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'''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. | '''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.<ref>UNICEF [https://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGMC_2016_brochure_final_UNICEF_SPREAD.pdf Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: a Global Concern (2016)]</ref> 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.<ref name=":2">[http://archive.today/2021.04.09-040325/https://fgmtruth.wordpress.com/what-percentage-of-global-fgm-are-moslems-responsible-for/ What Percentage of Global FGM is done by Moslems ?]</ref> | UNICEF's 2016 report into FGM estimates that in the 30 countries surveyed at least 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM.<ref>UNICEF [https://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGMC_2016_brochure_final_UNICEF_SPREAD.pdf Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: a Global Concern (2016)]</ref> 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.<ref name=":2">[http://archive.today/2021.04.09-040325/https://fgmtruth.wordpress.com/what-percentage-of-global-fgm-are-moslems-responsible-for/ What Percentage of Global FGM is done by Moslems ?]</ref> And assuming a world population of Muslims of 1.7 billion, this means that at least one in five (20%) Muslim women. | ||
The 20% of FGM attributable to non-Muslims occurs in communities living in FGM-practicing Islamic societies (e.g. the Egyptian Copts<ref>[http://archive.today/2021.04.09-040655/https://copticliterature.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/prevalence-of-and-support-for-female-genital-mutilation-within-the-copts-of-egypt-unicef-report-2013/ Prevalence of and Support for Female Genital Mutilation within the Copts of Egypt: Unicef Report (2013)]</ref>), or to non-Islamic societies that have been hubs of the Islamic slave trade (e.g. Ethiopia and Eritrea<ref>[https://data.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/A-Profile-of-FGM-in-Ethiopia_2020.pdf A Profile of Female Genital Mutilation in Ethiopia]</ref>). About one in eighty (1.28%) non-Muslim women are genitally mutilated world-wide. [[File:Fgmmuslimmap.jpg|alt=World maps comparing distributions of FGM and of Muslims|thumb|World maps comparing distributions of FGM and of Muslims|left|350x350px]]FGM predates Islam. The [[Banu Qurayza|Banu Quraysh]], Muhammad's native tribe, appear to have engaged in the practice (see [[User:Flynnjed/Sandbox#FGM before Islam|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 [[User:Flynnjed/Sandbox#FGM%20in%20the%20Hadith|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 [[User:Flynnjed/Sandbox#FGM in the Qur.27an|FGM in the Qur'an]]) | 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 [[User:Flynnjed/Sandbox#FGM in the Qur.27an|FGM in the Qur'an]]) | ||
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{{Main}} | {{Main}} | ||
[[File:Madhhabplusfgm.jpeg|thumb|Maps showing distribution of madhabs and prevalence of FGM]] | [[File:Madhhabplusfgm.jpeg|thumb|Maps showing distribution of madhabs and prevalence of FGM]] | ||
Only one school of Islam - the Shafi'i - makes FGM universally obligatory. The other schools of Islam recommend it with differing levels of obligation. | Only one school of Islam - the Shafi'i - makes FGM universally obligatory. The other schools of Islam recommend it with differing levels of obligation. No school of Islam forbids FGM since nothing that Muhammad allowed can be prohibited. | ||
===Sunni Islam=== | ===Sunni Islam=== | ||
*The Maliki school decrees FGM as recommended, but not obligatory. | *The Maliki school decrees FGM as recommended, but not obligatory. | ||
*The Hanafi school decrees that FGM is optional. | *The Hanafi school decrees that FGM is optional. The Hanafi is the school of fiqh which least favours . Hanafi communities generally don't practice FGM. | ||
*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 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 | *The Hanbali school has have two opinions concerning FGM: some scholars decree it obligatory, other as 'honourable' and therefore recommended. | ||
===Shia Islam=== | ===Shia Islam=== | ||
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===Modern Fatwas=== | ===Modern Fatwas=== | ||
See [[Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Female Genital Mutilation#Modern Fatwas]] | |||
==The History of FGM== | ==The History of FGM== | ||
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==The origins of FGM== | ==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 | 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 afford harems of hundreds of concubines (the word 'concubine' is a euphemism for sex-slave).<ref name=":0">'[http://webarchiv.ethz.ch/soms/teaching/OppFall09/MackieFootbinding.pdf Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account' Gerry Mackie (1996)]</ref><ref>[https://pages.ucsd.edu/~gmackie/documents/BeginningOfEndMackie2000.pdf 'Female Genital Cutting: the Beginning of the End' Gerry Mackie (2000)]</ref><ref>[http://pages.ucsd.edu/~gmackie/documents/UNICEF.pdf 'Social Dynamics of Abandonment of Harmful Practices: A New Look at the Theory' - John Lejeune and Gerry Mackie (2008)]</ref> | ||
