Female Genital Mutilation in Islam

Female Genital Mutilation (Arabic: ختان المرأة) is the practice of cutting away and altering the external female genitalia for ritual or religious purposes. It can involve both or either Clitoridectomy and Excision. Clitoridectomy is the amputation of part or all of the clitoris (or the removal of the clitoral prepuce). Excision is the cutting away of either or both the inner or outer labia. A third practice, Infibulation (or Pharaonic circumcision), is the paring back of the outer labia, whose cut edges are then stitched together to form, once healed, a seal that covers both the openings of the vagina and the urethra. Infibulation usually includes clitoridectomy.

UNICEF's 2016 report into FGM estimates that in the 30 countries surveyed at least 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM.^[1] Assuming a world population of 7.9 billion, this means that about one in twenty girls or women world-wide have undergone FGM. About 80% of this FGM is attributable to Muslims.^[2] Most of the remaining 20% is attributable to non-Muslims living in FGM-practicing Islamic societies (e.g. the Egyptian Copts^[3]), or to non-Islamic societies that have been hubs of the Islamic slave trade (e.g. Ethiopia and Eritrea^[4]). Assuming a world population of Muslims of 1.7 billion, this means that at least one in five (20%) Muslim women, and about one in eighty (1.28%) non-Muslim women are genitally mutilated.

FGM predates Islam. The Banu Quraysh, Muhammad's native tribe, appear to have engaged in the practice (see FGM before Islam). Muhammad maintained the practice after migrating to Medina and is recorded as approving of the practice in four hadith. Two other hadith record the sahabah (Companions of Mohammed) engaging in the practice. (see FGM in the Hadith)

The Qur'an contains no explicit mention of FGM. However, Quran 30:30, by exhorting Muslims to 'adhere to the fitrah' indirectly, but ineluctably exhorts Muslims to engage in FGM. (see FGM in the Qur'an)

The FGM hadith give very few clues as to the nature of the practice they approve. Hence the nature, incidence and distribution of FGM varies between countries and communities. The most significant determining factor appears to be the presiding school of Islam (fiqh). Other factors include the culture's level of anxiety around female sexuality, its proximity to Islamic slave-trade routes (Infibulation is associated with the transportation of slaves), and the nature and degree of Christian influence ( see FGM in Islamic law).

Whilst most modern fatwas favour or defend FGM, there has been, over the past half century, a growing unease in the Islamic world concerning the practice (due to a growing concern on the part of organisations such as the UN and UNICEF). This has resulted in some fatwas critical of FGM. It appears that the earliest fatwa clearly critical of FGM was issued in 1984.^[5] (see Modern Fatwas and FGM as Un-Islamic)

The discussion, debate and analysis of FGM tends to focus exclusively on the question of whether it is Islamic or not. This is not surprising. It arises partly because the majority of Muslim don't practice FGM and have, over the past half century, become troubled by the sizeable minority of Muslims that do practice it. The focus on the doctrinal issue may also be in part, because it offer a shortcut to explaining the existence of FGM in the Islamic world: if a mother cites her religion as the reason for having her daughter mutilated, and that mother's imam decree the practice as required by Islam, then it feels that something has been demonstrated and proved.

However, as the section FGM before Islam demonstrates, FGM existed before Islam, and there is no evidence that pre-Islamic FGM was religiously-motivated. Thus FGM can not solely a religious practice - there must have been other reasons for its existence in pre-Islamic societies.

It is all too natural to consider FGM as nothing more than an arbitrarily misogynistic practice. However, it is actually a solution to certain social problems - albeit problems that not all societies suffer from, and that no society need suffer from. The section the origins of FGM will consider what these 'problems' are, and why they arise in some societies. The next section (Islamic Doctrine that creates social conditions favourable to FGM) shows how Islam doctrine reproduces the very factors that made FGM useful or necessary in some pre-Islamic societies. A third section (Functions of FGM) considers how the social purposes of FGM is realised through the experience of the individual child undergoing FGM.

