[pnews-news] Female Genital Mutilation in Iraq and other Muslim countries

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(see other article at http://pnews.org/archives/)

  The Irish Times, Tue, Oct 25, 2005
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2005/1025/1413799758FR25BIRCH.html

Study provides proof of female genital mutilation in Middle East

IRAQ: In a Kurdish area of Iraq, 60 per cent of women had been
circumcised, writes Nicholas Birch in Germian.

Set on a pebble-strewn plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a
place forsaken by time.

Fat-tailed sheep amble past mudbrick houses and brushwood pens. The odd
sickly palm tree provides shade for children's games. There is no
electricity.

Yet, along with 39 other villages in this area Iraq's Kurds call Germian
- hot place - Hasira and its people have carved out their small place in
history.

Surveyed by WADI, a German NGO based in Iraq for more than a decade, it
has provided the first statistical proof of the existence of female
genital mutilation in the Middle East.

"The results were shocking," says WADI director Thomas von der
Osten-Sacken. Of 1,554 women interviewed by his local medical team, more
than 60 per cent said they had undergone the operation. WADI is
currently raising funds for a survey of the entire Iraqi Kurdish region.

Look up the operation on the web and you'll almost certainly find
yourself reading about northeast Africa, where the majority of women are
circumcised.

However, female genital mutilation is also known to exist throughout the
Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. If it is
less well-known here, one United Nations official in Egypt says it's
largely due to "the attitude of the region's governments".

Osten-Sacken couldn't agree more. When WADI presented its results in
Vienna this spring, he recalls, Austrian Arab groups accused the NGO of
being an agent of the Israelis.

Even the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, which have backed efforts to stop
female genital mutilation since the 1990s, were rattled.

"The [ Kurdish] Ministry of Human Rights hauled us in for questioning,"
says Assi Frooz Aziz, of WADI's medical team. "They accused us of
publicising the country's secrets."

It is not just officialdom that has held up awareness of the phenomenon.
If it is practised relatively openly in parts of Africa, in the Middle
East it is veiled in secrecy.

"You can't just walk into a village and ask people if they circumcise
their daughters," says Germian social worker Hero Umar. "These people
only talked because we've been bringing them medical help for over a
year."

A farmer's wife, Trifa Rashid Abdulkerim, says she learned circumcision
techniques from her neighbour and took over when she stopped. "June is
the best time of year," she says, "and the best age for patients is
anywhere between three and eight."

The operation she describes is identical to descriptions heard
throughout the Iraqi Kurdish area. Charcoal is applied before as a
painkiller. After, the child is sat in a bowl of water and antiseptic
solution. Asked about the specifics of the procedure, she falters. "I
just cut off the top," she says, embarrassed.

It's a reference to what is sometimes termed the "Sunna" circumcision,
the partial removal of prepuce and sometimes clitoris that some Muslims
attribute to a tradition taught by the prophet Mohammed.

Campaigners opposed to female genital mutilation point out that it
crosses religious and ethnic boundaries, but Iraqi Kurdistan's chief
cleric acknowledges that Islam holds contradictory views on the
practice.

"According to the Shafi'i school, which we Kurds belong to, circumcision
is obligatory for men and women," Mohamed Ahmed Gaznei explains. "The
Hanbali [ law] say it is obligatory only for men."

Personally opposed to the practice, Gaznei in 2002 issued a religious
edict, or fatwa, calling for imitation of Hanbali practice. He regularly
appears on television to preach against female genital mutilation.

In Germian, where electricity, let alone access to TV, is in short
supply, the message is taking time to get through. "They say the food an
uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean," says Hasira villager Shirin Ali,
"and that a circumcised girl has more affection for her family."

This summer in a village an hour north of Hasira, WADI workers say, a
newly married woman was so victimised by her in-laws for not being
circumcised that she did the operation herself. They had to take her to
hospital.

Hero Umar, the social worker, nonetheless thinks attitudes are beginning
to change.

"Most imams are co-operative," she notes. "The biggest obstacle
remaining is the older generation of women." Since early October, she
and her colleagues travel armed with a new tool - a 20-minute
documentary on male genital mutilation. They say reactions have been
overwhelmingly positive.

Judging by remarks made by this reporter's translator on the dirt track
leading out of Hasira, though, there is still plenty of work to be done.

"I see nothing wrong with the operation, as long as it is done under
anaesthetic," says this educated urbanite. "Because they are unable to
control their sexual urges, uncircumcised women are more likely to be
deflowered before marriage. That, in our society, is a shameful thing."

) The Irish Times


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