IRAQ: For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual

TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.

"This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. "We don't know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it."

UGANDA: Sebei Lose Battle Against Female Circumcision

Kampala — Girls are paraded after undergoing circumcision in Bukwo in eastern Uganda. The traditional practice can sometimes lead to over-bleeding

When you enter Bukwo, a remote district in eastern Uganda, you are welcomed by a billboard saying: "Stop female circumcision, it is dangerous to women's health". Any person would expect the Sabiny, who inhabit the area, to take the message seriously, but the turn of events reveals otherwise.

KENYA: 200 Marakwet Girls Forcefully Circumcised

EGYPT: Activists Fight Female Circumcision

The Egyptian government says that circumcising young girls is illegal and inhumane [Bauomy]

Amal Mahmoud, 44, cringed as she recalled the ceremony which took place after her circumcision in a small town south of Cairo 32 years ago. 

"The whole family was gathered in celebration. Everybody was eating and the children were dancing to Egyptian music on full volume," Mahmoud told Al Jazeera.

KENYA: Hiding From The Cruellest Cut

Photo: Justo Casal

Girls such as these are at great risk of FGM in several districts in the country

Hundreds of girls between seven and 17 are seeking refuge in church compounds in western Kenya to avoid the ritual removal of their clitorises, a practice that remains common despite its illegality.

"Local authorities must ensure that these girls are not ostracised by the community and that their education is not disrupted," Andrew Timpson, a senior protection officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya, told IRIN on 16 December.

Timpson made a field visit to Kuria East and Kuria West districts in early December to examine the condition and protection needs of 340 girls who had fled their homes to avoid undergoing female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

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Study Guide for "Born in the Big Rains" by Fadumo Korn

To view the reading guide, click on this link To purchase the book, click on the book image in the next column

Reading Group Choices, an online reading group has provided a reading guide for BORN IN THE BIG RAINS: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival by Fadumo Korn. This autobiographical book traces Fadumo's life from Somalia as a child where she was subjected to FGM, to her arrival in Germany, and eventual campaign against FGM. It's a gripping book, full of sadness, tears, and many laughters as Korn shares her rebellious antics with readers, and demonstrates that although she was victimized as a child, she is much more than just a victim.

BOOK REVIEW: “Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan” by Janice Boddy

September 24, 2007 Wendy McElroy iFeminists.com Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan is the latest book by Janice Boddy, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. The book is a self-conscious attempt to alter the terms of debate on an explosive issue: female genital mutilation (FGM). The issue is so explosive that fierce arguments surround the very question of what to call it. Those who defend or remain neutral on the practice tend to prefer the label ‘female genital cutting’ (FGC). In “Civilizing Women,” the index entry for ‘female genital mutilation’ reads “see female genital cutting.” In this review, when presenting my critique, I use the acronym FGM because nothing in Boddy’s book has softened my conviction that the practice is brutal child abuse. Out of respect for the author, however, I use FGC or other neutral terms when presenting her views. Boddy’s purpose in “Civilizing Women” is two-fold. First, she constructs a broad historical context through which to understand FGC as it was practiced between the years 1920 to 1946 in northern Sudan; these were years of British imperialism. Boddy asks the intensely interesting question, how did British colonialism and the practice of FGC affect each other?

PUBLICATION: Cutting to the Core

Book Description When the benefits of surgery do not outweigh the harms or where they do not clearly do so, surgical interventions become morally contested. Cutting to the Core examines a number of such surgeries, including infant male circumcision and cutting the genitals of female children, the separation of conjoined twins, surgical sex assignment of intersex children and the surgical re-assignment of transsexuals, limb and face transplantation, cosmetic surgery, and placebo surgery.