FGM in the Qur'an and Hadith

There is no explicit reference to Female Genital Mutilation in the Qur'an. However, the Quran 30:30 requires Muslims to 'adhere to the fitrah'.

The word 'fitrah appears only this once in the Qur'an, and is left undefined and unexplained. To know what 'fitrah means, traditional scholars turned to hadith which make use of the word. Note that this hadith uses the Arabic word khitan (ختان) for 'circumcision'.

Two other hadith use the word khitan in contexts where the procedure is unquestionably being performed on females (and only on females).

Three hadith use the word 'khitan to refer to both FGM and Male Circumcision.

Thus, the word 'khitan' appears to refer to both or either FGM and Male Circumcision. According to traditional interpretive methodology, Quran 30:30 by requiring Muslims to 'adhere to the fitrah' advocates FGM.

A sixth Hadith reports Uthman, one of Muhammad's closest companions, having newly converted women under go FGM as part of their initiation into Islam. The word he uses is not الْخِتَانُ (khitan), but فَاخْفِضُو (khaffad), which translates as 'reduce them' or 'trim them'.

The remaining hadith includes an exchange of insults between Meccan warriors and Muhammad's companions prior to the battle of Uhud. It has little import doctrinally, but is of linguistic, historical and sociological interest because it appears to indicate that Muhammad's native tribe, the Banu Qaraysh, traditionally practiced FGM.

FGM in Islamic Law

Only one school of Islam - the Shafi'i - makes FGM universally obligatory. The other schools of Islam recommend it with differing levels of obligation. Since nothing that Muhammad allowed can be prohibited, no school of Islam can forbid FGM.

Sunni Islam

• The Maliki school decrees FGM as recommended, but not obligatory.
• The Hanafi school decrees that FGM is optional.
• The Shafi'i school decree FGM to be obligatory. Infibulation, the most severe form of FGM practiced under Islam, is almost entirely attributable to followers of the Shafi'i school.
• The Hanbali schools has have two opinions concerning FGM: some scholars decree it obligatory, other as 'honourable' and therefore recommended.

Shia Islam

The attitudes of Shia Islam towards FGM are as not clear-cut as with the schools of Sunni Islam. The Jafari school appears to recommend FGM, while the Ismaili school ( notably the Dawoodhi Bohras) treat it as obligatory.

Modern Fatwas

see Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Female Genital Mutilation#Modern Fatwas

The History of FGM

FGM before Islam

Islamic sources

The hadith 'One Who Circumcises Other Ladies' suggests that FGM was practiced by the Banu Quraysh, Mohammed's native tribe, and that the FGM reported in the Hadith (which therefore took place after Mohammed's migration to Medina) was a practice carried over from pre-Islamic Mecca.

The Hadith tells how, prior to the battle of Uhud, Hamza, one of Mohammed’s companions, taunts the Meccan warrior, Siba. Hamza implies that Siba is like ‘Ibn Um Anmar’ – a woman who was a known circumciser of women. The more descriptive phrase muqteh al-basr – ‘one who cuts clitorises‘ – is used rather than the usual khitan.

This taunt suggests that clitoridectomy was practiced by the Quraysh, and that it was a role reserved for women, probably of low-status, hence its insulting nature when directed against a warrior. The taunt could only be effective if it humiliated Siba in the eyes of both his fellow Meccan warriors and also the Muslim warriors. Thus its use implies that members of both camps had knowledge of the practice and a shared culture of clitoridectomy. The fact that a circumciser of women could be famous (or notorious) also suggests that it was an established practice with the Meccan Quraysh.

Non-Islamic sources

There is evidence that FGM was practiced before the birth of Muhammad in the Middle East and along the African coast of the Red Sea. The following are listed in roughly chronological order.

There are reports that some Egyptian mummies show signs of FGC. However this appears to be disputed.

A spell or prayer found on an Egyptian coffin dating from sometime between 1991–1786 BC appears to refer to an uncircumcised girl.

An analysis of this hieroglyph by the Egyptologist Saphinaz-Amal Naguib suggests that the procedure referred to was not the infibulation that has become commonly associated with Ancient Egypt (hence ‘pharaonic’ circumcision), but rather clitoridectomy. This seems to be confirmed by other later Greek descriptions of the Egyptian practice.

