User:Flynnjed/Sandbox: Difference between revisions

Because of the supposed ‘perfection’ of Islam, Muslims are unable 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.

Islam permits [[Women in Islamic Law|sex-slavery]], nor limits the number of sex-slaves a man can own.  

{{Quote|quoted and translated from 'L'Escalavage en Terre d'Islam' - M. Chebel (2007)|'[...]completely removing the whole genitals, penis and testicles. After castration, those conducting the procedure introduce a lead wire into the urethra which the mutliated boy removes for urination until the cauterization is complete [...] the number who died was far greater to those who survived, essentially because of a lack of care and hygeine, the procedure concerning vital organs'}}

The payment of bride-price (''[[Mahr (Marital 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 in Islamic Law|Islamic law sets no lower age at which a girl can be married off]]. [[File:Niqab-eyes-hijab-niqab.jpg|thumb]]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.

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====

Polygynyous societies (including Islam) 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.

Polygynous households tend to be characterised by:

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

==FGM as Un-Islamic==