Islam Female Circumcision

[mathinspiration]

If Muslims believe God made the covenant with Abraham with his son, Ismael instead of Issac, then why perform circumcision on girls when sons were the ones God made the covenant with?
If Hagar had a daughter, and God made the covenant with her, it would make sense.

 

[SummerMadness]

Muslims are not the only ones doing female circumcision. There are Christians doing it too.

 

[Monk Brendan]

Muslims are not the only ones doing female circumcision. There are Christians doing it too.

And can you tell us just which Christians are doing so?

What is euphemistically called "female circumcision" is actually a clitoridectomy.

 

[HTacianas]

If Muslims believe God made the covenant with Abraham with his son, Ismael instead of Issac, then why perform circumcision on girls when sons were the ones God made the covenant with?
If Hagar had a daughter, and God made the covenant with her, it would make sense.

Female circumcision is not a part of Islam. It's a cultural tradition in some parts of the world.

 

[JosephZ]

And can you tell us just which Christians are doing so?

Why are Christians cutting their baby girls?

Female circumcision predates both Christianity and Islam and is purely a cultural practice.

 

[Yytz6]

Men are circumcised because of health benefits. For women there are no health benefits - on the contrary, which is why there is no obligation for circumcision for women.

 

[SummerMadness]

And can you tell us just which Christians are doing so?

What is euphemistically called "female circumcision" is actually a clitoridectomy.

Just look at a map.

You'll see that all those countries are not Muslim and some of them are majority Christian. Another to notice is there are many countries that have majority Muslim populations and they do not have this practice.

 

[JackRT]

The practice is banned by virtually all nations both Muslim and Christian but it is difficult to enforce particularly in remote tribal areas. From time to time we even hear of it being done in secret in Western nations including Canada and the USA.

 

[dzheremi]

Female circumcision is not a part of Islam. It's a cultural tradition in some parts of the world.

There are some hadith that would seem to indicate otherwise, of various levels of strength/reliability. Here is an Islamic resource on the subject (opens as PDF), with the usual justifications/excuses as you'd hear them from Muslims. Most of them are "this hadith is unreliable", but if you pay close attention, that is not the case regarding all of them, and some of the reasons for the hadith being dismissed as unreliable would not be accepted in a non-Muslim country or society (e.g., "The narrator is an atheist, so it is unreliable"; we recognize in all non-Muslim societies that a historian's being an atheist or not does not necessarily make their retelling of history unreliable).

But it is mostly a cultural tradition anyway, as in the Christian places where it is practiced. We can date the presence of any circumcision in Egypt (where it does sometimes happen to Christian girls, sadly), for instance, to after the Islamic conquest, because it's actually mentioned in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria (10th century) as an example of the Arabization of the Copts, and heavily criticized.

 

[JosephZ]

We can date the presence of any circumcision in Egypt (where it does sometimes happen to Christian girls, sadly), for instance, to after the Islamic conquest, because it's actually mentioned in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria (10th century) as an example of the Arabization of the Copts, and heavily criticized.

FGM definitely predates the arrival of Islam in Egypt and it's quite possible this is the region of the world the practice originated in.

Egyptian mummies show women infibulated and this is supported by a Greek papyrus in the British Museum dated 163 BC. A Greek historian and geographer in the second-century BC reported that a group along the eastern coast of the Red Sea cut their women in “Egyptian style” and that another group “cut off in infancy with razors the whole portion that others circumcise”. Curiously, today FGM is referred to as “Pharaonic circumcisions” (i.e. Egyptian) in Sudan and “Sudanese circumcision” in Egypt.
What are the origins and reasons for FGM?28 Too Many

The exact origin of female genital mutilation (FGM) remains unclear. Some scholars have proposed Ancient Egypt (present-day Sudan and Egypt) as its site of origin, noting the discovery of circumcised mummies from fifth century BC. Other scholars theorize that the practice spread across the routes of the slave trade, extending from the western shore of the Red Sea to the southern, western African regions, or spread from the Middle to Africa via Arab traders.
https://med.virginia.edu/family-medicine/wp-content/uploads/sites/285/2017/01/Llamas-Paper.pdf

A Greek papyrus dated 163 B.C. mentioned the operation being performed on girls in Memphis, Egypt, at the age when they received their dowries, supporting theories that FGM originated as a form of initiation of young women.
How Did Female Genital Mutilation Begin?

(where it does sometimes happen to Christian girls, sadly)

Sometimes happens to Christian girls in Egypt would be an understatement.

Recent studies have shown that some 90% of Egyptian women have been circumcised. The practice is common among Muslim as well as Christian families in Egypt and other African countries, but is rare in the Arab world. It is believed to be part of an ancient Egyptian rite of passage…

The report goes on to discuss the prevalence of FGM among Coptic Christian and Muslim women in the governate of Minya, in Upper Egpyt, using data collected between 1995 and 1997.

