A fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics says FGM is an “honor” for women.
Below are words from scholars on the ruling on circumcision:
The Hanafis: Al-Zayla’i said: “The general ruling is that circumcision is sunnah, and is one of the trademarks of Islam. In fact, if the people of Egypt or some land decided to abandon its practice, the Imam would make war against them, for it cannot be abandoned except by necessity… Female circumcision is not sunnah, but it is an honor for men because it is more pleasing during sex”
Well that’s the important thing. It’s painful and dangerous for women? Pff – who cares – it is more pleasing for men during sex.
Perhaps the saying that it is (only) recommended is due to the pain women must go through to carry out the acts of al-fitrah, such as circumcision, as stated in the sound hadith. But as we mentioned, this is not evidence of it being confined only to men. The term circumcision was used for both men and women during Muhammad’s time. But it is clear that performing circumcision must be preferable to not performing it, especially when one considers that circumcision includes both pain and revealing one’s nakedness. Thus if there was no benefit to it, the Messenger of Allah would not have agreed to it.
That’s a fabulous argument! It hurts like fuck and it’s humiliating, therefore there must be a benefit to it! No need to figure out what that is, just reason in a tight little circle that Mo wouldn’t have said yes otherwise because Mo is Mo so it must be all right because Mo wouldn’t have said yes otherwise.
Grown up people, in an academy of pediatrics, talking a raft of nonsense about what some guy said 14 centuries ago, to justify chopping up little girls’ crotches. Gag me.
The more I hear about Islam the more I despise it — and its so-called “prophet.” What sickness religion is! How did I endure it all thsoe years? From the inside it all seems perfectly reasonable, because you are arguing in a circle. It’s only when you get out that you can see the ring-a-ring-a-rosies, all fall down!
Notice that it’s a man singing the praises of FGM.
Just…but…ah.
Another day, another Muslim who says something that makes it just that little bit harder not to view Islam in the same light as Nazism.
“it is an honor for men because it is more pleasing during sex”.
I suppose it’s unreasonable to expect a clinical trial on this question, but has he at least done a poll to produce this datum?
Yeah, because there’s nothing more pleasurable to a man than knowing your wife
isn’t really able to enjoy herself when you have sex with her.
Psychos. Total frickin’ psychos.
Oh good, does this mean we can stop pretending that FGM is a “cultural” practice that has nothing to do with Islam, isn’t supported by Islamic leaders, quit picking on Islam?
This is why you don’t put 1’s in your prior probabilities. I don’t think it’s technically circular – he’s not trying to prove that Mo is good. What we see here is a consequence of deciding that you are absolutely certain about something – anything that seems to contradict it must then be false, even if it has all the evidence in the world. Given that assumption of perfect certainty, the ridiculous conclusions are, technically, valid.
Absolute certainty ought to be defined as a logical fallacy, with a name and everything. They ought to give it a name and put it on posters and such.
(Also, he doesn’t say it’s an honor for women. He says it’s an honor for men. That’s what’s important anyway, didn’t you know?)
The culture/religion argument around things like FGM is a dispiriting example of binary thinking. It’s not either/or – it’s both. It’s a tradition that outdates Islam and has continued somewhat independently of it – and, thus, the proportion of women who are circumcised in Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and elsewhere is far higher than that of people who are Muslim – but it’s also been sustained by theological justifications for old tribal practices. The fact that witch hunts predate Christianity has, I’d guess, never led people to deny the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in their perpetuation.
Now wait just a clit-cuttin’ minnit here! You’re telling me that it’s an honor to the male to have a woman or girl have her most sensitive piece of her body sliced ???
WHAT . . . THE . . .FUCK?!?!!!11ty-one!
No, seriously. What the Fucky-fuck Fuck is this shit?
And the author claims to be a fucking fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics ? Hello, AAPA, clean-up on Aisle Kook!
I’ll be interested to see how the AAP reacts to this (if they do).
A quick check of their current online press room and their archive press room doesn’t show anything.
