[Cairo, Egypt] In June 2007, 12-year-old Badour Shakour died as a result of a circumcision operation. The death sparked a battle within the country over the use of the controversial medical procedure.
Women’s and children’s rights groups were galvanized into action, pushing for more stringent penalties against those who carry out what is increasingly becoming known as female genital mutilation (FGM).
Shakour’s cause of death was an overdose of anesthetic, but her memory was the cause of an awakening that reached to the upper echelons of government.
In summer 2008, Egypt’s parliament passed a law that ostensibly bans the controversial procedure, not that it should have needed to legislate against FGM – it was already officially banned in the country during the mid-Nineties. But with doctors continuing to perform the procedure on girls as young as five, parliament felt it was necessary to intercede.
The new law stipulates a fine of 1,000–5,000 Egyptian pounds ($185–$900) and a prison term of anywhere between three months and two years if caught performing FGM.
A doctor could also lose his medical license. In the case of Shakour, the doctor who performed the procedure remains in prison after being convicted of manslaughter.
But despite the rising number of deaths and injuries that have resulted from FGM, including a young girl who was left struggling for her life in November after the procedure, many Egyptians are fighting against the ban.
A 2005 report by UNICEF contended that 97 percent of single Egyptian women between 15 and 49 have undergone some form of FGM, although other estimates put the number at 70 percent.
Member of Parliament Mohamed Al Omda, from a small opposition party, brought his three daughters to the floor of the People’s Assembly to protest the ban last year. One of his daughters carried a sign that read: “No to any attempt to forbid what is divinely allowed. No to any attempt to allow what is divinely forbidden.” Two of his three daughters are circumcised.
Many conservative Muslims in the country maintain that the practice is condoned in Islam. The country’s Muslim Brotherhood has come under fire over many of their members’ denunciations of the parliamentary bill. The powerful Islamic group and many Islamic scholars argue that the ban is akin to “imposing Western ideals” on Egyptian society, which they maintain is based in Shari’a (Islamic law).
"Religion does not prohibit or criminalize female circumcision," prominent Islamic scholar Mustafa Al Shaka said to the local press shortly after the bill was passed.
The Brotherhood told The Media Line that they were currently reviewing FGM in terms of its legitimacy within Islam and did not want to comment. Despite this assertion, last summer, their MPs – who won one-fifth of the People’s Assembly as independents – were the most ardent opponents of the bill.
Progressive Islamic scholar Gamal Al Banna – brother of late Brotherhood founder Hassan Al Banna – says there is simply no precedent in Islam for this kind of practice. He argues that it was imported into society as a means of forcing women into the background of everyday life.
“It didn’t exist in Islamic history and those who argue it is Islamic or part of the Shari’a are wrong,” the 87-year-old argued. “Religion does not subscribe to this kind of treatment that can cause death and other horrible results. It is un-Islamic.”
Al Azhar, the Sunni Islamic world’s leading religious authority, agrees with Al Banna. In 2007, the Council of Islamic Research issued a statement saying that FGM and cutting are “harmful, have no basis in core Islamic law and should not be practiced.”
But Egyptian society remains divided into opposing camps over the issue, says National Council for Motherhood and Childhood secretary-general Moushira Khattab. She believes that although the ban will remain permanent, it will take time to educate the population over the long-term effects of cutting a woman’s clitoris.
“Nobody is going to say no to something that has negative effects caused by the procedure and, in time, Egyptians will see this,” she begins. “So the punishments that are being handed out against those who conduct this practice are vitally necessary.”
UNICEF estimates that three million girls in Africa undergo FGM annually, including in Egypt. The practice is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989.
The practice remains common in Egypt, especially among the rural communities outside the capital Cairo and Alexandria. According to a 2005 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey, the majority of FGM procedures have been performed by trained medical personnel.
Human rights groups and doctors in the country argue that the involvement of medical workers in the procedure is a major reason the procedure continues.
“We have to work slowly and cannot expect everything to change with one law. Egyptians are stubborn and if they believe this is part of their religion, then it is very difficult to convince them otherwise, even if they are trained doctors,” said a female doctor at the country’s Doctor’s Syndicate, who asked not to be named, as the controversy continues inside its doors.
With children in danger, the doctor argues that Egyptians must move forward in order to limit these sorts of practices.
“We are struggling as a country, and until everyone is being educated, it is so difficult to achieve progress on anything, let alone FGM.”
Like so many controversial issues facing Egypt today, the seemingly endless battle between secularism and Islam continues to put opposing sides on the defensive. Al Banna believes that issues such as FGM will not be resolved within society until there is space for open debate on all things, including religion.