A fragment referring to a fifth-century B.C. history by Xanthos of Lydia (Western Asiatic Turkey) uses the word 'castrated' in relation to women. It may refer to FGM, or some method of permanently sterilizing women.

'There are several classical references from the geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus (fl. 2nd century BC., who identified a tribe living on the west coast of the Red Sea which excised their women in the manner of the Egyptians, and that another group cut of in infancy with razors the whole portion that others circumcise'. ^[6]

A papyrus dated from 163 BC refers to the operation being performed on girls in Memphis, Egypt, to coincide with the time when they received their dowries.

Strabo (64 or 63 BC – c. AD 24), a Turkish-born Greek geographer, observed the practice whilst travelling up the Nile.

Another passage from Strabo suggests that Jews practiced FGM some time after Moses’ death.

The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC – 50 AD) reports in his ‘Questions on Genesis’^[7]:

The Greek physician Galen (129-c. 200 AD) notes that the Romans developed a procedure which involved slipping fibulae (the latin word for ‘brooches’) through the labia majora of female slaves as a form of contraception. He also notes in his ‘Introductio sive Medicus’:

Greek physician, Soranus of Ephesus (1st/2nd century AD. Ephesus was a Greek colony found on the west coast of Turkey) also noted the same procedure. One of the titles in his manual of gynecology is ‘On an excessively large clitoris’. The actual text of this chapter has not survived. However there exists a translation, probably from the the sixth century AD:

Caelius Aurelianus, a fifth-century AD physician from Sicca Veneria (modern el-Kef in Tunisia), synthesised much of Soranus’s work. In a chapter entitled ‘On an excessively large clitoris’, he wrote:

Closer to the time of Mohammed, the Byzantine Greek physician Aëtius of Amida (fl. mid-fifth century to mid-sixth century. Amida was located where modern Diyarbakır now stands in east Turkey) describes a clitoridectomy, citing the physician Philomenes:

Paulus of Aegina (Aegina is one of the Saronic islands of Greece), a 7th Century AD urologic surgeon, was something of an expert and gives his version of how to perform the procedure (the word ‘nympha’ usually refers the labia minora, but here seems to be being also used of the clitoris):

FGM since 622 CE

reported that inland from Mogadishu a group has

The British explorer  in his account of his journey in Africa between 1768 and 1772 reports

James Bruce also reports that the Catholic missionairies in Egypt thought Copts practiced excision “upon Judaic principles”, therefore, they “forbade, upon pain of excommunication, that excision should be performed upon the children of parents who had become Catholics”.

Browne reported in 1799 that Egyptians practice female excision, and that infibulation to prevent pregnancy is general among female slaves, who come from the Black south.

***

Other travelers to Egypt (Larrey 1803 and Burckhardt in 1819) confirm Browne and claim that Moslem slave traders infibulated young female captives.

* * *

The explorer Sir Richard Burton claimed that “Female circumcision […] is I believe the rule among some outlying tribes of Jews.”

The origins of FGM

The roots of FGM as lying in polygyny, particularly the kind of extreme polygyny that existed at the heart of empires, where some men could become powerful and wealthy enough to be able to afford harems of hundreds of concubines (the word 'concubine' is a euphemism for sex-slave).^[8][9][10]

In a monogamous marriage a husband and wife can spend much time together (and thus better monitor each others fidelity), can grow close to one another, and their sexual and emotional needs are more-or-less proportional. In polygynous societies the high-status men who can afford to keep multiple wives face a problem guaranteeing the fidelity of their many wives, whom he must satisfy emotionally and sexually, provide with offspring. If these needs are not satisfied, his wives will be tempted to look elsewhere, and this may result in the high-status man rearing children that are not his own.

Chastity assurance practices evolve to which assure the chastity of wives: harems keep 'concubines' locked away, guarded by eunuchs; footbinding (as once practiced by the Chinese) reduces the mobility of girls and women chaperoning and gender segregation eliminate interactions between the sexes; arranged and child marriages obviate the dangers that romance and courtship pose to a girl's chastity and reputation; veiling makes girls less desirable and identifiable to other males.

FGM is, of course, a chastity assurance practice. It reduces women's capacity for sexual pleasure both physically (through the removal of the clitoris and labia, or sealing the vagina shut) and mentally (through the effects of trauma).

In polygynous societies:

• a married high-status man remains available to further marriages (unlike in monogamous societies);
• the only acceptable role for a girl to aspire to is that of 'wife'. A girl can only better her life by marrying a rich man;
• the wealth gradient tends to be steeper – the poor poorer, the rich richer ;
• marriages involve the payment of a brideprice by the groom (or his family) to the bride (or her family), which will be higher from a rich man than from a poor man;
• marriage to high status men is highly advantageous to the bride's family, who will benefit from the bride-price and from having a high-status male as a relative.

Thus in polygynous societies it is preferable to be the n^th wife of a rich man than the only wife of a poor man. This makes polygynous societies intensely hypergynous (hypergyny is the tendency for women to marry men of higher social status).

To stand a chance of making an 'advantageous' marriage girls must meet the requirements of the high-status polygynous men i.e. persuade him that she is 'pure', chaste and will be faithful. This is demonstrated by adopting the chastity assurance practices required by polygynous elite, whether it be FGM and/or other practices mentioned earlier. The intensely hypergynous nature of polygynous societies means that the marriage requirements of high-status polygynous men cascade down through the ranks of society, and are adopted by almost all families.

In polygynous societies the marriage market heavily favours polygynous elite men, because they are relatively few elite polygynous men whilst there are many lower-ranking potential brides. Low-ranking families must therefore compete with each other and persuade higher-ranking men to marry their daughters. It is not enough to simply adopt the elite’s marriage-practices, the daughter has to be made to stand out from the crowd of other candidates hoping to make a hypergynous match.

A girl’s fidelity, purity and chastity becomes her most important selling-point and the more spectacularly she can advertise this the better. Families therefore seek to make conspicuous the ‘honour’ of their lines, the purity of their females, and their commitment to the values of chastity, fidelity and modesty. In a process analogous to Sexual Selection in Nature, female modesty takes on a competitive value rather than an intrinsic one and this provokes an ‘inflation’ of modesty practices and attitudes: “one wrong word about my sister and I will kill you”…”the smaller the foot, the better the family”….”the more extreme the cutting the better the girl’s reputation”…”the more harshly a family punishes its daughters’ immodesty, the more likely she is to be pure”…

FGM becomes a symbol, a proxy, for chastity and fidelity. Girls and families who do not observe these Chastity Assurance practices are stigmatised as 'impure', contaminating and guaranteed to be unfaithful if anyone should have the misfortune to marry them. They are 'untouchable' and suffer discrimination, ostracism and persecution. Only the daughters of the poorest families, who can not afford to engage in such practices, remain unmutilated. They serve as public demonstrations of the ignominy that results from not following modesty practices. The avoidance of stigma becomes as much an incentive to mutilate one's daughters as making a good marriage.

The universality of FGM within a local intramarrying community generates folk beliefs: that women must have excessively lascivious natures to require such scrupulous guarding and restraint; that the clitoris will grow to the length of a goose’s neck if not removed during childhood; that contact with the clitoris kills, be it the baby during its birth or the husband during intercourse; that an 'uncut' vulva is ugly; that FGM enhances a woman’s facial beauty; that FGM improves a woman's health and hygiene; that a ‘cut’ vulva is more pleasurable to the husband; that FGM enhances fertility. These folk beliefs are self-enforcing because the believed consequences of violating them are sufficiently grave that their truth is never tested – they are ‘belief traps’. This is the case not only with those folk beliefs which threaten death, but also those which postulate the un-marriageability of the uncut girl.

