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Female Genital Mutilation in Islam: Difference between revisions
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Female Genital Mutilation in Islam (view source)
Revision as of 09:32, 16 February 2022
, 16 February 2022→Islamic Doctrine Creating Social Conditions Favourable to FGM
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A society's kinship system has far-reaching implications for the rest of the culture, determining laws, beliefs and institutions that, at first sight, can appear unrelated to kinship and reproduction. Islam, in allowing and encouraging polygyny, reproduces the originating conditions for FGM. As this section will make clear, Islam also enshrines in doctrine, custom and law ''other consequences'' of polygyny, such as bride-price, veiling, gender segregation, arranged marriage, child marriage, and obsession 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 has far-reaching implications for the rest of the culture, determining laws, beliefs and institutions that, at first sight, can appear unrelated to kinship and reproduction. Islam, in allowing and encouraging polygyny, reproduces the originating conditions for FGM. As this section will make clear, Islam also enshrines in doctrine, custom and law ''other consequences'' of polygyny, such as bride-price, veiling, gender segregation, arranged marriage, child marriage, and obsession with feminine 'purity'. Indeed, Islam could be characterised as ''the codification and sacralisation of polygyny and of the consequences of polygyny''. | ||
Thus, even if Islamic doctrine ''didn't'' explicitly mandate/allow FGM, it would still be associated with Islam, since it also sacralises the ''causes of FGM,'' and also sacrailises the ''consequences'' of FGM, which erect round the practice an institutional and normative armature that | Thus, even if Islamic doctrine ''didn't'' explicitly mandate/allow FGM, it would still be associated with Islam, since it also sacralises the ''causes of FGM,'' and also sacrailises the ''consequences'' of FGM, which erect round the practice an institutional and normative armature that rewards, justifies and normalises FGM, and make it 'useful'. | ||
Monogamous kinship systems approach a state of equilibrium where every man and woman can expect to find a spouse. This state of equilibrium cannot occur in a polygynous system since - assuming an equal number of females and males in the society - every extra wife one man takes will deprive another man of the possibility of finding a bride (imagine a desert island with five men and five women and what happens if one man takes two wives...). Females become a commodity with both inherent value (their attractiveness, their reproductive and home-making capacities) and status value (the more you have, the higher | Monogamous kinship systems approach a state of equilibrium where every man and woman can expect to find a spouse. This state of equilibrium cannot occur in a polygynous system since - assuming an equal number of females and males in the society - every extra wife one man takes will deprive another man of the possibility of finding a bride (imagine a desert island with five men and five women and what happens if one man takes two wives...). Females in polygynous communities thus become become a rare commodity with both inherent value (their attractiveness, their reproductive and home-making capacities) and status value (the more you have, the higher a husband's 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/celibacy. | ||
The 'bride-famine' that develops amongst poor low-status men is addressed by introducing ever more females to the system | The 'bride-famine' that develops amongst poor low-status men is addressed by introducing ever more females to the marriage system. One way of doing this it to make marriageable ever-younger girls and of ever-closer relatives - hence the legitimacy of child and first-cousin marriages in polygynous societies. Females can also be captured from outside the community in raids and wars, either to be taken as wives, or sold as sex-slaves to the elite. But even these measures do not alleviate the Bride Famine. And where raids are not an option - celibate young men direct their sexual frustration towards females closer to home: the girls and women of their community. Thus Polygynous societies are inherently violent, and particularly sexually violent<ref name=":3">[https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/files/henrich/files/henrich_boyd_richerson_2012.pdf The puzzle of monogamous marriage] by Joseph Henrich et al. (2012)</ref>. | ||
This endemic sexual violence further amplifies the society's anxieties 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 and chronic bachelorhood. {{Quote|[https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Civilization-Monogamy-Made-Human/dp/1621572013 'Marriage and Civilization' by William Tucker (2014)]|'In a 2004 New York Times article, a graduate student in his twenties described what it was like growing up in Saudi Arabia. He said that he had never been alone in the company of a young woman. He and his friends refer to women as “BMOs – black moving objects” gliding past in full burkas. Brideprices are steep and men cannot think of getting married until they are well established in a profession. All marriages are arranged and it is not uncommon for the bride and groom to meet at their wedding.'}} | This endemic sexual violence further amplifies the society's anxieties 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 and chronic bachelorhood. {{Quote|[https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Civilization-Monogamy-Made-Human/dp/1621572013 'Marriage and Civilization' by William Tucker (2014)]|'In a 2004 New York Times article, a graduate student in his twenties described what it was like growing up in Saudi Arabia. He said that he had never been alone in the company of a young woman. He and his friends refer to women as “BMOs – black moving objects” gliding past in full burkas. Brideprices are steep and men cannot think of getting married until they are well established in a profession. All marriages are arranged and it is not uncommon for the bride and groom to meet at their wedding.'}} | ||
The case of Liberia seems to confirm that, without doctrine explicitly mandating/recommending | The case of Liberia seems to confirm that an Islamic-style kinship system alone is sufficient to cause FGM, without doctrine explicitly mandating/recommending 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<ref>[http://archive.today/2021.04.20-043407/https://www.28toomany.org/country/liberia/ Liberia - 28 Too Many]</ref>, yet only 12% of Liberia's population is Muslim. However, Liberia's 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.<ref>https://www.genderindex.org/wp-content/uploads/files/datasheets/LR.pdf</ref> Liberia suffers from the sexual violence that is a characteristic of polygynous societies, and to which chastity assurance practices such as FGM are a response (it should be taken into account that Islamic polygyny and FGM were probably introduced to the region by Islamic immigration from Sudan, from empires based in today's Mali, starting from the 13th or 14th century, and later by the influx of infibulated women escaping the slave trade).{{Quote|[https://odi.org/en/publications/the-fallout-of-rape-as-a-weapon-of-war/ The fallout of rape as a weapon of war]|[Liberia] has one of the highest incidences of sexual violence against women in the world. Rape is the most frequently reported crime, accounting for more than one-third of sexual violence cases.}}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 favours a plethora 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 and create a social and normative context in which chastity assurance measures such as FGM, become useful or even necessary. | ||
====Sex-slavery==== | ====Sex-slavery==== | ||