“We need to be able to debate religion freely, or else we will not be able to have people making their own decisions; instead they will follow their local sheikh as if he were the only source for reason,” he concludes.
SOURCE: The Media Line
AUTHOR: Joseph Mayton
DATE: 20/04/2009
Showing posts with label genital mutilation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genital mutilation. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Iraq: For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual
The Widespread Practice of Female Circumcision in Iraq's North Highlights The Plight of Women in a Region Often Seen as More Socially Progressive
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."
Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq --and one of the few places in the world--where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.
The practice, and the Kurdish parliament's refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.
"When the Kurdish people were fighting for our independence, women participated as full members in the underground resistance," said Pakshan Zangana, who heads the women's committee in the Kurdish parliament. "But now that we have won our freedom, the position of women has been pushed backwards and crimes against us are minimized."
Zangana has been lobbying for a law in Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region with its own government, that would impose jail terms of up to 10 years on those who carry out or facilitate female circumcision. But the legislation has been stalled in parliament for nearly a year, because of what women's advocates believe is reluctance by senior Kurdish leaders to draw international public attention to the little-noticed tradition.
The Kurdish region's minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn't think the issue required action by parliament. "Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it," he said.
The practice of female circumcision is extremely rare in the Arab parts of Iraq, according to women's groups. They say it is not clear why the practice -- common in some parts of Africa and the Middle East -- became popular with Iraqi Kurds but not Iraqi Arabs.
Supporters of female circumcision said the practice, which has been a ritual in their culture for countless generations, is rooted in sayings they attribute to the prophet Muhammad, though the accuracy of those sayings is disputed by other Muslim scholars. The circumcision is performed by women on women, and men are usually not involved in the procedure. In the case of Sheelan, her mother informed her father that she was going to have the circumcision performed, but otherwise, he played no role.
Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman's sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares.
"I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure," said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.
Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan's eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said "Of course" and explained that the procedure is painless.
"They just cut off a little bit," she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.
Women's rights groups in Kurdistan are working eagerly to change the perception that the procedure is harmless and that it is required under Islam. They go to villages in rural areas where the practice is most ingrained and tell women and religious leaders of the physical and psychological damage the circumcision can cause. Health experts say the procedure can result in adverse medical consequences for women, including infections, chronic pain and increased risks during childbirth.
Ghamjeen Shaker, a 13-year-old from the Kurdish capital of Irbil, said she is still traumatized from the day she was circumcised. She sits with her legs clenched together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, as if protecting herself from another operation. Indeed, Shaker says she sometimes dreams that the midwife who circumcised her is coming back to perform the procedure again.
She was 5 when her mother sent her out to buy parsley and then locked her in the front yard of their home with six other girls. "I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know exactly where they were going to cut," she recalled. "My family just kept saying, don't worry, this is a social custom we have been doing forever."
"They pinned me to the ground, and I just cried and cried," said Shaker, who spoke barely above a whisper. "I was just so astonished. But now I realize that they want to prevent women from living their lives normally."
Her mother, Shukria Ismaeel Jarjees, a 38-year-old housewife, said she was forced by her relatives and elderly women in the community to have her daughter circumcised. "I made a huge mistake, and now my daughter is always complaining of pain in her pelvis," Jarjees said. Her eyes began to fill with tears. "I now advise my daughters to never circumcise their children."
Shaker hopes to become a social worker focusing on women's issues, in particular other girls traumatized by female circumcision.
"I want to make sure the world understands they cannot silence girls like this," she said.
Susan Faqi Rasheed, president of the Irbil branch of the Kurdistan Women's Union, said that even in the cosmopolitan capital, as many as a third of young girls are circumcised. "When the Kurds hold on to something, they hold on to it strongly," she said. "So now they hold to Islam more than the Arabs."
One of the religious leaders who have been less vocal in demanding female circumcisions is Hama Ameen Abdul Kader Hussein, preacher at the Grand Mosque of Kalar and head of the clergymen's union in Germian. Previously, he preached that female circumcision was required. Now he says it is optional, which Hussein believes has caused the area's rate of female circumcision to drop from 100 percent to about 50 percent.
"If there is any harm in this exercise," he said, "we should not do it."
Despite the outreach efforts, a study of women in more than 300 Kurdish villages by WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, found that 62 percent underwent the procedure.
