Gambian imam leads campaign for Bill unbanning FGM
APA News, March 4, 2024:
APA-Banjul (The Gambia) Abdoulie Fatty, a well known campaigner to unban female genital mutilation has taken this evangelism to The Gambian national assembly in support of a Bill which seeks to reverse the ban.
Imam Fatty on Monday led a bunch of other clerics and some veiled schoolgirls to the bowel of the national assembly in Banjul as the Bill championed by an MP was brought to the floor of the House and subjected to a debate.
Just a few feet away sat a gaggle of fiery anti-FGM amazons from among Gambia’s gender activists who have been up in arms against the Bill ever since it was crafted by Almamy Gibba, the MP for Foni Kansala….
The practice of female circumcision was criminalised in The Gambia in 2015 during which then President Jammeh described it as a watershed moment ushering his country unrelentingly into the 21st century when such tendencies which scar women and girls for life have no place in her future.
However, nine years after the ban, both local and international activists have been warning that anti-FGM legislation was under threat from an unyielding campaign by mostly religious scholars and custodians of tradition to ”bring it back from the dead”.
Religious clerics have taken their campaign a step further, paying the fines of FGM practitioners prosecuted and found guilty of breaking the anti-FGM law and using scripture to justify the practice as virtuous in Islam….
Although the practice is under a ban in The Gambia, practitioners have gone undercover to indulge the tendency and evade prosecution.
===========================
MAR 6, 2024 3:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
We are constantly told in the West that FGM is cultural and has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. The article below from the repulsive Daily Mail follows standard establishment media practice in studiously avoiding any mention of Islam or Muslims, but the reality that no one dares to face is that female genital mutilation (FGM) is justified in Islamic law. It is practiced by some non-Muslims, but only in majority-Muslim areas where the influence of Islamic culture, mores and law is all-pervasive.
“It is a religious thing. Do you want to change religion?” said one Egyptian in response to a campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation. “You only listen to what the West is saying.”
The establishment media ignores the fact that FGM is mandated in Islamic law: “Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) (by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the bazr ‘clitoris’ [this is called khufaadh ‘female circumcision’]).” — Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64
Why is it obligatory? Because Muhammad is held to have said so: “Abu al- Malih ibn Usama’s father relates that the Prophet said: ‘Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honour for women.’” — Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 5:75
“Narrated Umm Atiyyah al-Ansariyyah: A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: ‘Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.’” — Abu Dawud 41:5251
That hadith is classified as weak, but this one is classified as sahih (reliable): “Aishah narrated: ‘When the circumcised meets the circumcised, then indeed Ghusl is required. Myself and Allah’s Messenger did that, so we performed Ghusl.’” — Jami` at-Tirmidhi 108
If Muhammad had the genitals of his favorite wife, Aisha, mutilated, that is a strong endorsement of the practice from the man who is an “excellent example” (Qur’an 33:21) for Muslims.
Why does it matter whether or not FGM is Islamic? Because the practice will never be eradicated if its root causes are not confronted. As long as those Muslims continue to believe that Allah and Muhammad want it done, for some that will override all other considerations, in the United States and everywhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment