Female Circumcision in Kurdish Iraq

Okay....where the Hell else is this being practiced regularly on this godforsaken planet?

I knew it to be a phenomenon in parts of Africa, but did not realize it was 'prevalent' in the Middle East as well. According to the Science Christian Monitor, the suspicion that this mutilation was going on has been confirmed for the first time.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0810/p06s01-woiq.htm

Ugh...

KIRKUK, IRAQ - Set on an arid plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time. Sheep amble past mud-brick houses and the odd sickly palm tree shades children's games. There is no electricity.

Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it.

Of 1,554 women and girls over 10 years old interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907, or more than 60 percent, said they had had the operation. The practice is known to exist throughout the Middle East, particularly in northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, and Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest it is present in Syria, western Iran, and southern Turkey.

But while this practice was suspected in the region, there was never solid proof that the procedure was so prevalent.

This has got to be one of the more atrocious practices foisted upon women since the dawn of time, so Im surprised to hear that Kurdish villages are perpetuating this. I had this simplistic idea that Kurds were more 'western' somehow than other groups in the region. What's worse, many of these poor women don't even understand exactly how backwards and unnessessary it is, since the practice is bathed in superstition and myth. The last line in this blockquote is the most telling, and in a small way gives me a little hope:

In Germian, however, information is slow to filter through the population. Women are still thought to be promiscuous if they are uncircumcised, some people here say.

"They say the food an uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean," says Shirin Ali, "and that a circumcised girl has more affection for her family."

WADI workers said that four months ago in a village just north of Hasira, a newly married - and uncircumcised - woman was so badly treated by her in-laws that she performed the operation on herself.

Hero Umar, the social worker, nonetheless thinks attitudes are slowly beginning to change.

"Most imams are cooperative," she notes. "The biggest obstacle remaining is the older generation of women."

The good news is that these findings took everyone in the region by surprise (FGM is not discussed generally, these findings are a big push for getting the word out), and it is being openly discussed.

Sitting in his office in the Kurdish city, Mohammed Ahmed Gaznei explains.

"According to the Shafii school, which we Kurds belong to, circumcision is obligatory for both men and women. The Hanbali say it is obligatory only for men."

Personally opposed to female circumcision, Mr. Gaznei has helped in campaigns to stamp it out.

In 2002, he and other senior Kurdish clerics issued a religious edict, or fatwa, supporting the Hanbali practice. He has since appeared on TV several times to preach against FGM.

You know, I read stuff like this and it only reaffirms my feeling that organized religion had done nothing but fuck up humankind since day one.  I try and try and try to keep an open mind about religion and people's beliefs, but sometimes (often) I just cant understand it at all. Thousands of years of persecution, death, mutilation, superstition, fear, war and general craptacularity.

 Nice going, humankind.