Gents, is FGM a quality you look for in your prospective wife?

[x_quizit]

Raula, we're pretty much saying the same thing. I did say that i blamed the women, such as the midwives and the mothers who think w/o the practice, their daughters may become un-marriageable, but I also gave the men their share of the blame since i did say it was introduced by them. What's astonishing to me, and maybe we arrived at different conclusions due to our different encounters and experiences, majority of ppl i see who still support it are women, because they have been indoctrinated with that idea, and some of u may have seen different where it is the men who are still for it. Bottom line is, regardless of what sex supports it, it needs to be completely banned and stop using the excuse of islam as a reason to do it. We should remove the social stigma from un-circumsized girls and realized that a woman will keep her honor through her deen, not b/c of of stiches.

 

Peace

[raula]

I agree w/u X-Q Gal...totally

[HONEY-D]

a little dirty history: a woman from the groom's side would be sent to check if girl is fgm or not.

Is that a fact. :confused:

 

Some people actually believe gals who are not mutilated cant somewhat control themselves what a load of crap. :rolleyes:

[Reality Check]

Is FGM practiced outside of Somalia by somalis?

 

I havent heard of any cases here.

[Gediid]

This debate is common among societies where the men aren't circimcised too.I remember a pilot friend of my dad's from Uganda who had to go under the chopping knife when he decided to marry a woman from a another tribe whose traditions included mens circumcision(apparently it wasnt the norm in is his tribe).Imagine the embrassment of having to be circimcised at age 40......... :rolleyes: :eek:

 

I just dont understand how someone can pose such a question,we know what FGM is all about and the effects it has on women.For anyone to make that a precondition of marriage is absolutely absurd.I dont think any guy in his right mind should care about something a girl was subjected to at age 6 or 7.

I would however make it extra clear to my wife to not put my daughters through the same torture waa haddi Ilaahey i siiyo.

[x_quizit]

DA, yeah, FGM is still practiced, last i heard of it anyways, therefore, it isn't a practice that is reserved for somalis living back in the homeland. Most ppl took their ideas of FGM when they left back home, and sadly, little girls are being subjected to it.

 

I was watching a documentary not too long ago, about a married somali couple, where the husband insisted on making sure his wife was circumsized by opening her himself in the marriage bed, not allowing her to go to a gyno to open her so that her first experience won't be painful. According to him, if he allowed that, he would "lose face" in front of his friends and the larger society and deemed weak for not opening her himself. :eek:

 

Also, I know of a neighbor who still gets herself circumsised, voluntarily, after giving birth to her kids. Thats' a prime example of ignorance. :mad:

 

Peace

[Dhagax-Tuur]

A$$ All

 

Thanks all of you for contributing to this topic.

 

You all made fine points. But the fact of the matter is, this feeling is deep-rooted in somali male psyche. Quite a number of them. And as you all know or heard about, there are incidents where girls were divorced when they were married just because they were not sewn (virgin).

 

Allah watches us all, Allah will judge us.

 

Let us judge the present time and the person's actions of today, not what they did in the past or the conditions of their body parts.

 

1,2,3........Say Boooo to FGM once and for all!

 

 

How about introducing Islam as a form of abstinence instead of resorting to FGM?

Good intrusion x_quizit.

 

Salaams.

[pearl]

Raxiil:

quote: a little dirty history: a woman from the groom's side would be sent to check if girl is fgm or not.

Is that a fact. :confused:

 

ya some tribes used to practice it.

 

 

Is FGM practiced outside of Somalia by somalis?

 

its illegal in most parts of the world, so some parents resort to taking their daughter back home to get it done. my own cousin visited her grandmama in Holland, and the old lady decided to deceive her into going to to abu dubia for shopping only to get her fgm, alhamdualliah she heard it before they left for abu dubia and refused to go. sad thing is her parents in toronto actually wanted and supported the grandmama's decision. how cruel!

[HONEY-D]

ya some tribes used to practice it

Thats disgusting imagine the poor gals reaction.

 

 

 

my own cousin visited her grandmama in Holland, and the old lady decided to deceive her into going to to abu dubia for shopping only to get her fgm, alhamdualliah she heard it before they left for abu dubia and refused to go. sad thing is her parents in toronto actually wanted and supported the grandmama's decision. how cruel!

I'm glad the poor girl didnt go throu that otherwise she would've been traumatised. As for the parents they're just ignorant about the issue but i dont think they meant to hurt her.

 

 

I was watching a documentary not too long ago, about a married somali couple, where the husband insisted on making sure his wife was circumsized by opening her himself in the marriage bed, not allowing her to go to a gyno to open her so that her first experience won't be painful. According to him, if he allowed that, he would "lose face" in front of his friends and the larger society and deemed weak for not opening her himself.

shouldnt What goes in the bedroom stay confidentail. :confused:

 

Also, I know of a neighbor who still gets herself circumsised, voluntarily, after giving birth to her kids. Thats' a prime example of ignorance.