In Tuz Khurmatu, the most famous practitioner of female circumcision is Maharoub Juwad Nawchas, a 40-year-old midwife with traditional Kurdish tattoos covering her chin. She learned from her mother, who used to perform the procedure for free, though Nawchas now charges 4,000 Iraqi dinars, or just under $3.50, because her husband is disabled and can't work. She has circumcised about 30 girls a year for the past two decades.
On the day she circumcised Sheelan, the midwife began the ritual by laying down an empty white potato sack to serve as her working area. AK-47 assault rifles hung from the wall of the dingy concrete house, and watermelons rested below.
When Sheelan entered the room, her mother, Nawchas and a local woman placed the girl on a tiny wooden stool the size of a brick. The midwife applied yellow antiseptic to her pelvic area and injected her with lignocaine, an anesthetic. Little children peeked through the window to see what the noise was about.
"It's all right, it's all right," Sheelan's mother whispered, as the girl screamed so loudly her face turned red. She tried to bunch up her skirt over her pelvis and shield the area with her hand, but the women jerked her arms back.
Then Nawchas uttered the prayer, made a swift cut, and immediately moved the girl over a pile of ashes to control the bleeding.
The entire ritual took less then 10 minutes.
Back home, Sheelan lay on the floor, unable to move or talk much. She clutched a bag filled with orange soda and candy and barely said anything except that she was in pain.
But she became more animated when asked whether it was worth it to have the operation so her friends and neighbors would be comfortable eating food she prepared. "I would do anything not to have this pain, even if meant they would not eat from my hands," she rasped slowly.
"I just wish that I could be the way I was before the procedure," she said.
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondents Nian Ahmed and Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.
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."
Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq --and one of the few places in the world--where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.
The practice, and the Kurdish parliament's refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.
"When the Kurdish people were fighting for our independence, women participated as full members in the underground resistance," said Pakshan Zangana, who heads the women's committee in the Kurdish parliament. "But now that we have won our freedom, the position of women has been pushed backwards and crimes against us are minimized."
Zangana has been lobbying for a law in Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region with its own government, that would impose jail terms of up to 10 years on those who carry out or facilitate female circumcision. But the legislation has been stalled in parliament for nearly a year, because of what women's advocates believe is reluctance by senior Kurdish leaders to draw international public attention to the little-noticed tradition.
The Kurdish region's minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn't think the issue required action by parliament. "Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it," he said.
The practice of female circumcision is extremely rare in the Arab parts of Iraq, according to women's groups. They say it is not clear why the practice -- common in some parts of Africa and the Middle East -- became popular with Iraqi Kurds but not Iraqi Arabs.
Supporters of female circumcision said the practice, which has been a ritual in their culture for countless generations, is rooted in sayings they attribute to the prophet Muhammad, though the accuracy of those sayings is disputed by other Muslim scholars. The circumcision is performed by women on women, and men are usually not involved in the procedure. In the case of Sheelan, her mother informed her father that she was going to have the circumcision performed, but otherwise, he played no role.
Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman's sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares.
"I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure," said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.
Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan's eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said "Of course" and explained that the procedure is painless.
"They just cut off a little bit," she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.
Women's rights groups in Kurdistan are working eagerly to change the perception that the procedure is harmless and that it is required under Islam. They go to villages in rural areas where the practice is most ingrained and tell women and religious leaders of the physical and psychological damage the circumcision can cause. Health experts say the procedure can result in adverse medical consequences for women, including infections, chronic pain and increased risks during childbirth.
Ghamjeen Shaker, a 13-year-old from the Kurdish capital of Irbil, said she is still traumatized from the day she was circumcised. She sits with her legs clenched together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, as if protecting herself from another operation. Indeed, Shaker says she sometimes dreams that the midwife who circumcised her is coming back to perform the procedure again.
She was 5 when her mother sent her out to buy parsley and then locked her in the front yard of their home with six other girls. "I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know exactly where they were going to cut," she recalled. "My family just kept saying, don't worry, this is a social custom we have been doing forever."
"They pinned me to the ground, and I just cried and cried," said Shaker, who spoke barely above a whisper. "I was just so astonished. But now I realize that they want to prevent women from living their lives normally."
Her mother, Shukria Ismaeel Jarjees, a 38-year-old housewife, said she was forced by her relatives and elderly women in the community to have her daughter circumcised. "I made a huge mistake, and now my daughter is always complaining of pain in her pelvis," Jarjees said. Her eyes began to fill with tears. "I now advise my daughters to never circumcise their children."
Shaker hopes to become a social worker focusing on women's issues, in particular other girls traumatized by female circumcision.
"I want to make sure the world understands they cannot silence girls like this," she said.
