(A warning for readers: This article contains some sexually explicit passages. Please do not read this article, if you do not like frank and open discussion on sex and sexuality).

Ms. Farida Majid posted on Mukto-mona an article she read in the Guardian, written by Rahila Gupta, along with a comment made on it by one Ms. Mayraj Fahmi, apparently in an attempt to extricate Islam from the blame many critics of this faith put on it for the prevalence of honor killing and female circumcision in some Muslim countries.

If the above had been the reason for Ms. Majid to post the article on Mukto-mona, in that event, she can have my assurance that as far as I am concerned, I do not hold Islam responsible for the introduction of honor killing and female circumcision among the Muslims.

I drew my conclusion from the fact that the Quran does not espouse either of the two heinous practices, nor is the female circumcision a sunna, as Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, is not known to have subjected any of his four daughters to the extremely painful and life-long effects of this sinister and abhorrent practice.

But if Ms. Majid thinks that my above stated assumption is misplaced, then she may graciously overlook it. I, however, urge her to continue reading what follows this paragraph.

Ms. Fahmi commented:

“All crimes against women have at their roots the evils of a patriarchal culture, which have a very strong hold in the societies of developing countries.

But, I should add that women in western countries are also victims of domestic violence (a common crime even in Sweden, one of the most enlightened in terms of women's rights amongst western countries); and most commonly the victim of violent crimes. Even western society has a bias towards the male gender (also illustrated by fact women generally get paid less for equal work).”

What Ms. Fahmi asserted is absolutely true, but we cannot leave the truth to rest here, as the questions on crimes committed by men against women go beyond honor killing, the mutilation of their genitals and the payment of lesser wages because of their gender. To begin with, I need to point out a basic flaw in Ms. Fahmi’s understanding of atrocities inflicted on women by their patriarchal cultures.

Ms. Fahmi appears to hold the view that domestic violence against women is somehow equivalent to the mutilation of their genitals. This is not true, nor is such a comparison desirable, as indulgence in such a misleading exercise is likely to minimize the life-long devastating effects the mutilation of female genitals leaves on each and every victim of this so-called “patriarchal practice.”

We should also remember that though domestic violence exists in many countries, including the developed ones, but mutilation of female genitals is not known to be in existence in countries like Sweden. Therefore, to line up Sweden with the guilty nations in which female circumcision, though not very openly, is deemed to be a norm is not fair either to Sweden, or to the sensibility of many us, who try to keep themselves abreast with most of the important happenings that occur every now and then around them, and in the world at large.

Having said the above, I now would like to approach the issue of female circumcision from the standpoint of a critic of Islam. I hope Ms. Majid would give serious considerations to my observations:

Female circumcision existed before the arrival of Islam. It was, to some extent, also prevalent among the Arabs to whom God had sent Muhammad to propagate human values and good conducts that God thought were best not only for them, but also for the rest of mankind.

Muhammad and God knew that the Arabs and other people of the world circumcised their girls, but none of them took any action against the practice. Perhaps, God, too, liked to have sex with circumcised women! (Cf. Quran; verse 8:41).

Introduced by men, the purpose of female circumcision was, and it still remains, not only to deprive females from their sexual urges and pleasures, it was also devised to give men exclusive pleasure that female virginity gives them every time they took their women to bed.

According to one website, “Female circumcision is today mainly practiced in African countries, especially in Muslim areas. It is common in a band that stretches from Senegal in West Africa to Somalia on the East coast, as well as from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south. In these regions, it is estimated that more than 95% of all women have undergone this procedure. It is also practiced by some groups in the Arab peninsula, especially in Yemen, but also in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The practice can also be found among a few ethnic groups in South America, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The practice is particularly common in Somalia, followed by Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali. Among ethnic Somali women, infibulation is traditionally almost universal. In the Arab peninsula, sunna circumcision is usually performed, especially among Arabs (ethnic groups of African descent are more likely to prefer infibulation).”

According to the same website, following are the three main categories of female circumcision:Clitoridotomy

“Type I, "clitoridotomy" or "hoodectomy" (also sunna circumcision, after Islamic tradition) is the most limited and involves the removal or splitting of the clitoral hood. This type of female circumcision is most comparable to male circumcision. When it is practiced today for non-religious reasons, it is usually an elective surgery intended to enhance the sexual sensitivity of the clitoris, and considered only in cases where the hood is overgrown or cannot be retracted.

From the late 19th century until the 1950s, it was practiced not to enhance, but to control female sexuality, and was advocated in the United States together with more invasive procedures such as the removal of the clitoris and infibulation by groups like the Orificial Surgery Society until 1925.

Specifically, doctors performing or advocating the procedure were concerned that girls of all ages would otherwise engage in more masturbation and be "polluted" by the activity, which was referred to as "self-abuse.”

Through the 1950s, some doctors continued to advocate clitoridotomy for hygienic reasons or to reduce masturbation, even as other procedures were increasingly believed to be a violation of genital integrity, and as such, a form of genital mutilation. For example, C.F. McDonald wrote in a 1958 paper titled Circumcision of the Female.

"If the male needs circumcision for cleanliness and hygiene, why not the female? I have operated on perhaps 40 patients who needed this attention." The author goes on to describe how a two-year old was "cured" of frequent masturbation using the procedure.
Such views regarding masturbation became widely discredited by the 1960s as a result of the so-called "sexual revolution". A small minority of doctors has since advocated clitoridotomy of adults to increase sexual sensitivity, so as to increase sexual pleasure rather than to decrease masturbation frequency.