Here in Uk its illegal to get stitched.

[Warrior of Light]

We all say its illegal but people still do it. African tribes also do it. Ive heard of a few young girls have bleed to death making the news in the tabloids in africa. Heard of a somali lady being sliced (due to family pressure ie they will lose face) a couple of days before her wedding night, The groom divorced her when he found out.

. Its a shame really guess its upto our n the younger generation im excluding our ayeyos coz they still insist on it to try to educate people. Religion knowledge is needed to curb any society from promiscuity.

[Curly]

Raxill it's illegal but it still happens in the UK. I knew of an Arab man who was wanted by the police after accidentally killing a child when he was under the knife. This man also does a lot of FGM for Somali girls living in the UK, where parents usually the mother pay up to £60 for it to be performed at home. But obviously it's not the complete stitching up that is done back home but still it's horrible and there should be more done about it!

 

For god sake these women rather have some man not to mention "wanted man" perform the surgery than not have it done at all!

I know a girl this happened to when she was 14 and what made me think was that her mother had the cheek to ask her to wear a hijaab but the girl refused and said to her mother

 

"What do you care about religion...so he can see by private parts and but not my hair?!"

 

she also told me she asked her mum who would know if she didn't have it done anyways...for goodness sake that was a 14 year old!

 

I also know another girl, who came to be for advice because she was having problems with her FGM, that she was unable to do normal things and because she was worried about telling her mother because she thought that her mum will call her a whore. And she was seriously considering going to a clinic by herself and getting it opened or corrected without telling a soul.

 

Walahi it makes feel sick to the core because I feel so angry and yet so powerless when I hear about FGM and I can understand why some well-known Somali woman have decided to raise awareness about FGM. I've actually worked for a Somali community for youths but this subject was and still is a total taboo because the girls are worried about how their families will treat them if they were to tell people about it and were to somehow find out.

 

So what I want to know is...have the Somalis come to the point were they value culture over religion and social morals?!

 

Oh and in answer to the actually topic starter's question. I believe that the majority of men within the Somali community couldn't careless about FGM but it's the narrow minded, shortsighted women who propagate and sell these twisted ideologies to the younger generation in hope of maintaining one of the most barbaric cultures around.

 

Walahi I only hope one day that FGM becomes a lost and forgotten about practise everywhere, because it isn't just the Somalis who perform FGM.

[SomeAlien]

im so happy my mother and aunts are all vocally against it. wallahi i get furious when i hear of girls of my generation or even younger who have to go through this cruel and unusual operation.

 

also, i think its the traditional somali men from somalia who are more "pro mutilation", because the stereotype that we or it is dirty and incapable of controlling our hormones is prevailent back home (which is ironic considering what we see here).

[Warmoog]

^Somealien^, sister, we need more people like your Mom and Aunts around because it takes a lot of courage to do stand up to the wrongs being done in one's cultural community... and, better yet, be vocally against it. May more of our people do the same. :cool:

 

It's disappointing that none or few of our religious leaders speak out against FGM. I've personally never met or even heard of one single religious leader (be they male or female) doing that. It's indicative of how deeply rooted the problem is in Somali society. :confused:

 

Salaama.

[Benevolent_ Beauty]

As a young person i've always been told that FGM is an absolute neccessity in our religion and a prerequisite to performing prayer. Now the FGM am referring to as the brutal kind, more commonly phrased cliterodectomy. Long story short, am doin some personal research on it and came across this article on IslamiCity.com which i thought was relevant in some sense to our discussion....

 

 

Female Genital Mutilation: An Islamic Perspective

A war is raging, with extremists on both sides, over the issue of circumcision. On one side are fanatic secularists whose antipathy to religion has induced them to engage in a crusade against all forms of circumcision, including male circumcision, as a form of child abuse. On the other side are ignorant traditionalists who have ascribed to religious belief cultural traditions involving horrific forms of female genital mutilation (FGM, which they defend as a form of "female circumcision"). In between the extremes are many well-meaning people confused about the actual nature of the scientific evidence and the religious prescriptions regarding all sorts of practices involving any form of cutting in the genital areas.

 

In this pamphlet we shall concentrate on female genital mutilation. Male circumcision is clearly a Muslim tradition. Although it is not prescribed in the Qur'an, it was definitely approved of by the Prophet and he was himself circumcised. The beneficial health consequences of male circumcision are widely known, although some medical groups have begun to waver as to whether they are sufficiently great to justify the fact that infants are circumcised "against their will." We leave this debate for another time and place and mention it here only so that the lay reader may be aware that there is a broader context to the debate over female genital mutilation, which is the debate over whether any form of infant mutilation, including male circumcision constitutes child abuse. We restrict ourselves here to the subject of female genital mutilation and leave the debates over male circumcision and the piercing of infant girl's ears to another time and place.

 

A concise discussion of the main subject requires a detailed prolog to clarify some issues regarding both the nature of Islamic law and the medical terms used to identify the various forms of FGM. Understanding the background of the matter will permit the reader to understand the Islamic position on this question.