Susan Faqi Rasheed, president of the Irbil branch of the Kurdistan Women's Union, said that even in the cosmopolitan capital, as many as a third of young girls are circumcised. "When the Kurds hold on to something, they hold on to it strongly," she said. "So now they hold to Islam more than the Arabs."
One of the religious leaders who have been less vocal in demanding female circumcisions is Hama Ameen Abdul Kader Hussein, preacher at the Grand Mosque of Kalar and head of the clergymen's union in Germian. Previously, he preached that female circumcision was required. Now he says it is optional, which Hussein believes has caused the area's rate of female circumcision to drop from 100 percent to about 50 percent.
"If there is any harm in this exercise," he said, "we should not do it."
Despite the outreach efforts, a study of women in more than 300 Kurdish villages by WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, found that 62 percent underwent the procedure.
In Tuz Khurmatu, the most famous practitioner of female circumcision is Maharoub Juwad Nawchas, a 40-year-old midwife with traditional Kurdish tattoos covering her chin. She learned from her mother, who used to perform the procedure for free, though Nawchas now charges 4,000 Iraqi dinars, or just under $3.50, because her husband is disabled and can't work. She has circumcised about 30 girls a year for the past two decades.
On the day she circumcised Sheelan, the midwife began the ritual by laying down an empty white potato sack to serve as her working area. AK-47 assault rifles hung from the wall of the dingy concrete house, and watermelons rested below.
When Sheelan entered the room, her mother, Nawchas and a local woman placed the girl on a tiny wooden stool the size of a brick. The midwife applied yellow antiseptic to her pelvic area and injected her with lignocaine, an anesthetic. Little children peeked through the window to see what the noise was about.
"It's all right, it's all right," Sheelan's mother whispered, as the girl screamed so loudly her face turned red. She tried to bunch up her skirt over her pelvis and shield the area with her hand, but the women jerked her arms back.
Then Nawchas uttered the prayer, made a swift cut, and immediately moved the girl over a pile of ashes to control the bleeding.
The entire ritual took less then 10 minutes.
Back home, Sheelan lay on the floor, unable to move or talk much. She clutched a bag filled with orange soda and candy and barely said anything except that she was in pain.
But she became more animated when asked whether it was worth it to have the operation so her friends and neighbors would be comfortable eating food she prepared. "I would do anything not to have this pain, even if meant they would not eat from my hands," she rasped slowly.
"I just wish that I could be the way I was before the procedure," she said.
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondents Nian Ahmed and Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Yemen: MPS say no to genital mutilation, 18 is minimum marriage age, juveniles cannot be punished as adults
SANA'A, June 24 — A two-day workshop in Parliament concluded that the minimum marriage age in Yemen should be 18, and the sponsors of both brides and grooms should be punished if they allow them to marry under this age.
The workshop’s participants also concluded that juvenile delinquents between the ages of 15 and 18 are not equal to adult criminals. They further recommended laws banning female genital mutilation.
The workshop covered three main areas: the criminality of juveniles, female genital mutilation, and the minimum age of marriage. These three subjects were chosen because the existing laws concerning them are not specific enough and are often ignored.
This workshop was arranged by Parliament, the Higher Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and the Yemeni Network Combating Violence Against Women known as SHIMA, under the sponsorship of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), OXFAM International, and Save the Children, a worldwide children's rights organization. Attendees included members of the Sharia Committee, who matches the constitutional laws with Islamic sharia law, Parliament members (MPs), doctors and human rights activists.
“The main purpose of the workshop is to amend the laws that did not provide protection to children,” said Naseem Ur-Rehman, UNICEF's communications director.
Ur-Rehman said that he heard about Nojoud Al-Ahdal Nasser, the young girl who went to court to ask for a divorce from her almost 30-year-old husband. He added that there are many cases like Nojoud's which go unnoticed.
“We want to end the silent suffering,” he told the attendees.
In April, after Nojoud’s case was published in news sources around the world, the Safe Maternity Act presented by the health committee failed to pass in Parliament. The act included a minimum age of 18 for marriage, punishment for families who marry their children off earlier and a ban on genital mutilation.
The Sharia Committee refused the act because they said that the minimum age for marriage in Islam is not definite.
Parliament President Yahia Al-Ra'i and religious scholar Ahmed Abdul-Razaq Al-Rukaihi, who is also a member of the Sharia Committee, said that they will take these recommendations into account when drafting the laws.
Minimum age of Marriage
The suggestion to specify the marriage age faced more objections than the other two subjects addressed during the workshop. Specifically, the Sharia Committee found it difficult to define a specific minimum age of marriage. Hassan Al-Sheikh, a scholar and Sharia Committee member, said that he was confused after what he heard in the workshop.