…a slightly higher percentage of Muslim than Christian mothers were circumcised at the time of interview (99% vs. 96%).
https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4b6fe1cd0.pdf (PDF)

 

[dzheremi]

FGM definitely predates the arrival of Islam in Egypt and it's quite possible this is the region of the world the practice originated in.

I shouldn't have been so careless with my words. I was talking about the Egyptian Church, not the ancient Egyptians from the time before Christianity. It was not known among the Copts specifically until after the arrival of Islam, as testified to again in Coptic and even non-Coptic historical sources. See the following three-part history from Dioscorus Boles' very interesting blog On Coptic Nationalism:

CIRCUMCISION AND THE COPTS – A HISTORY: PART I

CIRCUMCISION AND THE COPTS – A HISTORY: PART II

CIRCUMCISION AND THE COPTS – A HISTORY: PART III

Sometimes happens to Christian girls in Egypt would be an understatement.

Indeed so, as the prevalence of it in the Coptic community is very high overall, but apparently tends to vary quite a bit with education and urbanization. I suspect this is why the Coptic NGO mentioned in the report you've linked forcuses its efforts on upper Egyptian villages, because the practice is much more common in those places.

Also from your report:

"A 2004 study in the journal Social Forces argues that the partly politically-motivated positions taken over FGM by Islamists and Coptic Christian groups throughout the 1970s and 1980s may have caused the practice to decline more rapidly among Christians than Muslims."

"…a higher percentage of daughters of Christian than Muslim families were not circumcised at the time of interview (54% vs. 42%) and a lower percentage of daughters of Christian than Muslim families had experienced more extensive forms of cutting (30% vs. 43% excised). A lower percentage of Christian than Muslim mothers of uncircumcised daughters also intended at the time of interview to have their daughters circumcised (54% vs. 85%) such that the percentage of daughters already or expected to be circumcised was lower among Christian than Muslim families. …although the probability of circumcision appears to be declining among both religious groups in Minya, a much larger percentage of Christian than Muslim daughters can expect to remain uncircumcised by age 13. A majority of Christian and Muslim daughters continue to be circumcised in Minya, however."

54% vs. 85% is a much larger difference. Both constitute majorities, and both are completely unacceptable (any percentage is too much), but it is clear that in any case there is a difference between the communities, and that the practice is declining faster in Coptic communities than Muslim ones, because there is no basis for it in Christianity, whereas in Islam, even if it isn't in the Qur'an, it is in the Sunnah more widely-speaking.

So it is to the point in the Coptic Orthodox community, of which I am a part, that if you meet a Coptic girl you can assume that she may have been a victim of FGM depending on where she came from and how recently she came from Egypt, but there are intervening factors that are not necessarily there for other communities, because for the Muslims it is not just a traditional cultural practice but imbued with some sense of necessity due to the assertion of "traditional female roles" by Islamists in recent decades. So the Muslims must fight against powerful forces in their religion to get rid of it, which is not the case for us.

At any rate, I hope that both Christians and Muslims can rid their communities of this evil and barbaric practice.

 

[anatolian]

There is no female circumcision in Islam and male circumcision is a sunnah/tradition of the Prophet/s rather than a covenant. Our only covenant with Allah is shahadah/witness.

 

[dzheremi]

Hmm. Interesting. Thank you. There must be some powerful force of tradition keeping those Muslims involved in the practice, then. I have read in various hadith some things that presume circumcision among both sexes, but I bet that would not be enough for those Muslims who are convinced that this is not a part of their religion to change their mind, while those who practice it would probably take those sayings and evidence that it is. So it is a difficult problem for the Muslims to solve, and while they fight so many girls are mutilated. Lord have mercy.

 

[dzheremi]

In Egypt, they do (see the map in #7). I was asking about Egypt.

 

[dzheremi]

<staff edit>

That seems to be very true. It was not so long ago that in the USA doctors would tell parents of supposed health benefits of circumcision for boys. I don't think most would do that now. Usually if it happens now, it is so that the child doesn't look "weird" relative to other people, and hence feel bad about themselves. There is certainly no religious reason for it outside of the Jewish community.

<staff edit>

Amen. Christ is most important above everything. Even the Ethiopians, who are the most outwardly 'Hebraic' of all traditional Christian churches (the founding story of their royal dynasty begins with a child produced by the meeting of King David of Israel and the Queen of Sheba, so they keep a lot of Hebraic customs related to their history), have a portion of their liturgy where they proclaim "Therefore let us not be circumcised like the Jews, for we know that He Who has fulfilled the Law has come."