Realizing that the Islamic population in the U.S. has soared to ten million, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants American doctors receive legal permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on the genitalia of Muslim baby girls.
The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any non-medical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo circumcision.
“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.
Opponents of female genital mutilation, or F.G.M., have decried the Academy’s stance.
“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether F.G.M. is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who recently introduced a bill to toughen federal law by making it a crime to take a girl overseas to be circumcised. “F.G.M. serves no medical purpose, and it is rightfully banned in the U.S.”
Georganne Chapin, executive director of an advocacy group called Intact America, said she was “astonished that a group of intelligent people did not see the utter slippery slope that we put physicians on” with the new policy statement. “How much blood will parents be satisfied with?”
Ms. Chapin added: “There are countries in the world that allow wife beating, slavery and child abuse, but we don’t allow people to practice those customs in this country. We don’t let people have slavery a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway, or beat their wives a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway.”
A member of the academy’s bioethics committee, Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, said the panel’s intent was to issue a “statement on safety in a culturally sensitive context.”
Dr. Friedman Ross said that the committee members “oppose all types of female genital cutting that impose risks or physical or psychological harm,” and consider the ritual nick “a last resort,” but that the nick is “supposed to be as benign as getting a girl’s ears pierced. It’s taking a pin and creating a drop of blood.”
She said the panel had only heard hackneyed anecdotes from worried doctors.
“If we just told parents, ‘No, this is wrong,’ our concern is they may take their daughters back to their home countries, where the procedure may be more extensive cutting and may even be done without anesthesia, with unsterilized knives or even glass,” she said. “A just-say-no policy may end up alienating these families, who are going to then find an alternative that will do more harm than good.”
More than 130 million women and girls worldwide have undergone female genital cutting, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It is mostly performed on girls younger than 15 in countries including Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. Consequences can include severe complications with pregnancy, childbirth and sexual dysfunction.
The academy’s statement acknowledged that opponents of the procedure, “including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure.”
Dr. Friedman Ross said, “If you medicalize it and say it’s permissible, is there a possibility that some people will misunderstand it and go beyond a nick? Yes.”
But she added the risk that people denied the ceremonial procedure, usually on the clitoris, would opt for the more harmful one was much more dangerous.
And the statement said that, “in some countries where FGC is common, some progress toward eradication or amelioration has been made by substituting ritual ‘nicks’ for more severe forms.” The Last Crusade can find no reported accounts or other evidence to support the statement regarding “ritual nicks”.
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the leading Islamic organization in Indonesia with 30 million members, sanctioned pedophilia this weekend at its 32nd Congress, ruling that Muslim men may marry prepubescent girls as young as six, and also gave its stamp of approval on female genital mutilation.
The NU clerics ruled that female circumcision should not only be viewed as “sunnah” or “recommended but should be made mandatory throughout the Islamic world.
Several of the Sunni clerics in attendance offered suggestions that midwives and handmaids should employ while conducting partial clitoridectomies.
“Don’t cut too much. Just cut the small skin on the tip of the clitoris. Otherwise, a woman would lose her sexuality, and you males don’t like that to happen, do you?” prominent cleric KH Mohammad Masyhuri Naim told a press conference.
Mr. Masyhuri, who is also a member of NU Suriah (lawmaking body), said that a proper female circumcision should not cause any damage to woman genitals. “No bleeding, if you do it properly.”
He suggested that circumcision should be conducted on a female baby at the age of 7 days.
The NU religious leader also took an example of mass female circumcision in Bandung in the past which had triggered opposition from many Islam communities, some of which then considered female circumcision haram.
“That was not a good example of the way to conduct a female circumcision. The bad thing was that the media had blown the issue out of proportion,” Mr.Masyhuri said.
Nahdlatul Ulama has been the authoritative voice of Islam in Indonesia since 1926.
Lolo Soetoro, President Barack Obama’s stepfather, reportedly was a member in good standing of this organization until his death of liver cancer in 1981.
Scores of cases involving the genital mutilation of infant Muslim girls have been reported in the United States in recent years. On March 15, 2010, a Muslim woman was arrested in Le Grange, Georgia, for performing a life-threatening clitoridectomy on her newborn daughter.
140 million Muslim women throughout the world have been subjected to circumcision – - almost all in primitive and unsanitary settings.
The National Women’s Health Information Center reports that preventing minors from undergoing FGM is hampered by problems “with cultural adaptation, immigration status, economic issues, isolation and access to education and healthcare services.”
The Center further states that remains unlikely that a girl or woman experiencing complications from undergoing female genital mutilation will receive health care “because the fear of legal repercussions would be too strong.”
Although female genital mutilation is illegal under federal law, only seventeen states have passed legislation that criminalizes the practice on minors and children.
One of the world’s largest Islamic organizations has issued a religious ruling stating that Muslims should feel free to marry prepubescent girls as young as six or seven.
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) further ruled that Muslim men may have intimate relationships, including intercourse, with such young children “as long as they are able.”
The organization boasts a membership of 30 million throughout Indonesia, including Java, where President Barack Obama lived with his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.
Mr. Soetoro, who served as an army geologist and government relations consultant in Jakarta, reportedly remained a member of NU until his death in 1981.
Cholil Nafis, NU’s secretary of the committee for religious issues, made the announcement sanctioning pedophilia at the conclusion of the organization’s 32nd Congress.
Sacred Islamic verses, Mr. Nafis said, do not stipulate a minimum age for a young girl to marry or a certain age for connubial sexual activity..
“They can get married at any age, even girls who haven’t started menstruating,” he announced. “And they can have intimate relationships and intercourse, as long as they are able.”
Cholil said Islamic law only suggested that marriages would be better after a woman had her first period.
“As long as the objectives of the marriage are positive, it is allowed,” Mr. Cholil continued. “Mind you, we don’t encourage people just to get married to fulfill their desires, no.”
The edict drew immediate criticism from Komnas Perempuan (KP), the National Commission on Violence Against Women in Jakarta.
KP Vice Chairwoman Masruchah said the edict violates the Law on Child Protection, which defines children as being younger than 18 years old.
Girls can begin to have their periods as early as the age of 9, but their reproductive system is still fragile and they are “not ready to be a sexually active person,” Ms. Masruchah maintained.
Canadian immigration officials say there’s little they can do to stop the “child brides” of Muslim men from gaining entry into the country.
Canadian Muslim men, often 60 years or older, often marry young girls – - some prepubescent – - in arranged marriages abroad. They then serve as sponsors for their “child brides” to gain Canadian residency and citizenship.
Canadian authorities say they cannot prevent the practice and can only request an official delay upon the approval of sponsorship until the girls turn 16.
The marriages of men to young girls – - even children who are premenstrual – - are sanctioned by Sharia Law. The Prophet Muhammad wed Aisha, when she was six, and deflowered her at nine. The three year hiatus before the deflowering was precipitated by the fact that Aisha developed a serious skin condition.
The Canadian officials say some of the child brides, often as young as 10, are forced to marry in such Islamic countries as Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority.
In classified documents, Canadian visa officer Steve Bulmer says he refused to allow one Pakistani man to sponsor his 15-year-old bride in August 2009.
“I can find no section (of law) that states the marriage is ‘invalid’ or ‘void,’” Bulmer wrote in e-mails obtained by lawyer Richard Kurland under Access of Information. “I am afraid the age does not invalidate the marriage even if it is illegal to marry.”
Mr. Kurland maintains there’s little that can be done to stop Canadians from marrying child brides. “A 15-year-old bride doesn’t void a marriage,” he says, arguing that the practice has been going on for years and represents “a concrete loophole that can’t be fixed.”
“A child marriage is punishable but it does not render the marriage invalid,” Abdul Hameed of the Canadian embassy in Islamabad says.
Canadian officials quoting an Afghanistan Law of Marriages say in some countries it is “customary for young females to wed men considerably older, especially if the man is in a position of financial or social power.”
According to the Afghan law and similar Islamic laws, it is not uncommon for marriages between first cousins or extended family members
Aired on LBC TV (Lebanon) – June 19, 2008 – 00:03:08 :
Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub’i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant: It Is Allowed to Marry a Girl at the Age of One, If Sex Is postponed. The Prophet Muhammad, Whose Model We Follow, Married ‘Aisha When She Was Six and Had Sex with Her When She Was Nine :
Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu’bi, a Saudi marriage officiant, which aired on LBC TV on June 19, 2008:
Child sex normal in Islam and Quran
Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 65:
Narrated ‘Aisha:
That the Prophet married her when she was SIX years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.
Canadian journalist Antonia Zerbisias published an article in the Toronto Star (January 27, 2010) bearing the title: “Gazan weddings not aboutpedophilia”… In the beginning of the column, Zerbisias made it clear that she didn’t write it to defend Hamas, which she criticized for its unacceptably strict attitude towards women. She explained that her main intention was to rebut allegations disseminated like mushrooms after rain on the web and in emails accusing Hamas of organizing a mass marriage in July 2009 in which 10-year old girls were married to Palestinian men. Zerbisias contends that the little girls dressed like brides, as shown in the pictures and video clips documenting the mass marriage, were not the brides themselves, but relatives of the brides who were not exposed to the media for modesty reasons.
In her column, Zerbisias tries to find out the real motivation behind disseminating the false allegations on the pedophile mass marriage of Hamas. “That’s because, despite mass Hamas weddings in the past, including one covered by the BBC in 2005, there were no previous accusations of pedophilia. It was only in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, which killed some 1,400 Gazans, including hundreds of children, that this lie began,” she wrote. [1]
An independent probe I’ve made of Palestinian open sources shows that Zerbisias’s first argument is very likely correct. The 10-year old girls were not the real brides. However, an official list of the brides’ names was never published by Hamas and there is no way to know for certainty their exact age. Ahmed Jarbour, the Hamas official in Gaza responsible for social activity, told WND’s reporter Ahron Klein that the youngest girl who was married at the ceremony was 16-years old and most brides were above the age of 18. [2] It seems that those who published the allegation against Hamas were deluded by the misleading pictures of the event and did not conduct a thorough investigation.
Examining Zerbisias second argument regarding the motivation of intentionally spreading out “the lie” after Operation Cast Lead brought about interesting findings. The phenomena of early marriage was well known in Palestinian society long before the Israeli military operation in Gaza started on December 27, 2008. According the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 682 girls aged 14 and younger were legally married in 2000. Two of them were married to men who were 35 or older, 13 to men 30 to 34, 117 to men 25 to 29, 378 to men 20 to 24 and 172 to men 15 to 19. Child marriages of girls 14 and younger made up 2.9 per cent of the total number of registered marriages. In the same year, 13,163 Palestinian girls between 15 and 19 were legally married, surpassing 55 per cent of all registered marriages. [3]
Local human rights organizations are deeply concerned about child marriage in Palestinian society. Participants of a conference in Gaza dedicated to this issue in January 2008, organized by the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), warned of the “significant rise in child marriage rate” and its severe psychological and physical implications on the youth. [4]The phenomenon of early marriage was also discussed in April 2008 in another conference held by the Palestinian Red Crescent and Widad Society. [5]
The Palestinian law, amended in 2005 and valid in the Gaza Strip, set 18 as the minimum age for marriage. However, it gives authority to the Islamic court to approve marriages of minor females and males alike if the supreme judge of the Islamic court is convinced that they are mature physically and mentally. [6]
The power of the Islamic court in Gaza Strip was reinforced after Hamas took control of the Palestinian Authority institutions in a violent military coup in June 2007. The Arab daily Al Hayat reported in December 2008 , a few days before Cast Lead Operation, that the Hamas parliament in Gaza voted in favour of a law allowing courts to mete out sentences in accordance with Sharia law. According to the bill, if approved, courts would be able to condemn offenders to a series of violent punitive measures that include whipping, severing of hands, crucifixion and hanging. The bill reserves death sentences for people who negotiate with a foreign government “against Palestinian interests” and engage in any activity that can “hurt Palestinian morale.” Hayat further reported that any Palestinian caught drinking or selling wine would suffer forty lashes at the whipping post if the bill passes. Convicted thieves would lose their right hand[7]. Since then, the Hamas government has slowly but gradually implemented a series of rules in accordance with Islamic law that affect many aspects of daily life, including the enforcement of a dress code for women on the street, in schools and in the courts and a prohibition against mixed-gender public ceremonies. [8]
The Kuwaiti Awan newspaper’s journalist, Shima Yusuf, investigated the phenomena of child marriage in Gaza in light of reports on the flourishing import of young Egyptian girls from poor families for prostitution and slavery under the cover of marriage. In her article, published on December 28, 2009, Shima Yusuf writes the following:
“There was a series of accounts on a new commerce via the tunnels [of Rafah] in which minor Egyptian females from extremely poor families were brought to the Gaza Strip in a somehow dark game in which ends in either their marriage, services in houses or working in the oldest profession in history!
“… one of the passengers [of the taxi in which the reporter drove] started talking on the golden solution via the tunnels, saying that it is possible to get an Egyptian woman for only $1,000 paid to the middleman at the tunnel’s entrance and handing him a copy of the groom’s identification card…
“Quick tour at Rafah’s tunnels reveals that the story that I’ve heard in the taxi was not a joke… Abu Asi [40 year old, working in the tunnels] is saying fearlessly: “I’m married to three women. The first one is a Palestinian who lives in my house located in the eastern area of the city of Khan Yunis [south of Gaza] and raises the children. The second and the third are Egyptians and were brought during my many shuttles in the tunnels between Egypt and Rafah. I persuaded them to marry me because of their extreme poverty.
“Later I decided to make this marriage an investment [business] by purchasing a house in Egyptian Rafah [Rafah is divided between Egypt and the Gaza Strip] in which my two wives are living and helping me in bringing young girls from the communities adjacent to Rafah, and particularly from the villages of Al-Sharqia district [of Egyprt]. That is done by convincing the families of the poor young girls to marry their daughters to Palestinian men.
“Giving his consent to marry his daughter [to a Palestinian man] the father receives an amount that does not surpass 1,000 Egyptian pounds [193 CAD] and a copy of the groom’s ID and his phone number, and then the brides lodge in my house in Rafah and the suitable husband is found for them. After finding the husband from whom I receive 1,000 USD, I send a copy of his ID and his phone number to my two wives and they in their turn send it to brides’ families. Then the brides are smuggled via the tunnels and handed to their grooms at the entrance of the tunnel in the Palestinian Rafah”.
“When asked on the fate of the young girls brought by him, Abu Asi said: “I don’t care what happens with them. The most important thing to me is closing the deal, even knowing that some of them will be married, some will be sent for working in rich people houses in Gaza and others are destined for the many drug dealers and pimps operating in area of south eastern Gaza.
“I asked Abu Asi on the number of minor girls lodged in his house. He said: “the number is beyond my expectations and that is an indication to the professionalism of my two wives and their capability of persuasion which made me renting more than a house as the number of the young girls reached now hundreds”. [9]
In conclusion, 16-year old females, minors by Western standards, were married in the mass wedding held by Hamas in July 2009. However, the report regarding 10-year old brides is groundless. Probing the wide spectrum of this issue reveals that child marriage is well known and rooted in Palestinian society based on its culture and religion. Disturbing media accounts shed the light on “prosperous import” of minor females from Egypt via Rafah tunnels for slavery and prostitution. The abundant information on child marriage originates from Palestinian sources and has nothing to do with Operation Cast Lead.
[1] http://www.thestar.com/living/article/756173–gazan-weddings-not-about-pedophilia
Mohammed heard one of his wives was leaving him, so he rushed home where he found her on the carpet in front of the tent with her belongings; he sat beside her and said, I heard you were planning to leave me?
She replied, Yes, I heard your other wives saying you were a pedophile! Mohammed thinks for a minute or so and then responds, that’s a mighty big word for a 6 year old.”