“I am afraid that if we stop early marriage, we could create troubles for young people,” said Al-Sheikh.
Jabr Abdullah, a religious scholar, said that the ability to have sex could start from the age of nine. Law professor Ali Hassan Al-Sharafi told the scholars that nothing in the proposal should worry them.
He mentioned two main things about adopting a minimum age for marriage. First, he pointed out the dispute among Islamic scholars about the acceptability of early marriage. “This is a good thing to use in our favor; we should consider the most suitable opinion,” said Al-Sharafi.
He added that in Islam, there are things considered mobah [neither forbidden nor obligated], which he said would include creating a minimum age for marriage. The attendees objected to the current law that states that the young girl can be married if she is ready for sex.
Attendees said that readiness is not measurable, and that young girls are vulnerable to exploitation.
Scholar Al-Rukaihi said that he was really moved when he understood the negative health impacts of early marriage brought up during the workshop, such as obstetric fistula [a common ailment among child brides who give birth that causes permanent incontinence and physical pain].
“Honestly, I was affected by what I saw,” he said.
Another attendee, Huda Al-Yafe’i, the head of the orphan sector in Al-Saleh Social Foundation for Development, said that legislators have to differentiate between early marriage and early pregnancy. “As a teacher, I have seen many girls who go astray and to stop them from marrying is not good.”
Others objected to the idea of differentiating between early marriage and early pregnancy because to control that is not attainable, and marriage is not limited to pregnancy. PM Shawqi Al-Qadhi said that marriage is not only about sex, it is a whole new life for girls who are often unprepared for its stresses.
Attendee Jamila Al-Ra’abi said that early marriage does not solve any problems, but rather creates more. “Early marriages makes lots of orphans, and causes a lot of pain for young mothers,” she said.
According to a study by the Gender Development Research and Studies Center in Sana’a University in 2005 early marriages trigger social, psychological and health problems like obstetric fistula, malnutrition, psychological trauma, maternal and child mortality. Early marriage also increases a girl’s vulnerability to domestic abuse by both the husband and her in-laws.
Early marriage forces girls to drop out of school, which dramatically affects the country's development as a whole. Other groups like the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have also condemned the practice. Criminal Responsibility: Criminal responsibility was discussed in two respects: legality and the religious background for lawmaking.
Al-Sharafi said that there is a difference between puberty and adulthood. Al-Sharafi and other attendees quoted the Qur’anic verse that says, “And try orphans (as regards their intelligence) until they reach the age of marriage; if then you find sound judgment in them, release their property to them.”
They said that this verse showed that puberty does not mean adulthood, and criminal responsibility should be measured this way. A juvenile offender at the age of 15 can be punished with between 10 to 20 years in prison for a crime, but cannot be executed for murder.
“His young age should be taken as an extenuating circumstance in major crimes, and he should get half the sentence for minor ones,” said Al-Sharafi.
Scholar Al-Rukaihi objected to this, saying that some people might use juveniles to kill others. Al-Qadhi responded that he understood the fears of the religious scholars, but juveniles shouldn't be punished for others' mistakes.
Al-Sharafi agreed that the one who incited the child to commit a crime should be punished as if he was the perpetrator.
Genital Mutilation
Despite the fact that most of the PMs said that they did not believe that Yemenis perform female genital mutilation, the Health Survey of the Yemeni Family, conducted by the government in 2003, showed that over 21 percent of Yemeni women are exposed to this extremely harmful practice.
Yemen has five main governorates that still perform female genital mutilation: Hodeidah (97.3 percent), Mahrah (96.6 percent), Hadhramout (96.5 percent), Aden (82.2 percent), and Sana’a Capital Secretariat (45.5 percent).
“I do not think that genital mutilation is rampant, but it is neither forbidden nor an obligation and therefore it is acceptable if we stop doing it to prevent the damage,” said Al-Sheikh.
Genital mutilation has dangerous consequences for female reproductive health in both the short- and long-term, according to the UNFPA and the WHO, among a large number of non-governmental organizations.
By: Kawkab Al-Thaibani For the Yemen Times
The workshop’s participants also concluded that juvenile delinquents between the ages of 15 and 18 are not equal to adult criminals. They further recommended laws banning female genital mutilation.
The workshop covered three main areas: the criminality of juveniles, female genital mutilation, and the minimum age of marriage. These three subjects were chosen because the existing laws concerning them are not specific enough and are often ignored.
