Publius' Forum

-By Warner Todd Huston

(This is part two of my women and Islam discussion)

If you are one who is squeamish, do not read this story of this common Muslim practice of the mutilation of a little girl's private parts. However, if you want to learn of yet one more barbaric Muslim practice, read on. Again, I apologize for the graphic nature of this report, but it is a very important thing for westerners to hear about and understand.

There is a practice among many African Muslims (rarely African Animists, as well) that is euphemistically called "female circumcision". It is not, though, anything like the safe and common --though often considered needless-- operation that males go through in this country. No, it is a brutal mutilation of a girl's vagina.

This "circumcision", more properly called a mutilation, is not done by a Doctor nor is it done in a hospital. It isn't even done with precision instruments and in sterile conditions. Sometimes it is done with shards of broken glass, sometimes with belt knives or scissors. Those who perform this mutilation are mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles or local tribesmen or village "specialists”. Paradoxically, it is done by those who are supposed to love the child being mutilated. And it is done in the name of religion.

The Mutilation

The practice differs slightly in levels of brutality from one Muslim region in Africa to another and can range from the removal of the labia, the outside of the vagina, to a cutting out of the entire clitoris along with the labia. This practice is forced upon prepubescent girls to "prove" their virginity.

In some regions, the mutilated vaginal opening is then sewn shut with a needle and thread to "prove" the girl is a virgin by preventing penetration the “proof” being that the ragged opening will heal together leaving the vagina closed. The tradition is observed that, upon marriage, the man will forcefully slice open his new wife's vaginal scaring and show the village the bloody knife to prove that she was still a virgin at the time of their marriage.

This virginity assurance is one reason that this outrage is done, but there is another, even more oppressive, reason. Once a female's labia and clitoris are removed, she can never experience sexual satisfaction. She is simply physically incapable of deriving any pleasure whatsoever from the act of intercourse.

Imagine a culture that desires to destroy the God given ability of a woman to enjoy the sensations of sexual intercourse? Imagine the hatred for women such a culture exhibits? Imagine the oppression and brutality experienced by women in such a barbaric culture?

This disgusting practice has been made illegal in the USA by act of Congress in 1996. However, not every state in the US has followed through with similar rules in their own legislatures. Additionally, until now, no prosecution for violating this law has ever occurred, due most likely to the fact that such a thing is not so easy to discover.

A Prosecution in Georgia

Dad stands trial over daughter's mutilation

A father stands accused of the unthinkable: brutally cutting his daughter's genitals.

The girl was only 2.

Khalid Adem is accused of circumcising his 2-year-old daughter with scissors.

For the first time a Muslim has been arrested in the USA for perpetrating this brutal attack upon his own child. I am not prepared to say, from the report I cite in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that this father is necessarily the one who mutilated this poor child. The story reports that there was a messy divorce and that the father is claiming the mother did this crime.

I have no desire to necessarily attack the father for this crime, but we must to get to the truth of the matter and discover who was responsible for this barbaric attack on such a young child. My desire is to discover the perpetrator of this crime and send them to jail for a long, long time regardless of who did it. We need to see a conviction for this shameful Muslim practice to set the precedent of the illegality of this monstrous, barbarity.

News Report Fails to Mention Islam

On a side note, the Journal-Constitution went weak in the knees on the fact that this is a Muslim practice mostly in Africa but one that exists throughout the Muslim world. Once again, an American newspaper refuses to delineate clearly that this is just one more brutal, barbarity of Islam.

Neither the word "Muslim" nor "Islam", nor any permutation thereof, appears even one time in the Journal-Constitution's story.

Instead of defining this as a common Muslim practice the Journal-Constitution calls it an "African custom they call genital mutilation". Unfortunately, this is a very misleading explanation. It is not merely an "African custom", but a practice of Muslims the world over in varying degrees.

In any case, we need to understand just how brutal Islam is in how it treats its most vulnerable members: girls and women.

If we are ever to get past the era of Islamic terrorism being visited upon the world today, Islam needs the same sort of reformation that Christianity experienced several hundred years ago. Islam needs to most especially reform its treatment of women and minorities to step into modernity and bring safety, prosperity, and advancement to its peoples.

Pressure from the west cannot but help to bring this reformation about. But we will not be able to assist such a reformation by constantly turning away from these brutal Islamic failings in the name of "tolerance" and politically correct considerations. A spotlight on these brutal, inhuman practices must be realized to help Islam confront its worst failings.

Islam needs introspection but with western excuse making for Islam we do nothing but help them ignore such failings and keeps reform a distant possibility.

We can only be hopeful that this prosecution in Georgia can help bring about Islam's reformation and, in the meantime, save untold young girls the horror of genital mutilation.

See part One of my Women and Islam discussion: Is Muslim Veil Issue Western Intolerance