Religious views on female genital mutilation

There is a widespread view among practitioners of female genital mutilation (FGM) that it is a religious requirement, although prevalence rates often vary according to geography and ethnic group. There is an ongoing debate about the extent to which the practice's continuation is influenced by custom, social pressure, lack of health-care information, and the position of women in society. The procedures confer no health benefits and can lead to serious health problems. FGM is practised predominantly within certain Muslim societies, but it also exists within some adjacent Christian and animist groups. The practice is not required by Islam and fatwas have been issued forbidding FGM, favouring it, or leaving the decision to parents but advising against it. However, FGM was introduced in Southeast Asia by the spread of Shafi'i version of Islamic jurisprudence, which considers the practice obligatory. There is mention of it on a Greek papyrus from 163 BCE and a possible indirect reference to it on a coffin from Egypt's Middle Kingdom (c. 1991–1786 BCE). It has been found among Skoptsy Christians in Europe, Coptic Christians in Egypt, Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia, Protestants and Catholics in Sudan and Kenya. The only Jewish group known to have practiced it are the Beta Israel of Ethiopia.

Background

Definition

Until the 1980s FGM was widely known as female circumcision, which gave the erroneous impression that it was equivalent in severity and health effects to male circumcision. In fact, FGM has only adverse health effects and is almost always more extensive than male circumcision. In 1990 the IAC began referring to it as female genital mutilation, as did the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1991. The WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA defined FGM in 1997 as "all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". There are four WHO categories:

Type I: "partial or total removal of the clitoral glans (the external and visible part of the clitoris, a highly sensitive part of the female genitals), and/or the prepuce/clitoral hood (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoral glans.)" Type Ia involves removal of just the prepuce. More common is Type Ib (clitoridectomy), the complete or partial removal of the clitoral glans (the visible tip of the clitoris) and clitoral hood. Type II (excision): complete or partial removal of the inner labia, with or without removal of the clitoral glans and outer labia. Type III (infibulation): removal of the inner and outer labia and the fusion of the wound, leaving a matchstick-sized hole for the passing of urine and menstrual blood. Type IV: all other practices including both more severe forms and symbolic nicking.

Origins

FGM is concentrated in what Gerry Mackie called an "intriguingly contiguous" zone in Africa—east to west from Somalia to Senegal, and north to south from Egypt to Tanzania. The practice is both "contiguously distributed and contagious", he writes: "It spreads across groups as more resource-endowed males encounter less resource-endowed females in circumstances of inequality." Marriageability is its "main engine of continuation". The practice's distribution in Africa meets in Nubia in the Sudan, leading Mackie to suggest that Type III FGM began there with the Meroite civilization (c. 800 BCE – c. 350 CE) to increase confidence in paternity. The proposed circumcision of an Egyptian girl is mentioned on a Greek papyrus from 163 BCE. Spell 1117 of the Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts may refer to an uncircumcised girl ('m't), although there is disagreement about the word's meaning. Found on the sarcophagus of Sit-Hedj-Hotep, the spell dates to Egypt's Middle Kingdom (c. 1991–1786 BCE). The examination of mummies has shown no evidence of FGM. Strabo (c. 64 BCE – c. 23 CE) wrote about FGM after visiting Egypt around 25 BCE, as did Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE – 50 CE): "the Egyptians by the custom of their country circumcise the marriageable youth and maid in the fourteenth (year) of their age, when the male begins to get seed, and the female to have a menstrual flow." Type III FGM became linked to slavery. João dos Santos wrote in 1609 of a group near Mogadishu who had a "custome to sew up their Females, especially their slaves being young to make them unable for conception, which makes these slaves sell dearer, both for their chastitie, and for better confidence which their Masters put in them".

Christianity

The Bible does not mention FGM. Christian authorities agree that the practice has no foundation in Christianity's religious texts, and Christian missionaries in Africa were at the forefront of efforts to stop it. Indeed, they led the way in referring to it as mutilation; from 1929 the Kenya Missionary Council called it the "sexual mutilation of women", following the lead of Marion Scott Stevenson, a Church of Scotland missionary. When, in the 1930s, Christian missionaries tried to make the abandonment of FGM a condition of church membership in colonial Kenya, they provoked a far-reaching campaign in defence of the practice. Despite the absence of scriptural support, women and girls within Christian communities, including in Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania, do undergo FGM. It has been found among Coptic Christians in Egypt, Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia, and Protestants and Catholics in Sudan and Kenya. A 2013 UNICEF report identified 17 African countries in which at least 10 percent of Christian women and girls aged 15–49 had undergone it. In Niger, for example, 55 percent of Christian women and girls had experienced it, against two percent of Muslim women and girls. The Skoptsy Christian sect in Europe practices FGM as part of redemption from sin and to remain chaste.

Islam

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