July 11, 1996

A 6-year-old's rite of passage
Somali girl's circumcision just one of millions
by Karin Davies
Associated Press

HARGEISA, Somalia - Hudan Mohammed Ali's shrieks for Allah's mercy rend the dawn and chill the heart. Her sister smacks Hudan's face and pries her thin legs apart as an old woman cuts deeper into the 6-year-old's flesh.

Three women struggle to pin the writhing child to a short stool stained with the blood of a thousand other little girls who before her were forced to submit to the ancient rite of female circumcision - the ritual cutting of a girl's genitals.

"I must get rid of the dark flesh," says Halimo Mohamoud Obahleh, Hudan's great-aunt and a "gudniin," or traditional circumciser.

The World Health Organization estimates that up to 120 million women and girls alive today in at least three dozen countries have been circumcised. UNICEF says most girls are between the ages of 4 and 10 when they undergo the rite.

Critics call it female genital mutilation, a way for men to curb a woman's sexual pleasure and jealously guard her chastity. Westerners condemn it as torture, child abuse and a violation of human rights.

Many women suffer infections, difficult childbirth and even death as a result of circumcision.

But it is a revered rite of passage in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Immigrants are taking the practice with them to Europe, Australia, Canada and more recently the United States.

Shame for non-participants

In practicing countries, women who are not circumcised are considered less desirable or even prostitutes. The greatest insult in Somalia is "son of an uncircumcised mother."

The procedure can simply be a small but painful nick across the hood of the clitoris. But it is typically more severe: The clitoris, the organ of sexual pleasure in women, is removed.

In a method called infibulation, the clitoris, inner labia and most of the soft flesh of the labia majora are scraped or cut away. The two sides of the vulva are then fastened with acacia thorns, catgut, silk or a glue made from a tree gum or eggs.

Almost all Somali women are circumcised, and Hudan is among the 87 percent who undergo the most severe type: infibulation. Until now, Hudan has wanted the procedure so that she will be like other girls.

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts," Hudan howls. "You're all against me. Stop! Now!"

With a thick sewing needle and heavy black thread, Mohamoud Obahleh sews the raw flesh together with five crude stitches to fashion a chastity belt of the girl's own flesh. Sex will be impossible until she is married and her husband cuts or tears her open.

The rail-thin child is then bound from waist to toes; she will remain tied for weeks, until scar tissue nearly seals the vagina. She is left just a pencil-thin hole close to the anus for urination and menstruation.

Women's chastity highly prized

The most frequent reason offered for female circumcision is to stifle a girl's desire for sexual intercourse and to make penetration impossible, thereby preserving her chastity.

Discussing Hudan's circumcision, Mohamoud Obahleh said: "The only value of a girl is her virginity. The main thing is to protect the girl, to protect her from men, until she is married."

There are esthetic concerns besides the issue of sexuality, Mohamoud Obahleh said, sounding rather like a Western woman endorsing a breast enlargement or a tummy tuck. "A woman's external genitalia are unattractive, so it it better to remove them so she is more beautiful."

No one knows exactly when or how the practice began, though scholars speculate it originated along the Nile Valley. The earliest literary references, dating from 2,000 B.C., indicate that ancient Egyptians, Jews and others performed the surgery.

In the West, doctors amputated clitorises and ovaries in the 19th century as a treatment for epilepsy, hysteria, lesbianism, masturbation, melancholia and nymphomania. As recently as the 1950s, American and European doctors performed clitoridectomies to treat nymphomania and melancholia.

Western bans are poorly enforced

As Africans immigrate to the West, they are bringing their foods, music, politics and traditions - including the practice of circumcising their daughters.

A number of countries, among them Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Sweden and Switzerland, have outlawed the practice. But because immigrants mostly keep quiet about the custom, the laws are poorly enforced.

The United States is just beginning to respond.

In a key policy ruling June 13, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals granted asylum to Fauziya Kasinga, 18, who said she feared she would be forced to undergo circumcision if she were sent back to Togo.

A Nigerian woman living illegally in Portland, Ore., was spared deportation in 1994 to protect her two American-born daughters from forced operations.

In May, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment to make genital mutilation of females 18 and younger punishable by up to five years in prison. The House is expected to approve similar legislation.

Trying to change African culture

In African regions where female circumcision is a cultural tradition, women's advocacy groups are trying to end the practice or at least lessen its severity.

Women's groups in Sudan, for instance, are urging mothers to take their daughters to doctors for the ritual and encouraging physicians to do no more than clip the tip of the clitoris.

Under Egyptian law, anyone who causes permanent damage by performing a female circumcision could face three to 10 years at hard labor. But women's groups say no one has ever been prosecuted.

Although female circumcision is not prescribed in the Koran, it is most commonly practiced by Muslims. Yet, the practice does not exist in Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest places of the Islamic world, or in many other Muslim countries, including Algeria, Iraq, Syria and Tunisia.

"There is no evidence that the Prophet Mohammed ordered the circumcision of his own daughters," said Ibrahim Ahmed Hussein, a prominent Islamic leader in Hargeisa.

Hudan had her own reasons for wanting to be circumcised.

"Other children tease me because I haven't been cut," she said two days before undergoing the procedure. "If girls are not circumcised they will be insulted. If they are insulted they will not be beautiful."

Hours after being circumcised, Hudan smiles proudly.

The child, who lost her father to death in the war and has not seen her mother since she fled the fighting, is pleased by the rare attention her surgery brings her.

In a richer family, a circumcision would have been celebrated with a feast and gifts.

Hudan smiles. "I'm a big girl now. Just like my friends."

Background

Female Circumcision and Genital Mutilation Web site