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'Reliance of the Traveller' by by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (1302–1367) is the Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law according to Shafi'i School. {{Quote|''Reliance of the Traveler'' [''Umdat al-Salik''], Section e4.3 on Circumcision|'''Obligatory (on every male and female) is circumcision.''' (And it is the cutting-off of the skin [''qat' al-jaldah''] on the glans of the male member and, '''as for the circumcision of the female, that is the cutting-off of the clitoris')}}Nuh Ha Mim Keller's 1991 translation of Reliance of the Traveller is bowdlerised to make its content more acceptable to Western eyes and translates the word 'bazr' ( بَظْرٌ ) as 'clitorial prepuce' instead of simply 'clitoris' (see section [[#Defining Bazr|Defining Bazr)]].

Much of what follows is based on the work of Gerry Mackie, a political scientist who has investigated the social origins of FGM, using comparative-historical sociology and game theory.  Mackie identifies 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).

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 needsare more-or-less proportional. In polygynous societies the rich and high-status men who can afford to keep multiple wives face a problem guaranteeing the fidelity of their many wives. And the more they have the greater that problem becomes. A polygynous man may have anything from two to a thousand 'concubines' whom he must satisfy emotionally and sexually, provide with offspring and keep faithful. If the needs of his wives are not satisfied, they will be tempted to look elsewhere, and this may result in the high-status man rearing children that are not his own.

Consequently, polygynous societies evolve technologies and practices which assure the chastity of both wives and ''potential'' wives.

* '''harems''' keep 'concubines' locked away, guarded by eunuchs;

* '''footbinding''' (as once practiced by the Chinese) reduces the physical independence 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;

* '''FGM''' 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).

Hypergyny is the urge for women to marry into higher strata of society. Polygynous societies are extremely ''hypergynous''. It is considered preferable to be the nth wife of a rich man than the only wife of a poor man. This is because 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.

To stand a chance of making an 'advantageous' marriage girls must meet the requirements of the high-status polygynous men. She, and her family, must persuade him that she is 'pure', chaste and will be faithful. They demonstrate this by adopting (or having their daughter adopt) the Chastity Assurance practices required by polygynous elite man, whether it be FGM or other such practices listed above. 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 rapidly adopted by 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.