Question No 1188 Question:Is female circumcision sunnah or a bad practice? I read in a magazine that female circumcision in any form is a bad practice that is harmful from a medical point of view, and that it may sometimes lead to sterility. Is this correct?Answer: Praise be to Allaah. Circumcising females is sunnah; it is neither a bad practice or harmful, if it is done within moderation. When extreme forms of female circumcision are carried out, harm may result. Okay. As long as it is done in moderation.

No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam ("INFIDEL" by Hirsi Ali) A Somali by birth, recently elected member of Dutch Parliament, Ms. Hirsi Ali waged a personal crusade to improve the lot of Muslim women. Her warnings about dangers posed to the Netherlands by unassimilated Muslims made her Public Enemy No. 1 for Muslim extremists, a feminist counterpart to Salman Rushdie.The circuitous, violence-filled path that led Ms. Hirsi Ali from Somalia to the Netherlands is the subject of “Infidel,” her brave, inspiring and beautifully written memoir.... from Mogadishu to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and her desperate flight to...

Cruellest cut in the name of Islam: Genital mutilation and forced marriage occurs even among educated Muslims in some countries, writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a shocking account of her early life in Somalia, in her new book Excerpt is required from AU News. I'd rather not excerpt bits, which I feel would reduce her prose's impact -- just follow the link