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Another virgin sacrifice to the idol of sexual oppression
Posted by civil truth on June 30th, 2007
Fox news today released the latest chapter in that grim book on female circumcision that continues to be written century after century.
The death of a 12-year-old Egyptian girl at the hands of a doctor performing female circumcision in the country’s south has sparked a public outcry and prompted health and religious authorities this week to ban the practice. The girl, Badour Shaker, died earlier in June while being circumcised in an illegal clinic in the southern town of Maghagh. Her mother, Zeniab Abdel Ghani, told the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that she had paid $9 dollars to a female physician to perform the procedure.
A forensic investigation into the case showed the girl’s death was caused by an anesthesia overdose during the procedure. The case sparked widespread condemnation and was closely followed in Egyptian papers, which also reported that Shaker had passed out sweets to pupils in her class earlier on the day of her death, to celebrate her good grades.
Such a senseless snuffing out of a promising life – and for what end? What repulsive ethic would cut off a girl’s clitoris and other parts of her womanhood; what animus towards sexuality would seek to tame sexuality; what corruption of the heart lies behind the preverted belief that mutilating girls maintains their honor. And yet this practice goes on, abetted by government leaders who quaver at outlawing this atrocity and by elders who close their eyes or look the other way.
Yet this time, female circumcision has been dragged from the shadow and brought into the light; this latest outrage has sparked great attention in the Egyptian press and a public outcry that has led to clerical condemnations, a pronoucement by the Egyptian Health Ministry banning female circumcision (an action, unfortunately that does not have the force of law), and increasing pressure on the national legislature to pass a law outlawing the practice.
Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak pronounced Badour’s death “the beginning of the end for female circumcision in Egypt,” labeling her a victim of “the most vicious practice committed against women.”
Perhaps the most fitting commentary is this lament for penned by Egypt’s renowned feminist activist, Nawal el-Saadawi, 76, who previously has written of her own experience with circumcision:
Badour, did you have to die for some light to shine in the dark minds?
Did you have to pay with your dear life a price …
for doctors and clerics to learn
that the right religion doesn’t cut children’s organs
How many more women will have to suffer the degradation from this vicious assault upon their persons until at last female circumcision is banished from the face of the earth. Its demise is already delayed far too long!
June 30th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
UUGH!! How awful!!
And they do this often in the Sudan- I work with some of the “lost Boys” who managed to escape that country and came to the US and were granted asylum. Some of the stories they told me made me sick!! Little girls and teens raped; exchanges and offers of food for the girl and if the answer was NO, they killed them but not before doing horrible rapes and other unmentionables. All at the hand of Muslims. Disgusting religion.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Oh and the Mothers…would sell the girls.
or worse, PAY to have this “surgery” performed on their own daughters, some as young as two or three. Ever hear of breast ironing? That’s the other abusive “treatment” done by these savages. And it’s just what it sounds like. You don’t want to know.