Well that was that, and this is this.

verbalresistance:

In 2008 Egypt outlawed the practice of female genital mutilation, but as Newsnight’s Sue Lloyd-Roberts reports in an article which contains graphic detail and which some readers may find disturbing, the ban has had little effect and the practice is still rife.

“Of course she must be circumcised,” said Olla, referring to the timid 11-year-old girl sitting beside her.

I asked Olla if I could find out from the child herself, her daughter Raaja, who sat shaking with fear, what she thought.

“There is no need to ask her,” her mother declared. “She doesn’t understand what we are talking about.” …

Astonishingly, in 21st Century Egypt, the latest figures suggest that more than 90% of the women have been subject to female genital mutilation (FGM). The figure comes from a Unicef approved survey carried out in 2008, the year that the practice was banned.

A new set of figures are due to be published later this year and doctors expect them to show a 10% decline. That still leaves the majority of women in Egypt exposed to unimaginable physical and psychological pain and denied what the rest of us would call a normal sex life.

The practice is not restricted to Muslims, as has often been claimed, but also carried out by Christians, who make up 10% of Egypt’s population.

The practice predates the arrival of either religion in Egypt - there is evidence that it was practised back in Pharaonic times.

It is a deeply entrenched tradition, which is why it is proving so hard to eradicate.

Serious complications

Dr Randa Fakhr El Din of the Cairo Coalition Against FGM invited me to her surgery on the outskirts of the city, after dark when the last patient had left.

With the help of diagrams and photographs, she explained the difference between the Type 1 and Type 2 FGM routinely practised in Egypt.

Type 1 involves the removal of the clitoris; Type 2 the removal of the clitoris and the labia - the “lips” that surround the vagina, those hyper sensitive parts of the female genitalia which make the sexual act a pleasurable one.

She then showed me pictures of what can go wrong when amateurs wield the blade - infection, inflammation, giant cysts and injuries which can make it impossible to have a natural childbirth.

“Women dread the pain of sexual penetration,” she explains, “but some girls die before they ever marry. There is an artery close to the clitoris. If the cut goes awry, many girls simply bleed to death.”

Paradoxically, because of the ban, more girls are dying: “Their parents won’t take them to the hospitals in case they get reported and imprisoned.”

‘Curbing desire’

In the rural areas of Egypt, in Upper Egypt, however there is scant respect for the law. You hear the words “tradition”, “custom”, “honour” uttered like a mantra when people justify their decision to circumcise their daughters.

The belief there is that it is the female who is sexually rampant and that her sexual desire must be arrested at a young age, before she can disgrace the family.

“It is important that she loses that part of her body that awakes sexual desire. If not, she may play with herself or ask a boy to touch this part for her, not specifically a stranger, but one of her cousins for instance, and she might enjoy it,” Olla told me. “When she feels the pain of it she will be more careful about this part.

“I know the doctor might be punished for this, but still there are doctors who are practising it,” she said. “And if the doctors won’t do it then we will get the daya.”

The daya is a local midwife. In Olla’s village she is a large, shambling woman in flowing robes who passes through the streets with impunity.

Acting with impunity

Om Mohammed was totally uninhibited as she extolled to me the benefits of her work: “I love it like my own eyes because I need the money. Take me to prison if you want to, take me anywhere, but I will keep circumcising girls. I want the money.

“Circumcision is healthy for girls. I know this - purified girls grow taller and get marriage proposals, but unpurified girls stay short and stubby.

“Some women say they won’t have their daughters purified when the social worker is around. They humour her until she leaves and once she is gone they come and ask me to circumcise their girls. I have her mother, her aunt or neighbour hold her while I cut her,” she explained.

The interview was carried out in the hearing of members of the local NGO which, with the help of Unicef, is trying to eradicate the practice in the area.

“Why don’t you simply take her to the local police station?” I asked them. “After all, what she is doing is illegal.”

“Who are we going to report to?” Nivine Rasmi, one of the NGO workers, responded. “If we tell a police officer in the local station, we will be reporting to an officer who believes in it and is probably doing it to his own daughters.”

I accompanied Nivine as she went from house to house in the village trying to persuade mothers not to mutilate their daughters …

It is custom, tradition and religion that we are fighting, Nivine explained: “If a girl is discovered not to have been genitally mutilated on her wedding night, a husband or mother-in-law might demand that she is sent back to her family and her chances of marriage can be destroyed forever.

“We start by talking to religious leaders, Christian and Muslim alike, and try and get them to understand our point of view.”

All the anti-FGM campaigners I met in Egypt spoke enthusiastically about the help they were getting from the educated classes, doctors, priests and imams …

In the nearby town of Akaka, the local protestant priest, Reverend Yacoub Eyad of the Assemblies of God Church, explained the difficulties of getting the message across: “Raising the issue is a problem. Even talking about sexual relations within marriage is not tolerated by members of our congregation. So we pray that God will help us in reaching people with this message.”

The local imam, Rabea Taha Farag, spoke with equal determination and commitment: “In the past, the imam in mosques didn’t have enough information on this issue, but now cultural and educational expansion have allowed people to know more and understand the wrong acts that were done before.

“We are here working hard with the NGOs on spreading the word of not having FGM. We are ordered by the Prophet not to do it.” …

Read Whole: BBC News

I remember my dad talking to another doctor, who was visiting us from Egypt about this - how they can work to get rid of the practise through various charity initiatives… it’s astonishing to hear that such practices remain prevalent even today - against all religious rulings and you’d think common sensibilities.

As a Psychiatrist, he said such archaic practices can often result in long-standing mental health issues, alongside the more obvious practical issues related to their sex lives; indeed studies have shown that women (disgracefully) subjected to FGM “showed a significantly higher prevalence of PTSD (44.3%), depression (33.6%), anxiety disorder (45.6%) and somatic disturbance (36.7%) than the uncircumcised girls”.

This cultural practise being falsely paraded as religion has no grounding in the Muslim faith (and I’m sure Christianity too, as the priest detailed above). It needs to be eradicated - not only from Egypt, but everywhere - and the sooner it vanishes from the face of the earth, the better.