Outrage After Twitter Allows Paid-for Ad Promoting Female Genital Mutilation to Appear on Platform

If Twitter had a soul it sold it this week for a few dollars, and,

of course, little girls will pay for their evil.

© Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP

Twitter is facing outrage after a sponsored ad promoting a form of female genital mutilation (FGM) for young girls appeared on the social media platform and was viewed more than 30,000 times.

A Muslim women’s activist group called Dawoodi Bohra posted the tweet promoting “khafz” for young girls, which is a kind of female circumcision. One of the group’s members, Arwa Sohangpurwala, is seen in the video saying that her own daughters have undergone the procedure. Her daughters, she says, are “growing up as perfectly as other children of their age” and that as a mother, she would “never do anything to harm them”.

That's because you believe that FGM is 'good' for them. It is not! They will likely grow up to be like you, thinking that butchering your children is a good thing. As a Muslim, do you believe that God erred when he made girls? Do you believe that you can improve on His design? Are you mad? Don't answer that last question.

Twitter immediately faced backlash for allowing the practice to be promoted on its platform. The social media giant responded by taking down the promoted post, saying that it had been removed for “violation of our policies” —  but the original non-promoted tweet was not removed and can still be viewed on Twitter.

The Dawoodi Bohra group has since claimed on their website that the Khafz procedure, which they said involves removing a “speck of superficial skin” in a “gentle process” has been “wrongly classified” as female genital mutilation. But that stands in contrast to the opinion of the World Health Organization, which classifies this procedure as a form of FGM.

It is peeling skin off the clitoris, to be blunt, and that is FGM - the M standing for Mutilation. It's psychological effects are similar to survivors of child sex abuse. These may include PTSD, mood disorders and anxiety. Studies reveal that in some African communities where FGM is practiced, 80% of women suffer from these conditions. That may seem normal to Arwa Sohangpurwala and her Muslim cohorts, but it is very far from normal in the civilized world.

Many on Twitter were outraged that the platform had initially allowed the video to be promoted, which resulted in people who do not even follow the religious group seeing it in their feeds.

Unicef has estimated that more than 200 million women across the world have undergone FGM procedures.

Perpetrators Still Subjecting British Girls to Genital Mutilation with Impunity