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Press Review
The diversity of Kurdish women’s perspectives of female genital mutilation
6.2.2015. By Nazar Shabila. The 6th February is marked by the United Nations sponsored awareness day, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. To commemorate this day, Nazar Shabila reveals women’s perspectives in Iraq.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is widely practiced in Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) with a prevalence of around 40%. The prevalence, in fact, varies by geographical locations ranging from 4% in Duhok governorate to 58% in Erbil governorate and 70% in some specific rural areas of Sulaymania governorate. (more…)
VOA: UN, Malaysia Groups Seek to Repeal Fatwa Requiring FGM
March 02, 2015. By Gabrielle Paluch
In 2009, Malaysia’s National Fatwa Committee, the nation’s top Islamic council, required all Muslim women in the country to undergo female genital mutilation, otherwise known as female circumcision.
A recent study indicated that nearly all Muslim women in the country have had the procedure. But now the United Nations is working with the Committee to repeal ruling that made it mandatory. (more…)
Vice: Female Circumcision Is Becoming More Popular in Malaysia
I meet 19-year-old Syahiera Atika at the mall. She spends most Sundays prowling Kuala Lumpur’s mega malls like other women her age, but as she eagerly points out she’s also different. Syahiera is a modern incarnation of Malay culture: She happily embraces Western-style capitalism, while at the same time strictly following the local interpretation of Islam. And as she proudly informs me, that also means she’s circumcised.
“I’m circumcised because it is required by Islam,” she says. The Malay word she uses is wajib, meaning any religious duty commanded by Allah. Syahiera is aware of how female circumcision is perceived in the West, but rejects any notion that it’s inhumane. “I don’t think the way we do it here is harmful,” she says. “It protects young girls from premarital sex as it is supposed to lower their sex drive. But I am not sure it always works.” She giggles at this thought.
Deutsche Welle Persia: Cutting of female genitals
19.2.2015. The Persian program of the German Deutsche Welle recently aired a program about FGM in Iran. In the following we document parts of it (we did not translate some of the general explanations about FGM worldwide):
„The results of a survey show that 83% of women on the island Qeschm and 50% of women in Iranian Kurdistan are mutilated. The researchers are convinced that such practices are also prevalent in other parts of the country. (more…)
HRW: Yemen: No Justice for Past Abuses
Reforms Needed on Child Marriage, Women’s Rights
29.1.2015. (Sanaa) – Yemen’s government has not followed up on promises to take decisive measures to ensure justice for past human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2015. The government should also pass legislation to end child marriage and female genital mutilation, and reform laws that discriminate against women.
Middle East Online: Egypt doctor gets 2 years in jail for fatal female circumcision
26.1.2015. CAIRO – An Egyptian appeals court on Monday sentenced a doctor to more than two years in jail for performing a female circumcision that killed a teenage girl, overturning an acquittal. A lower court in November had acquitted the doctor and the father of 14-year-old Sohair al-Bataa in the first such case brought to the courts since the procedure was banned in 2008.
Weekly Standard: Female Genital Mutilation a Growing Problem in Iran
20.1.2015. by Irfan Alawi and Stephen Schwartz
The hideous practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is neither an exclusively Muslim nor a principally Middle Eastern phenomenon. It exists among non-Muslims through wide areas of Africa.
But in Iraq and Iran, FGM is mainly associated with Kurds. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, which is fighting against the terrorists of the so-called “Islamic State,” has pursued a substantive effort to eradicate FGM. As reported here, the KRG parliament introduced legislation prohibiting FGM in 2007. The law was passed in 2011 and forbade, additionally, child marriage, so-called “honor murders,” and other abuses suffered typically by women. In 2010, the KRG health ministry produced a plan to eliminate FGM and called on Islamic clergy to condemn the custom. (more…)
BBC reports in Persian about FGM in Kurdistan
9.1.2015. by Stop FGM Middle East. BBC Farsy (persian) broadcasted a report about female genital mutilation (FGM) in Iraqi Kurdistan and our work in Iraq, especially the TV campaign showing one of the new advertisements against FGM. This is a good start for a broader discussion about FGM in Iran where FGM is also prevalent in the provinces of Kurdistan, Western Azarbaijan, Kermanshah, Illam, Lorestan and Hormozghan. (more…)
Egypt’s first female genital mutilation trial ends in not guilty verdict
The Guadian, 20.11.2014. The first doctor to be brought to trial in Egypt on charges of female genital mutilation (FGM) has been acquitted, crushing hopes that the landmark verdict would discourage Egyptian doctors from conducting the endemic practice.
Raslan Fadl, a doctor and Islamic preacher in the village of Agga, northern Egypt, was acquitted of mutilating Sohair al-Bata’a in June 2013. The 12-year-old died during the alleged procedure, but Fadl was also acquitted of her manslaughter.
No reason was given by the judge, with the verdict being simply scrawled in a court ledger, rather than being announced in the Agga courtroom.
Sohair’s father, Mohamed al-Bata’a, was also acquitted of responsibility. Police and health officials testified that the child’s parents had admitted taking their daughter to Fadl’s clinic for the procedure.
Despite his acquittal, the doctor was ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds (about £450) to Sohair’s mother for her daughter’s manslaughter, after the pair reached an out-of-court settlement.
Revisiting Reza Aslan’s response to Bill Maher about female genital mutilation
21.10.2014. After Reza Aslan called FGM an African Problem, Stop FGM Middle East contacted PunditFact to set things straight. Here is their clarification:
“Hannah Wettig, who manages the Stop FGM Middle East campaign for Germany-based nonprofit WADI and Hivos, pushes back on the notion of FGM as an “African problem” and criticized UNICEF’s reliance on national survey data. For one, she said, Middle Eastern women may be more reluctant to admit they have been through the procedure, as it’s more secretive than the public rite of passage in some African countries. In addition to Iraq and Yemen, Wettig said it happens in Asian countries that include Oman, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Maldives and the Philippines.”