Clitoridectomy
Type II or clitoridectomy is more extensive and implies the partial or total removal of the clitoris, and sometimes also the labia minor. It has only rarely been performed in the English-speaking nations.
Infibulation

The most complete form of female circumcision is Type III, which is also referred to as infibulation or pharaonic circumcision. It consists of a clitoridectomy, the removal of the labia minora, the cutting of the labia majora and then sewing together the cut labia majora to cover the vagina, leaving an opening to allow urine and menstrual blood to pass through.”

We are told that the husbands of the women open their sewn-together labia majora before having sexual intercourse with them. But how husbands, without any training in the art of surgery, can remove the stitches that are given to the labia many years before the girls find themselves in their husbands’ beds remains unexplained, and, therefore, out of our knowledge.

(For details, go to:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Female_circumcision#Areas_of_practice).

The categories of female circumcision I have noted above do not talk about one important aspect and that is the excruciating pain and mental torture women with circumcised vaginas are forced to lead their entire life. I am going to narrate them in this write up, with the hope that readers would not take my sexually explicit narration as being an affront to their sensibilities.

The world’s only perfect architect is nature. It fashioned everything in ways as were necessary for each one of them to function smoothly. Human body is one of them.
Nature’s design requires women to give birth to children. But they cannot do it by themselves; to do what they are physically and psychologically designed for, they need men’s help. Men also need their help for transferring their genes to their next generation, hence the mutual collaboration between the males and females in the form of sexual intercourse.

Sexual intercourse between men and women has to follow certain norms. Men have to have erections, without which they cannot perform the act. Females also have to have their own “erection,” which comes to them in the form of vaginal lubrication. Lubricated vaginas allow male penises to enter into them smoothly without causing pain or harm to the females. Both the sexes usually achieve their erections through foreplays.

Consent and desire for sex between men and women precede foreplays. Any sexual act undertaken by men without women’s consent and preparedness is called “rape.” It is called rape, firstly, because men engage in it without women’s consent, and secondly, because forcing women into sex does not help them lubricate their vaginas. And forcing the entry of penises into dry vaginas is extremely painful; hence the performance of sex on women in this fashion is known as “rape.”

I have given the above description, related to the human sexual normative, with a view to drawing readers’ attention to a situation that I believe circumcised women confront in their sex lives. To understand their real situation, let us now consider the following scenarios:

A woman has her vaginal opening almost sealed. It is so narrow that through it, only fluids, like urine and blood, can pass. She has her clitoral hood removed. Can we imagine what happens to such a woman, when she is required to have sex with her husband?
No matter how hard her husband tries, the unfortunate woman fails to achieve her full sexual arousal. As a result of it, her vagina does not get lubricated as much as it would have had in case her clitoris was not cut and removed.

Discarding her man-inflicted handicaps, the husband forces his penis’s entry into the woman’s almost dry and shrunken vaginal passage. The resultant pain takes her close to death, but it does not come. She bears her excruciating pain in forced silence. She breaks it with muffled cries, only when she fails to hold it any longer. She cannot escape, because she is the legally-wed wife of her husband and also because her society wants here to suffer so that her husband could derive pleasure out of her suffering. So, she keeps on facing death every time her husband takes her to bed for satisfying his sexual hunger.

Also imagine the severity of pain such a woman faces at the time of giving birth to a baby. When women, with naturally designed vaginal passages, suffer extreme pain and life threatening situations at the time of delivering their babies, can we fathom how much pain and risk women with surgically shrunken passages have to endure, while delivering their babies? Has anyone thought of it, and tried to come to the aid of such extremely unfortunate and distressed women?

God says in the Quran that He has sent prophets to all nations of the world. Muhammad was one of them. None of the prophets are known to have ever preached against female circumcision. Had they wished, they could have tried to eradicate this societal evil from their people. But no, to them, it was a patriarchal practice, and they could not interfere with something their forefathers had been practicing from time immemorial.
On the other hand, all prophets, including Muhammad, found their patriarchal practice of worshipping idols highly abominable.

They, therefore, directed all of their energies towards eradicating this evil from the lands they descended upon from time to time. In their efforts, God personally helped them with everything they needed to make their missions successful. Where prophets, restrained by their human instincts, disdained killing humans, God Himself killed them with His own hands in order to remove from them their human values.

Muhammad was the last Prophet of God. His arrival on earth heralded the revelation of a new celestial Book. The revelations of this Book rescinded all the previous revelations God gave to his predecessors. This Book laid the foundation of Islam, the only “perfect” and complete religion of God. This religion was supposed to have removed all injustices, wrong-doings and inequalities from the face of the earth.

But we notice that God did not find it necessary to warn His servants against female circumcision through His Holy Book. As a result of His failure, many Muslims still continue to pursue their patriarchal practice with full steam.

Why God allowed in the past, and He still does so, one section of His faithful servants to suffer at the hands of another is a mystery I have failed to unfold, despite my best efforts. Can I expect some help on the issue from such erudite personalities as Ms. Farida Majid is, so that I may be able to put my perplexity to rest for good?

Mohammad Asghar