This workshop was arranged by Parliament, the Higher Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and the Yemeni Network Combating Violence Against Women known as SHIMA, under the sponsorship of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), OXFAM International, and Save the Children, a worldwide children's rights organization. Attendees included members of the Sharia Committee, who matches the constitutional laws with Islamic sharia law, Parliament members (MPs), doctors and human rights activists.
“The main purpose of the workshop is to amend the laws that did not provide protection to children,” said Naseem Ur-Rehman, UNICEF's communications director.
Ur-Rehman said that he heard about Nojoud Al-Ahdal Nasser, the young girl who went to court to ask for a divorce from her almost 30-year-old husband. He added that there are many cases like Nojoud's which go unnoticed.
“We want to end the silent suffering,” he told the attendees.
In April, after Nojoud’s case was published in news sources around the world, the Safe Maternity Act presented by the health committee failed to pass in Parliament. The act included a minimum age of 18 for marriage, punishment for families who marry their children off earlier and a ban on genital mutilation.
The Sharia Committee refused the act because they said that the minimum age for marriage in Islam is not definite.
Parliament President Yahia Al-Ra'i and religious scholar Ahmed Abdul-Razaq Al-Rukaihi, who is also a member of the Sharia Committee, said that they will take these recommendations into account when drafting the laws.
Minimum age of Marriage
The suggestion to specify the marriage age faced more objections than the other two subjects addressed during the workshop. Specifically, the Sharia Committee found it difficult to define a specific minimum age of marriage. Hassan Al-Sheikh, a scholar and Sharia Committee member, said that he was confused after what he heard in the workshop.
“I am afraid that if we stop early marriage, we could create troubles for young people,” said Al-Sheikh.
Jabr Abdullah, a religious scholar, said that the ability to have sex could start from the age of nine. Law professor Ali Hassan Al-Sharafi told the scholars that nothing in the proposal should worry them.
He mentioned two main things about adopting a minimum age for marriage. First, he pointed out the dispute among Islamic scholars about the acceptability of early marriage. “This is a good thing to use in our favor; we should consider the most suitable opinion,” said Al-Sharafi.
He added that in Islam, there are things considered mobah [neither forbidden nor obligated], which he said would include creating a minimum age for marriage. The attendees objected to the current law that states that the young girl can be married if she is ready for sex.
Attendees said that readiness is not measurable, and that young girls are vulnerable to exploitation.
Scholar Al-Rukaihi said that he was really moved when he understood the negative health impacts of early marriage brought up during the workshop, such as obstetric fistula [a common ailment among child brides who give birth that causes permanent incontinence and physical pain].
“Honestly, I was affected by what I saw,” he said.
Another attendee, Huda Al-Yafe’i, the head of the orphan sector in Al-Saleh Social Foundation for Development, said that legislators have to differentiate between early marriage and early pregnancy. “As a teacher, I have seen many girls who go astray and to stop them from marrying is not good.”
Others objected to the idea of differentiating between early marriage and early pregnancy because to control that is not attainable, and marriage is not limited to pregnancy. PM Shawqi Al-Qadhi said that marriage is not only about sex, it is a whole new life for girls who are often unprepared for its stresses.
Attendee Jamila Al-Ra’abi said that early marriage does not solve any problems, but rather creates more. “Early marriages makes lots of orphans, and causes a lot of pain for young mothers,” she said.
According to a study by the Gender Development Research and Studies Center in Sana’a University in 2005 early marriages trigger social, psychological and health problems like obstetric fistula, malnutrition, psychological trauma, maternal and child mortality. Early marriage also increases a girl’s vulnerability to domestic abuse by both the husband and her in-laws.
Early marriage forces girls to drop out of school, which dramatically affects the country's development as a whole. Other groups like the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have also condemned the practice. Criminal Responsibility: Criminal responsibility was discussed in two respects: legality and the religious background for lawmaking.
Al-Sharafi said that there is a difference between puberty and adulthood. Al-Sharafi and other attendees quoted the Qur’anic verse that says, “And try orphans (as regards their intelligence) until they reach the age of marriage; if then you find sound judgment in them, release their property to them.”
They said that this verse showed that puberty does not mean adulthood, and criminal responsibility should be measured this way. A juvenile offender at the age of 15 can be punished with between 10 to 20 years in prison for a crime, but cannot be executed for murder.
“His young age should be taken as an extenuating circumstance in major crimes, and he should get half the sentence for minor ones,” said Al-Sharafi.
Scholar Al-Rukaihi objected to this, saying that some people might use juveniles to kill others. Al-Qadhi responded that he understood the fears of the religious scholars, but juveniles shouldn't be punished for others' mistakes.
