Female Genital Mutilation Quotations and Comments

The Practice of FGM

FGM includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure has no health benefits for girls or women. Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. More than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 29 countries in Africa and Middle East where FGM is concentrated. FGM is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15. FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women" [World Health Organisation, Source].

"Female Genital Mutilation is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. The practice also violates a person's rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death" [World Health Organization, Source].

Prevention

"If we are serious about FGM, and we should be, then a register of female children born to women who have been mutilated should be kept, and that child subject to mandatory health-checks until the age of 18. Any mutilation should be punished with the full force of the law, and punishment for non-British citizens must include deportation. Sending this powerful message is the only way we can stop this, Being deported is the only threat that will work" [source].

"I believe that - this is quite controversial - we need routine medical examinations ... It is a disgrace and a shame that in 2014 we cannot protect those young girls in London and other big cities. We do not need simply consciousness-raising and educational information. We have to face up to the need for prosecution and for routine medical examination. FGM is a practice to which some of the British authorities have turned a blind eye for too long. It is lone overdue that we, as a political class, take serious action on FGM" [source].

"[T]he UK government is under a legal duty - I do believe - under the European Convention of Human Rights to protect the bodily integrity of minor girls. There is a positive duty to protect and prevent such crimes - not merely to prosecute them after the fact" [source].

"We must not pussyfoot around FGM and child marriage but confront them and prevent them" [source].

FGM in Islam

"Female genital mutilation, the grotesque removal of a girl's clitoris for reasons that epitomise misogyny, is widespread in the UK. It is practiced nigh-on exclusively by Muslim communities and remains completely unpunished despite being a criminal offence since 1985. Further crimes include honour violence, forced marriage and child marriage; all of which are widespread and carrying on with relative impunity" [source].

"The muslims assert that female genital mutilation is not mandated by muslim texts. That's a lie. Funnily enough, chopping people's heads off is right there in the koran, too. How far are the forces of political correctness prepared to go, to indulge muslim practices?" [comment at source].

"Don't breathe Islam in the same breath with true religions. Can you give any good reason for young girls to have their clitoris' removed other than filthy meanness?" [comment at source].

Social Services, Health and Welfare, Police

"On 26 February 2017, West Midlands Police stated that prosecuting/jailing parents for FGM is unlikely to benefit the child. So what! It's the parents who deserve to be punished and the consequences of wrong-doing, the mutilation of another person, made clear for all to see" [comment at source].

"It quickly becomes clear that the SS (social services) the local education authority, the police, and the Civil Service do not give a fig about girls whether black, white, Asian no matter what their religion. FGM? So what they're just girls. Think I am exaggerating? Just try it for yourselves. It is anything at all but rock the boat" [comment at source].

"Education is key, including working with girls and their families, raising awareness in schools and communities, and training professionals [sic] like social workers and teachers to spot girls at risk of FGM and know how to report it" [Leethen Bartholomew, head of the National FGM Centre, quoted at source].

"Welfare professionals can overlook risks for children from refugee and migrant communities out of culturally relativist fears of being seen as racist, which can impair their judgment about appropriate interventions" [Dr Susan Costello, senior lecturer in social work, Melbourne University, quoted at source].

"Health professionals also worry about patient confidentiality. UK hospitals report a mere 5% of FGM cases to the police or local authorities. But under the Serious Crime Act of 2015 all health professionals, social workers and teachers are allowed breaches of confidentiality and are obliged to report suspicions of FGM to the police. They just don't do it. Britain is still steeped in the ethos which produced the doctrine of 'Culturally Appropriate Care' with the appropriate acronym CAC" [source].

Prosecutions

Perhaps, then, we should also say: "We shouldn't prosecute murderers because it is unlikely to benefit the victim! What? Of course it's not likely to benefit the victim, he/she is dead. Yet prosecution, of any crime, goes way beyond 'likely benefits' to the victim. It confers, in any case where a guilty verdict is returned and acted upon, punishment upon the perpetrator and a clear message to everyone that certain actions and behaviours are wrong and not to be tolerated. Yet the slack thinking involved in the example above, that 'likely benefits' to the victim are the only consideration needing to be taken into account, is seen all the time where FGM and other 'cultural' issues, are concerned" [comment at source].

Male Circumcision and FGM

"Male circumcision is to be carried out (a) on the 8th day of the infant's life when Vitamin K is at its height and prothrombin is at 110% to aid and speed blood clotting, (b) at an age such that the boy will have no memory of the event when he gets older, (c) quickly and cleanly with extremely sharp and sterilised instruments specifically designed for the task, (d) by a very highly skilled and capable and experienced surgeon or rabbi who cares for the health of the little boy on whom he is operating, (e) because it has various health benefits for the circumcised man - for example it helps to prevent penile cancer" [source].

"No sane person could ever conceive that circumcision could possibly be carried out on a girl; her anatomy just doesn't allow for such an abominable procedure - and so often done with blunt and unsterilised and primitive tools - yet Satan's hatred for women managed to find a way to pervert this God-given practice for boys into a sadistic attack on girls. Yes, carried out by their mothers and aunts but enforced upon them by the very men, their fathers and husbands, who are commanded by God to care for and protect their daughters and wives. Female Genital Mutilation is an evil perversion of something God designed for good" [source].

"British Common Law was founded on Judeo Christian Biblical Laws (highly civilised). Many things that appear arbitrary to the unlearned are not at all, but were put there for our literal well-being ... [Male] Circumcision: I've been married 3 times. None of my husbands were circumcised at birth. Each one of them had to be painfully circumcised as young men as at puberty they all started experiencing horrid and serious infections (apparently young males don't clean their penises properly)" [comment at source].