Maybe they won’t react, though I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that at least their legal and publicity teams haven’t met hurriedly and heatedly to discuss the possibility, if for no other reason than to issue the standard cover-your-ass, “Al-Zayla’i’s opinion does not reflect that of the AAP.”
Still, for an organization with a slogan “Dedicated to the health of all children,” I’d think it would be in their interest, and also their moral purview, to make a clear statement condemning genital mutilation across the board.
Lately, I feel like I’m terribly, terribly naive.
Still learning,
Robert
Sorry, should have consolidated better, but a follow-up.
According to the AAP Health Initiatives section under the Advocacy and Policy tab on their homepage, among their programs are Child Abuse Prevention and the Council on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention. The former program specifically references the United States in its scope, not worldwide initiatives. The latter seems to mention a great deal of things like sports-related injury and child-passenger issues.
Still learning,
Robert
Fuck me, I’m an idiot. In my post at #10 I said:
The name Al-Zayla’i is incorrect. It’s Dr. Hatem al-Haj who released the paper trying to justify mutilation.
I apologize for my error.
Still learning,
Robert
BenSix @ 6:
I don’t deny it either, but it seems unfair to single out the Catholics. Protestants were in on it too – in fact Salem, when the famous witch trials occurred there, was Puritan, which was an extreme wing of Protestantism.
In slightly more encouraging news, the UK has just seen two arrests – the first I’ve ever seen publicly announced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/04/west-midlands-police-female-genital-mutilation?INTCMP=SRCH
Robert –
Oh, indeed.
It would help the article’s credibility if they didn’t resort to trying to make the person sound more influential than he is by highlighting that he is a “fellow in the American Academy of Pediatrics”. AAP is not say a think-tank. Being a fellow in AAP is basically the name of the membership level for someone who is a board certified pediatrician
Source: http://www.aap.org/en-us/pages/become-member.aspx
According to wikipedia there are 60,000 total members at the AAP so I’m sure there are thousands of AAP fellows in the US.
Yes, I think I sort of assumed that, without noticing it – that “fellow” in this case is just a dressed-up way of saying “member.” Title-inflation. You see a lot of it. I think the Templeton Foundation has done a lot to teach me to automatically discount titles – with its “Institutes” and “Fellowships” and the like. Not to mention the “Tobacco Institute”…
(F)GM™
It is indeed sad to see healthy children forced to endure growing up inside the lunatic asylum that is Islam.
WTF!!!
Sex with a woman that has had her clitoris removed is pleasing to men? Only an authoritarian monster and sadist, a man that takes pleasure in inflicting themselves upon women, while denying them any pleasure, would desire this.
If Egypt abandoned the practice and this imam, or other nation/s, made war on Egypt I think it right that the US should back Egypt. Back Egypt up to and including US of force and deployment of troops.
We have started and fought wars for all the wrong reasons. But this is a battle I would support.
He’ll br right at home in the AAP. In 2012, the AAP’s laughingly named “Bioethics committee” recommended allowing a token, ritual nick to girls “much less extensive than neonatal male genital cutting” (their words) lest worse befall. This was tucked away in the body of the policy and in seasel-wording and omission in the recommendations, not in the abstract or the press release, so at first even the chair of the AAP, Judith Palfrey, was issuing denials, but within a month the policy was “retired”. The chair of that committee, Dr Douglas Diekema, has never backed down from it, and he is on a “taskforce” currently considering male genital cutting.
This site – http://seekersguidance.org/blog/2012/04/mutilating-facts-setting-the-record-straight-about-female-circumcision-genital-mutilation – draws a sharp distinction between “female genital mutilation” and “female circumcision” (removal of the clitoral prepuce) condemning the one and recommending the other. One of his (male) commentators claims that the latter is done to increase women’s pleasure. I hae me doots.
seasel-wording -> weasel-wording
Not entirely OT…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/06/attorney-in-hijab-defends-call-for-other-women-at-11-hearing-to-wear/#ixzz1u6N7xS50
Is FGM legal in the USA?