Al-Sharafi agreed that the one who incited the child to commit a crime should be punished as if he was the perpetrator.
Genital Mutilation
Despite the fact that most of the PMs said that they did not believe that Yemenis perform female genital mutilation, the Health Survey of the Yemeni Family, conducted by the government in 2003, showed that over 21 percent of Yemeni women are exposed to this extremely harmful practice.
Yemen has five main governorates that still perform female genital mutilation: Hodeidah (97.3 percent), Mahrah (96.6 percent), Hadhramout (96.5 percent), Aden (82.2 percent), and Sana’a Capital Secretariat (45.5 percent).
“I do not think that genital mutilation is rampant, but it is neither forbidden nor an obligation and therefore it is acceptable if we stop doing it to prevent the damage,” said Al-Sheikh.
Genital mutilation has dangerous consequences for female reproductive health in both the short- and long-term, according to the UNFPA and the WHO, among a large number of non-governmental organizations.
By: Kawkab Al-Thaibani For the Yemen Times
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Egypt: Female genital mutilation outlawed
With attention focused on political events in the Middle East – the Hamas-Israel ceasefire, post-Doha developments in Lebanon, and the Saudis deciding whether or not to increase oil output – one important piece of news got drowned out: on June 7 the Egyptian parliament outlawed female genital mutilation (FGM). The BBC didn't even mention it.
I first came across the issue of FGM over a decade ago when I lived in Cairo and heard about studies that claimed over 70% of Egyptian women were circumcised in some way or other. I remember afterwards walking along the street and counting the women I passed: cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, not, not, not, cut, cut … By now I know that these studies were incorrect and that is not true that over 70% of Egyptian women have undergone FGM. The actual number is around 90%.
Over the past decade the Egyptian authorities have tightened the restrictions on FGM, first restricting the practice to doctors and nurses (in order to curb back-alley procedures), then also forbidding health service personnel to perform any type of FGM. But those were ministry instructions, not enforceable on private citizens. And as the practice is popular, only a law with severe punishments, like the one enacted now, will do … if it is accompanied by a health education campaign.
The Grand Mufti, Egypt's highest Islamic authority had already ruled FGM illegal and the only group protesting against the ban is the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming that "nothing in Islam forbids circumcision". This might technically be true, but last time I checked Egypt's MB wasn't campaigning against the prohibition of slavery, although according to traditional Islamic law it is not only not forbidden but explicitly allowed, whereas female circumcision isn't even mentioned in the Qur'an and the one often-cited hadith (tradition of the Prophet) about it had already been deemed "spurious" by Islamic scholars hundreds of years ago.
FGM is a good example how ancient (in this case pre-Islamic) traditions are absorbed into a new religious culture. Only one of the four Sunni legal schools, the Shafi'i, holds the so-called "Sunna circumcision", whereby the tip of the clitoral hood is "trimmed", to be obligatory. (The Shia all hold that it is wrong.) Interestingly, the extent of the Shafi'i school corresponds with the prevalence of FGM: Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, Horn of Africa, Yemen, sub-Saharan West Africa, Kurdistan, the south-west coast of India (Kerala) and Indonesia. But of course FGM is prevalent throughout the Greater Nile Valley (including Christians and animists) and among non-Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, raising the question whether the Shafi'i school of Islamic law was adopted in part because of its stance on FGM or whether it adapted to a strong pro-FGM culture already in existence.
Kurdistan, touted as the "other" Iraq where women don't have to cover their heads and are ministers, is the only area in Iraq where FGM is common – both among Muslims and Yazidis, hinting at a pre-Islamic tradition. Sunni and Shia Arabs in Iraq might hold very traditionalist views when it comes to the role of women in society, and neither the Iran-inspired nor the Saudi/Taliban-inspired rules now gaining currency among Iraq's Arab population are anything to play down, but they don't cut their women.
In Saudi Arabia, despite its paternalism and oppression of women, FGM is alien to the interior's Wahhabi traditionalists who rule the country, yet is practised on the Red Sea coast – an area that is generally more liberal and whose inhabitants still scoff at having their lives regulated by uncouth barbarians from the interior.
Evidently, FGM is not linked to insularity or a lack of exposure to "modernity". Most likely having originated in the Nile valley and then spread to sub-Saharan Africa (and in the case of the Kurds also to some communities further the east), over time FGM was integrated into whatever new religion came along – including Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (in the case of the Ethiopian Jews).