FGM persists even if its originating conditions lapse, and even when the majority of the community wish to abandon the practice. In a community where it is a pre-condition of marriage that a girl should be mutilated, a parent who doesn't have his daughters mutilated risks having unmarried daughters to support those daughters for the rest of his life, and also suffer the stigma and persecution that comes with having uncut daughters. Thus the consequences of not having his daughters mutilated only serve to reinforce, in the eyes of the community, the necessity of having one's daughters mutilated. The only way a community can abandon FGM is if the whole community, or a significant part of it, in a coordinated manner, pledges to not mutilate their daughters and also, crucially, pledges to only marry their sons to unmutilated girls. This approach - the Pledge Association method - worked spectacularly well with footbinding in China. However, it has been much less successful with FGM, probably because whilst footbinding was a secular practice, FGM is a religious one.

Islamic Doctrine that creates social conditions favourable to FGM

As might be evident from the previous section, Islam, by allowing and encouraging polygyny, not only reproduces the originating conditions for FGM but also enshrines in law and custom secondary consequences of polygyny, such as bride-price, veiling, gender segregation, arranged marriage, child marriage, and excessive preoccupation with feminine 'purity'. Indeed, Islam could be characterised as: the codification and sacralisation of polygyny, and of the consequences of polygyny.

A society's kinship system shapes the rest of the culture around itself and has far reaching implications - determining laws, beliefs and institutions that, at first sight, can appear unrelated to kinship and reproduction.

Thus, even if Islamic doctrine didn't explicitly mandate/allow FGM, it is possible that FGM would still be associated with Islam, since by sacralising the causes of FGM and also its consequences it erects round the practice an institutional and normative armature that culturally justifies and normalises it.

Monogamous kinship systems approach a state of equilibrium where every man and woman can expect to find a spouse. This state of equilibrium is impossible in a polygynous system. Females become a commodity with both inherent value (their beauty, and their reproductive and home-making capacities) and status value (the more you have the higher your status). This fuels a dynamic where the demand for marriageable females always exceeds the supply, where elite men can never have enough wives and poor men are doomed to systemic bachelorhood.

The 'bride-famine' that develops amongst poor low-status men is alleviated by introducing ever more females to the marriage market: children, cousins, and females captured in raids (either to be taken as wives by the raiders, or sold as sex-slaves to the elite). Where such raids are not an option - celibate young men direct their sexual frustration towards females closer to home: the girls and women of their community. This makes for sexually violent societies. And this ambiance of sexual violence further amplifies the anxieties of families and husbands with regard to the chastity and purity of their females - leading them to sequester and protect their females even more from young men. This is a positive feedback dynamic whose endpoint is the complete absence and invisibility of non-familial females from the lives of the low-status young men, who are doomed to systemic chronic bachelorhood.

The case of Liberia seems to confirm that Islamic laws alone, even in the absence of doctrine explicitly mandating or favouring FGM, may be sufficient to cause FGM. In Liberia FGM is practiced as an initiation rite into women's secret societies. A 2020 survey found that 38.2% of Liberian girls and women have been subject to FGM.^[11] Whilst only 12% of Liberia's population is Muslim, its marriage and kinship practices are essentially Islamic: men can have up to 4 wives, a third of all Liberian marriages are polygamous, a third of married women aged between 15-49 are in polygamous marriages, and married woman's rights to inherit property from her spouse are restricted.^[12] Liberia is marked by the sexual violence that is a characteristic of polygynous societies, and to which chastity assurance practices such as FGM are a response.

The supposed perfection of Islam, makes it hard for Muslims to identify the social causes of the sexual violence endemic to their societies. It is instead attributed to notions that female sexuality is excessive, indiscriminate and dangerous if left unchecked by chastity assurance measures such as FGM. Islam thus creates a concurrence of dysfunctional marital, sexual and kinship practices. It overvalues the chastity and purity of females whilst, at the same time, creating sexually violent societies which put that very chastity and purity at increased risk. The solutions Islam offers to this conundrum exacerbate the problems thus creating a social and normative context in which chastity assurance measures such as FGM, become useful or even necessary.

Sex-slavery

Islam permits sex-slavery, nor limits the number of sex-slaves a man can own.

Gerry Mackie suggests that it is extreme polygyny that gives rise to chastity assurance measures such as FGM. In a closed system (where females are not imported), the extent of polygyny is limited by the number of females in the system and the number of of systemically agamous young men (which, being a cause of crime, conflict and unrest, is a destabilizing force).^[8] Extreme polygyny is therefore only possible if sex-slaves are introduced into the system. We can note that the famously large harems of the Sultans, Shahs and Sheiks scrupulously respected Islamic law (e.g. the Sultan Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif of Morocco^[13] had four wives and at least 500 'concubines', and Fat′h Ali Shah Qajar, the second Shah of Iran, also had 4 wives, but also a harem of 800-1000 'concubines'). Extreme polygyny without sex-slavery (i.e. females forcibly imported into the system) creates correspondingly extreme bride-famines at the bottom of society, and also deprives the affected men of a means whereby to relieve that famine. This makes for unstable societies - where the interdiction on capturing sex-slaves would not, anyway, be respected.

Furthermore polygyny that is strictly restricted to a maximum of four wives (with no sex-slavery permitted) loses its power as a status symbol and becomes less desirable to elite men, and likewise diminishes the community's hypergynous drive. Thus in the absence of sex-slavery polygyny tends to diminish and die out.

Historians estimate that two thirds of slaves under Islam were girls or women. Whilst local raids on neighbors fuel tribal polygyny, Islamic polygyny drew on sources of slaves from far afield - especially Africa. This involved captured women and children in long treks across the continent, often to Ethiopia or Zanzibar for transportation to Arabia. These treks were risky and took a heavy toll on those in captivity. Virgins (and therefore prepubescent or adolescent girls) were the most valuable slaves. Infibulation (the sealing up of the vagina) developed as a technology to protect the virginity of these girls over these long hazardous treks (four out of five slaves died during the forced march to the slave trading post at Zanzibar. There appears to be a correlation between the historical centres of the Islamic slave trade and the distribution of infibulation today, and the influence of the Islamic slave trade could explain the pervasiveness of FGM in Islamic Africa today.

It should be noted that boys suffered an even worse fate than girls. In a process analogous to infibulation (see description below) captured boys between the age of ten and fifteen were systematically castrated in order to become eunuchs to guard the harems of elite Muslim men. Malek Chebel estimates the death rate had a 10% survival rate,^[14] Charles Gordon (1833 – 1885), governor of Khartoum, estimated the procedure had a 0.5% survival rate. Because of their rarity, eunuchs were worth about twelve times the other slaves because of the death rate from the operation.

Mahr

The payment of bride-price (mahr) by the groom (or his family) to the bride (or her family) is mandatory in Islamic law.

All marriages in polygynous kinship systems involve some kind of bride-price. The scarcity of marriageable women which polygyny causes turns them into a valuable asset, that is cashed in when she is 'sold' in marriage. The scarcer marriageable women are the greater the dowries. This makes marriage unaffordable to low-ranking young men, even if they do manage to find a bride. But if a girl is perceived to be unchaste, or if she’s been a victim of sexual violence, she becomes impure and un-marriageable and loses all her economic value. This leaves her family stuck with a valueless commodity that they must support for the rest of their lives. This creates a further incentive for parents to engage in chastity assurance practices such as FGM.

Child marriage

Islamic law sets no lower age at which a girl can be married off.

Introducing little girls into the marriage market is a response to the the scarcity of women caused by polygyny and child marriage is universal to polygynous societies. Dowry further incentives child-marriage, as it becomes advantageous for parents to ‘sell-off’ their daughters before adolescence, when reputations (and therefore also the girl's economic value) are at greater risk. The bride-price for a child is generally less than for an adolescent or adult woman. This makes children a more affordable to poor and low-status men. Polygyny increases mens' paternity anxieties and doubts, and also creates anxieties connected to the management of multiple wives – therefore submissiveness, obedience, manipulability are valued in a wife - characteristics more pronounced in younger brides. It has been observed that polygamous men select younger girls as wives (even as first wives) than monogamous men.