 

It must be understood that Islamic law has a well-defined tradition of jurisprudence. The sources of Islamic law include both revelation and reason. The efforts of scholars to attain understanding of the shariah (i.e., the Divine Law) through various tools (which we shall not detail here) is called ijtihad.

 

One fundamental of the Islamic law is that what is not prohibited is allowed. This makes for a great deal of tolerance in the religious law. As a result of this tolerance many pre-Islamic practices were not immediately eradicated by Islam. When such practices came to be unpopular (or unfashionable) in future centuries, the tolerance of Islamic jurisprudence was mischaracterized by those inimical to Islam as "backward." It was as if someone from a genteel class of society were to condemn America's toleration for body piercing among its young people as proof of the "barbarism" of American law. It would be wise to remember that there is a great burden of proof that Islam puts upon those who wish to prohibit a practice, and that the requirement for such proof is a strength of the Islamic law. Toleration is a strength, not a weakness.

 

In this discussion I shall refer to any form of permanent cutting the genitals as "genital mutilation." Some may feel this is prejudicing the case, since the words certainly sound pejorative. I think the term is fair, however, since the purpose of all the procedures under discussion-and the purpose of male circumcision and of the now commonly practiced forms of body piercing, including the piercing of the ears done by almost every Western female-is unquestionably to mutilate those parts of the body cut or pierced. The issue of interest, then, is not whether mutilation is involved but rather whether it is religiously (or morally) and/or medically desirable or contraindicated.

 

Although there is no reference to circumcision at all in the Qur'an, there is a well-established tradition of male circumcision in Islam as a "sunnah" act. In the Abrahamic tradition this act is understood as a fulfillment of a covenant with God, but there are numerous health reasons for the practice. There is no mandate at all for female circumcision, however, neither in the Qur'an, the traditional reports (called hadith), nor medical theory.

 

Although female circumcision is not mandated, one tradition of disputed authenticity permits (but does not encourage) the removal of a minuscule segment of skin from the female prepuce, provided no harm is done:

 

A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina [Madina]. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: 'Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.' - Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 41, #5251.

 

One does not want to make too much of this tradition, as it is classified as "weak" by Abu Dawud (the compiler) himself. Nonetheless, it clearly forbids severity in circumcision and bases such limitation on both the potential to harm the woman and the potential to make her less desirable to her husband. Yet, despite the restriction against severity, the Prophet did not here prohibit circumcision completely.

 

Permitting such a ritual constitutes an act of tolerance by Islamic law for pre-Islamic practices, and may be overruled by the Islamic prohibition against harmful acts. Consider, for example, that Islamic law protects a woman's right to sexual enjoyment, as demonstrated by the fact that a woman has the right to divorce on the grounds that her husband does not provide sexual satisfaction. It follows that Islamic law prohibits clitorodectomy (partial or complete removal of the clitoris) or infibulation (excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening), or any genital mutilation which impairs the woman's ability to enjoy sexual relations. Such prohibitions are consistent with the hadithic warning against severity in female circumcision.

 

If the Islamic law does not mandate female genital mutilation and tolerates only the most mild form of circumcision (and that only if it produces no adverse effects in the child), then how does it come about that so many people from certain countries with large Muslim populations insist that savage acts which exceed these limits are not only permitted, but required by Islamic law? The answer becomes obvious when one realizes that Christians from many of these countries also insist that the tradition is mandated by their religion as well. People often confuse traditions rooted in local culture with religious requirements.

 

Immigrants from such countries now residing in the United States stand between the culture of their heritage and the American culture of their environment. They cannot and should not be expected to abandon their religion. There should be no doubt, however, that the young amongst them, at least, will be willing to abandon old-world cultural practices at odds with their adopted culture when such practices are unsupported by religion. (This is because they carry no cultural bias towards such practices. On the contrary, they may absorb biases against them from their adopted culture.)

 

For Muslims, cliterodectomy and infibulation should be considered haram (prohibited) practices and opposition to it should be part of our ongoing mandate to fight against superstition and oppression. As to the mildest form of female circumcision, the risks to the girl's future ability to enjoy sexual relations with her husband must place it at best in the category of makruh (disliked) practices. Since it has neither hygienic nor religious value, there is no justification for Muslims to engage in this painful and potentially harmful practice and it would be best to avoid it completely.

[HONEY-D]

Raxill it's illegal but it still happens in the UK. I knew of an Arab man who was wanted by the police after accidentally killing a child when he was under the knife. This man also does a lot of FGM for Somali girls living in the UK, where parents usually the mother pay up to £60 for it to be performed at home. But obviously it's not the complete stitching up that is done back home but still it's horrible and there should be more done about it! QUOTE]

 

 

Sue i was refering to pearl's point regarding a woman who gets stitched up whenever she gives birth to a child. i sometimes work with the NHS and you cant imagine how dreadful it is to see first time mothers strugling to give birth.