In a monogamous marriage a husband and wife can spend much time together (and thus better monitor each others fidelity), can | In a monogamous marriage a husband and wife can spend much time together (and thus better monitor each others fidelity), can develop strong bonds, and their sexual and emotional needs are more-or-less proportional. But 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, and provide with offspring. If these needs are not satisfied, his wives will be tempted to be unfaithful, and this may result in the high-status man rearing children that are not his own - the worst outcome for a man, genetically speaking. The consequence of this is that the modesty, chastity, fidelity and purity of girls and women, wives and potential wives, is an aggravated anxiety amongst polygynous men. And the greater their polygyny the greater the anxiety. [[File:Polygamy-fgm.jpg|alt=maps showing distribution of polygamy (its legal status and/or its practice) and the distribution of FGM|thumb|maps showing distribution of polygamy (its legal status and/or its practice) and the distribution of FGM]] | ||
Chastity assurance practices evolve | Chastity assurance practices therefore evolve which assure the chastity of multiple wives: '''harems,''' guarded by eunuchs, imprison 'concubines'; '''footbinding''' (as once practiced by the Chinese) imprisoned girls and women by reducing their mobility; '''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 dehumanise girls, making them less identifiable and desirable to other males. '''FGM''' is 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). | ||
FGM is | |||
In polygynous societies: | In polygynous 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; | |||
*a married high-status man remains available to further marriages (unlike in monogamous societies); | *a married high-status man remains available to further marriages (unlike in monogamous societies); | ||
*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; | *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 | *marriage to high status men is advantageous to the bride's family, who will benefit not only from the bride-price, but also from having a high-status male as a relative. | ||
Thus in polygynous societies it is preferable to be the n<sup>th</sup> wife of a rich man than the | Thus in polygynous societies it is preferable to be the ''n<sup>th</sup>'' wife of a rich man than the sole wife of a poor man. This makes polygynous societies intensely ''hypergynous'' (hypergyny: 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. | 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. | 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. Lower-ranking families must therefore compete with each other to ''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 females’ immodesty, the more likely she is to be pure”…'' | |||
FGM (and other chastity assurance practices) become 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 become '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 the society's modesty practices. The avoidance of stigma becomes as much an incentive to mutilate one's daughters as making a good marriage. | |||
FGM | {{Quote|[http://archive.today/2021.04.24-033223/https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation Female genital mutilation, WHO (2020]|Where FGM is a social convention (social norm), the social pressure to conform to what others do and have been doing, as well as the need to be accepted socially and the fear of being rejected by the community, are strong motivations to perpetuate the practice. In some communities, FGM is almost universally performed and unquestioned.}} | ||
Communities that practice FGM tend to do so at near 100% levels. This 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 birth or the husband during intercourse; that FGM enhances a woman’s facial beauty; that an 'uncut' vulva is ugly; that a ‘cut’ vulva is more pleasurable to the husband; that FGM enhances fertility; that FGM improves a woman's health and hygiene. 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 | 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 and having to support those daughters for the rest of their lives, 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<ref name=":0" /> - worked spectacularly well with footbinding in China. However, it has been much less successful with FGM, probably because footbinding was a secular practice, whereas FGM is a religious one. | ||
==Islamic Doctrine that creates social conditions favourable to FGM== | ==Islamic Doctrine that creates social conditions favourable to FGM== | ||