[Cheese]

Originally Posted by calgaryblood

Muslims don't perform female mutilations. It's culturally done and some happen to be Muslims. It has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

http://www.meforum.org/1629/is-femal...slamic-problem

New information from Iraqi Kurdistan raises the possibility that the problem is more prevalent in the Middle East than previously believed and that FGM is far more tied to religion than many Western academics and activists admit. Many Muslims and academics in the West take pains to insist that the practice is not rooted in religion[1] but rather in culture. "When one considers that the practice does not prevail and is much condemned in countries like Saudi Arabia, the center of the Islamic world, it becomes clear that the notion that it is an Islamic practice is a false one," Haseena Lockhat, a child clinical psychologist at North Warwickshire Primary Care Trust, wrote.[2] True, FGM occurs in non-Muslim societies in Africa. And in Arab states such as Egypt, where perhaps 97 percent of girls suffer genital mutilation,[3] both Christian Copts and Muslims are complicit.
But at the village level, those who commit the practice believe it to be religiously mandated. Religion is not only theology but also practice. And the practice is widespread throughout the Middle East. Many diplomats, international organization workers, and Arabists argue that the problem is localized to North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa,[4] but they are wrong. The problem is pervasive throughout the Levant, the Fertile Crescent, and the Arabian Peninsula, and among many immigrants to the West from these countries. Silence on the issue is less reflective of the absence of the problem than insufficient freedom for feminists and independent civil society to raise the issue.

and from Ayaan Hirsi Ali

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/...e-8534299.html


Hirsi Ali says FGM is a symptom of the “whole virginity obsession” within largely but not exclusively Muslim communities abroad, and sometimes here. Forced marriage, honour killings and child brides are similar horrors related to a “purity” required in women but not men. “Actually it should be a man’s campaign. Why do they need a virgin? Why do they need a woman whose genitals have been demolished? Is that the only way to express their manhood?”