despite-ban-female-genital-mutilation-rife-in-egypt-1.1452027

Practice linked to belief it curbs women’s libido and boosts morality

By Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent, Nahed Ahmad, Special to Gulf News
Published: 13:55 February 5, 2015

Image Credit: AP
Suhair Al Bata’a

Cairo: Years after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM), Nadia, 44, still recalls the gruelling experience in her Nile Delta village.

“I was about ten years old when my father told my mother to prepare me for the purification [circumcision] and asked her to feed me well,” Nadia, now a mother of five including two girls, says.

“When I asked my mother what this purification meant, she told me that it would keep me pure until I got married and ensure I remained faithful after marriage. Shortly later, the ‘health barber’ of our village showed up with his distinguished briefcase. At that moment, I realised it was my turn like my older sister to get circumcised,” she adds. “I was led into a room of our house where my father held me tight and the barber carried out the operation amid my cries.”

Nadia is one of an estimated 90 per cent of Egyptian women, who have undergone the practice that although criminalised is thought to be still rampant in the country, mainly in rural areas. The practice, believed to have been observed in Egypt for thousands of years, involves the removal of all or part of the clitoris.

Despite the pain she has suffered due to the procedure, Nadia insisted that her two daughters undergo FGM. “All women in our village and the neighbouring villages have been circumcised. This operation is necessary because it controls the girl’s [sexual] desire and keeps her a virgin until she is handed over to her husband,” says Nadia declining to give her full name for fear of legal punishment.

“Our religion also calls for it,” says Nadia, who left school in the ninth grade.

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When reminded that moderate Islamic clerics have ruled that FGM is un-Islamic, Nadia, a Muslim, quickly dismisses those clergymen as “men of the government”.

In 2007, Egypt’s leading Islamic official, the grand mufti, issued a fatwa (a religious edict) stating that FGM is forbidden in Islam. The following year, the practice was banned, threatening violators with imprisonment.

In the past, FGM was performed in Egypt by local midwives and ‘health barbers’ without an anaesthetic, using knives or razors. In recent years, however, more than 60 per cent of circumcisions have been performed by physicians and nurses, according to Unicef.

Last week, an Egyptian court sentenced a doctor to two years and three months in prison after convicting him of violating the ban and performing FGM on Suhair Al Bata’a, a 13-year-old village girl, who died of complications from the operation. The victim’s father was given a suspended three-month jail sentence on charges of complicity. Their trial marked Egypt’s first on violating the 2008 ban.

The ruling coincided with an awareness-raising campaign against FGM aired on Egyptian TV stations.

Since the ban was issued, non-governmental groups and the state-backed National Council for Motherhood and Childhood have made efforts to halt the practice, usually done for local girls before reaching puberty.

‘Brutal operation’

Propelled by their trauma, some mothers have rebelled against the tradition. Majda Shukri, a government employee and a mother of three girls, is one of them.

“I can’t forget the first shock of my life, when I was forced as a child to undergo this brutal operation of female circumcision,” says Shukri, who holds a university degree in accounting.

Majda, 42, blames the procedure for occasional bleeding she has since suffered and problems in her sex life as a wife.

“Therefore, I decided not to expose my girls to what I had suffered,” adds Majda, who lives in a working-class area in northern Cairo. “Whenever my husband, who has rural roots, suggested we do the operation on our girls, I used to delay it, claiming that the weather was too cold or too hot and we had to wait until it was warm so as to ensure that they would recover quickly,” she says. “As time went on, he stopped raising the issue either because he was distracted by life pressure or because he became convinced that chastity is based on a proper upbringing and has nothing to do with this torture called circumcision.”

However, to avoid social censure for not having her daughters circumcised, Majda is careful about discussing the issue with her relatives and neighbours.

“Whenever they ask me whether my daughters have been circumcised, my answer is yes. If they learnt that my daughters have not been circumcised, they would see us as an immoral family. This could affect my daughters’ chances of marriage.”

Activists in this country of around 90 million contend that Egypt has a long way to go before FGM becomes a matter of the past.

“This phenomenon is rife in the populous and rural areas due to deeply-rooted traditions, which make a girl’s chastity reliant on being circumcised,” says Faten Sarhan, an anti-FGM campaigner. “The efforts against this barbaric tradition are still hampered by extremist clerics, who allege that female circumcision is obligatory in Islam. Egyptian Christians also believe that the practice is part of their faith,” adds Faten, referring to Egypt’s Coptic minority.

“In some areas [in Egypt], men request that their future wives have been circumcised before marriage. It should be clear that female circumcision is the main factor in many cases of divorce as it makes the wife sexually frigid.”

Experts say that severe forms of FGM can lead to lifelong psychosexual problems and physical troubles related to menstruation and childbirth.

“While we talk about empowering the woman, we should first stop this aggression inflicted on her as a child on the pretext of protecting her chastity and promoting morals,” says Faten. “I hope the ruling in the case of Suhair against the doctor and her father will be a big deterrent and a driving force in this long battle.”

— Nahed Ahmad is a journalist based in Cairo