But it remained part of local, popular culture; it did not become universal religious dogma. And to overcome it, FGM has to be treated as such. In Senegal and Ethiopia, where local women and community leaders were included in conceptualising and carrying out the programmes against it, campaigns have yielded success – quite spectacularly in some cases.
Similarly, the Egyptian parliament's decision to outlaw FGM, the practice of which now incurs a three months to two years in prison or a fine of 1,000-5,000 Egyptian pounds ($200-$1,000 – a lot of money in Egypt), needs to be accompanied by a public health campaign that takes the popular cultural attitudes seriously, that integrates community and religious leaders, and that is best organised not top-down but on the grassroots level. Criminalising the practice alone will not be enough.
But some attention and public recognition in the international media would have been nice.
-- The Guardian
I first came across the issue of FGM over a decade ago when I lived in Cairo and heard about studies that claimed over 70% of Egyptian women were circumcised in some way or other. I remember afterwards walking along the street and counting the women I passed: cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, not, not, not, cut, cut … By now I know that these studies were incorrect and that is not true that over 70% of Egyptian women have undergone FGM. The actual number is around 90%.
Over the past decade the Egyptian authorities have tightened the restrictions on FGM, first restricting the practice to doctors and nurses (in order to curb back-alley procedures), then also forbidding health service personnel to perform any type of FGM. But those were ministry instructions, not enforceable on private citizens. And as the practice is popular, only a law with severe punishments, like the one enacted now, will do … if it is accompanied by a health education campaign.
The Grand Mufti, Egypt's highest Islamic authority had already ruled FGM illegal and the only group protesting against the ban is the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming that "nothing in Islam forbids circumcision". This might technically be true, but last time I checked Egypt's MB wasn't campaigning against the prohibition of slavery, although according to traditional Islamic law it is not only not forbidden but explicitly allowed, whereas female circumcision isn't even mentioned in the Qur'an and the one often-cited hadith (tradition of the Prophet) about it had already been deemed "spurious" by Islamic scholars hundreds of years ago.
FGM is a good example how ancient (in this case pre-Islamic) traditions are absorbed into a new religious culture. Only one of the four Sunni legal schools, the Shafi'i, holds the so-called "Sunna circumcision", whereby the tip of the clitoral hood is "trimmed", to be obligatory. (The Shia all hold that it is wrong.) Interestingly, the extent of the Shafi'i school corresponds with the prevalence of FGM: Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, Horn of Africa, Yemen, sub-Saharan West Africa, Kurdistan, the south-west coast of India (Kerala) and Indonesia. But of course FGM is prevalent throughout the Greater Nile Valley (including Christians and animists) and among non-Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, raising the question whether the Shafi'i school of Islamic law was adopted in part because of its stance on FGM or whether it adapted to a strong pro-FGM culture already in existence.
Kurdistan, touted as the "other" Iraq where women don't have to cover their heads and are ministers, is the only area in Iraq where FGM is common – both among Muslims and Yazidis, hinting at a pre-Islamic tradition. Sunni and Shia Arabs in Iraq might hold very traditionalist views when it comes to the role of women in society, and neither the Iran-inspired nor the Saudi/Taliban-inspired rules now gaining currency among Iraq's Arab population are anything to play down, but they don't cut their women.
In Saudi Arabia, despite its paternalism and oppression of women, FGM is alien to the interior's Wahhabi traditionalists who rule the country, yet is practised on the Red Sea coast – an area that is generally more liberal and whose inhabitants still scoff at having their lives regulated by uncouth barbarians from the interior.
Evidently, FGM is not linked to insularity or a lack of exposure to "modernity". Most likely having originated in the Nile valley and then spread to sub-Saharan Africa (and in the case of the Kurds also to some communities further the east), over time FGM was integrated into whatever new religion came along – including Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (in the case of the Ethiopian Jews).
But it remained part of local, popular culture; it did not become universal religious dogma. And to overcome it, FGM has to be treated as such. In Senegal and Ethiopia, where local women and community leaders were included in conceptualising and carrying out the programmes against it, campaigns have yielded success – quite spectacularly in some cases.
Similarly, the Egyptian parliament's decision to outlaw FGM, the practice of which now incurs a three months to two years in prison or a fine of 1,000-5,000 Egyptian pounds ($200-$1,000 – a lot of money in Egypt), needs to be accompanied by a public health campaign that takes the popular cultural attitudes seriously, that integrates community and religious leaders, and that is best organised not top-down but on the grassroots level. Criminalising the practice alone will not be enough.
But some attention and public recognition in the international media would have been nice.
-- The Guardian
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