In monogamous societies, the incest taboo extends not only to daughters but also to women young enough to be a man's daughter. This separation of generations does not naturally occur in polygynous cultures. Polygyny thus sexualises the society's perception of prepubescent girls, making them vulnerable to the sexual violence endemic to polygynous societies. This drives down the age at which chastity assurance practices (including FGM) are felt to be required.

Sexual dysfunction and incest

Long-term prisoners and boys in single-sex boarding schools, when deprived of contact with female coevals, tend to direct their sexuality at the next best things available viz other boys or other prisoners. Under Islamic restrictions boys and girls are deprived of contact with unrelated coevals of the opposite sex. The next best thing available - those whose faces are visible, to whom they can talk, whom they might touch - will be mothers, aunts or sisters - or other boys, babies and children, or even livestock. The evidence for the effects of this on sexual health is anecdotal, but one can hypothesise that rates of incest, bestiality, paedophilia and otherwise deviant sexuality will be higher in polygynous societies, especially where multiple chastity assurance practices are in place, and that paedophilia, incest and bestiality are considered more acceptable than in monogamous cultures, where chastity assurance practices are absent. FGM, infibulation in particular, may serve as much to protect a girl's chastity from the attentions of immediate family members, as from sexual violence of the wider community.

Violence against girls and women

Islamic law permits wife beating.

Social scientists such as Joseph Heinrich, et al. and William H. Tucker have shown that polygynous societies are by their very nature belligerent and sexually violent. These societies develop chastity assurance measures to protect girls and women from this sexual violence.

The bride-famine created by polygyny dooms a sizeable proportion of young men to systemic bachelorhood. The resulting sexual frustrations can be relieved by them capturing females from neighbouring tribes and countries. However, a more available and less dangerous option is to engage in sexual violence towards girls and women of their own community.

Polygyny by increasing the society's anxieties around the 'purity', chastity and reputations of girls and women, gives rise to 'honour culture' – whereby excessive measures and excessive punishments are used to control girls and women, and to stop the family's honour being sullied by any (actual or percieved) unchastity of female members. This honour, once lost, can only be restored by severe and violent punishment and revenge, including murder of the female family member and/or the male that compromised her honour.

Polygynyous societies (including Islamic ones) are pervaded by a generalised violence that normalise practices such as FGM: sexual violence, male circumcision, the licitness of wife-beating, public executions and amputations, the glorification of violence in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, the requirement of Jihad, and animal cruelty, including halal slaughter and the mass public slaughter of animals during Eid, – all act to desensitize the culture to the violent nature of practices such as FGM.

The polygynous family

Polygynous households tend to be characterised by:

• competition and rivalry among co-wives
• increased spousal age gaps
• decreased genetic inter-relatedness within the household
• reduced confidence as to the husband's paternity of the children (which increases his sexual jealousy and anxiety)
• more step-parents.

All these factors correlate with increased neglect of, and violence towards, children, either from the father or from step-mothers. Data from 22 sub-Saharan African countries finding that children of (rich) polygynous families were 24.4% more likely to die compared with children of (poor) monogamous families. Fathers have less involvement with their many wives, and even less involvement with their even more numerous children (Osama bin laden’s father had 54 children by 22 wives and is reputed to have not known many of his children's names). Islam encourages parents, relatives and teachers to treat and discipline children in ways that are considered unnecessarily harsh in the non-Muslim world.

All this and the physical violence and wife-beating that is common in polygynous/Islamic families normalises the cruelty of FGM.

FGM as an Initiation Rite

Islamic FGM is not an initiation rite. However, non-Islamic FGM often is and as Islamic FGM geographically approaches these cultures it often takes on certain aspects of initiation ritual (e.g. Gambia).

The function of chastity assurance is fundamental to both the pre-Islamic origins of FGM and also to Islam's adoption, maintenance and spread of FGM. However, chastity assurance doesn't fully explain certain near-universal aspects of FGM - in particular the eschewal of anaesthetics (either general or local), even when available. (proof)

This aversion to the use of anaesthetics It is a characteristic

Islamic FGM

https://answersafrica.com/top-10-reasons-why-female-genital-mutilation-in-africa-is-evil.html

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/female-genital-mutilation-no-anaesthetic-before-she-cut-me-1.2093014

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13131835.i-screaming-mother/

lack of anaesthetics

https://answersafrica.com/top-10-reasons-why-female-genital-mutilation-in-africa-is-evil.html

pain

https://answersafrica.com/top-10-reasons-why-female-genital-mutilation-in-africa-is-evil.html

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19042103/female-genital-mutilation-survivor/

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a6504/female-genital-mutilation-survivor-stories/

http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2014/02/07/the-pain-is-far-worse-than-childbirth-fgm-survivor/

- break down personality

- instill fear and submission*

- frigidity and trauma

- chastiry assurance

Arguments de-linking FGM and Islam

As the above quote suggests, the idea that FGM might be un-Islamic appears to be relatively new. The earliest fatwa clearly critical of FGM appears to be from 1984^[15] and since then there have been fatwas critical of FGM. However, most are favourable towards the practice. (see Modern Fatwas)

An Ngram for the terms ‘fgm’, ‘female genital mutilation’ and ‘female circumcision’ shows an increased use of ‘mutilation’ and 'FGM' as against the more anodyne 'circumcision' starting around 1990. This coincides with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which first identified female genital mutilation as a harmful traditional practice, and mandated that governments abolish it as one of several 'traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children'.^[16] Soon afterwards organisations such as the World Health Organisation (1995),^[17] the Council of Europe (1995), and UNICEF & UNFPA (1997)^[18] also issued reports critical of FGM.

For the first time narratives critical of FGM started penetrating the Islamic world, parts of which began to feel uneasy about Islam's association with FGM, and have consequently sought to de-link the two by showing that FGM is un-Islamic.

The 'FGM as un-Islamic' narrative is reinforced by the fact that it is a minority of Muslims that practice FGM. Immigration to the West has till recently come from the Maghreb and Hanafi countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, or the Maghreb. The Hanafi is the school of fiqh which least favours FGM, merely ruling it as 'optional', and the Maghreb practices a Maliki Islam that appears to eschew FGM. These immigrant populations have effectively imported the 'FGM is un-Islamic' narrative to the West. This narrative is challenged by the rise in immigration from countries such as Indonesia and Somalia, and the Kurdish Middle East^[19], where FGM-rates are high and the practice is accepted as compatible with Islam.

The 'FGM is un-Islamic' narrative is further reinforced because the practice gives rise to a dilemma whereby telling the truth (or even just making known facts and evidence) is likely to aggravate the problem.

In recent decades many agencies and charities have engaged themselves in the fight against FGM^[20]. These agencies face a particular challenge when interacting with individuals and populations who practice FGM: how, for example, does an anti-FGM charity respond to a Somali mother who asks whether FGM is Islamic? If the charity worker tells her about the FGM in the hadith, and how FGM is part of the fitrah (which Qur'an 30:30 exhorts Muslims to adhere to - see FGM in the Qur'an), and how the school of fiqh which the Somali woman follows, the Shafi'i, makes FGM mandatory - then that mother will come away from that interaction more likely to have her daughter mutilated, not less.

This dilemma is faced not just by on-the-ground charity workers, but the whole hierarchy of institutions devoted to combating FGM, including politicians, the media and academia. To resolve the dilemma a number of propositions have evolved to defend the proposition that FGM is un-Islamic (each item in the list links to a full analysis and evaluation of each argument)

• FGM Is Not Required by Islam
• There Is No FGM in the Qur'an
• FGM Existed Before Islam
• FGM Is an African Practice
• Christians Practice FGM Too
• Not All Muslims Practice FGM
• The FGM Hadith Are Weak
• The Qur'an Forbids Mutilation
• 'Circumcision' is not Mutilation
• There Is No Record of Muhammad Having His Wives or Daughters Circumcised
• Muhammad Wanted to Forbid FGM but Couldn't

See Also

• Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Female Genital Mutilation
• Female Genital Mutilation in Islamic Law

References