YEMEN: Parliament upholds female circumcision

Yemen's conservatives are still in control.

After a heated debate in parliament this month, Yemeni women's rights advocates lost their battle to ban female circumcision, according to a report in the Yemen Times.

The parliament in recent days voted against a bill that would have outlawed female genital mutilation, a practice that is believed to affect almost 25% of Yemeni women.

Opponents claimed that the issue remains too sensitive among Yemeni and that no legal measure could be taken as long as there was no consensus among religious scholars against the practice.

Female circumcision is a widespread practice in the Middle East and Africa. Many Muslims believe that removing a girl's clitoris to tame her libido is a religious obligation.

Top Muslim clerics, including the Grand Sheik of al-Azhar Mosque, the world's oldest Sunni Muslim religious institution, have repeatedly decried the practice as purely traditional and without basis in Islamic scriptures.

Yet the scholars’ declarations have not been able to end to the centuries-old practice.

Egyptian lawmakers have been embroiled in a similar debate. A draft bill calling for the criminalization of the practice has been dismissed by Islamic lawmakers in Cairo as a Western ploy to demonize Islamic traditions.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Beirut

Photo: Yemeni women attended ceremonies in the city of Aden marking the anniversary of the British withdrawal from their country. Credit: EPA/YAHYA ARHAB

Comments

[Wepawee]

The Muslims pray 5 times a day. Do they read the Koran also? It does not say to do this to your daughters.
By doing this you are saying that "God Almighty" did not do a good enough job creating us in his "Perfect Image."
God made us in his image. We are perfect the way we are born. God loves us and does not want us to hurt one another. Has any woman who has been circumcised said that it did not hurt terribley?
This is wrong among man. Man should make this Cruel thing to woman STOP.
I will continue to pray for the end of this Female Circumcision. If God is with you who can stand against you?

[Engelbrekt]

“Top Muslim clerics, including the Grand Sheik of al-Azhar Mosque, the world's oldest Sunni Muslim religious institution, have repeatedly decried the practice as purely traditional and without basis in Islamic scriptures.”

They are in minority, over the decades there have been several fatwa’s endorsing female mutilation. The Grand Sheik and clerics doesn’t issue any binding Fatwa’s, Fiqh’s or what ever the correct term is. They only issue non binding statements against its practice. They probably cant issue fatwa’s, it is without question mentioned in some acknowledged scriptures about Mohamed’s life and deeds and if Mo did it no one can forbid it, those who is against say it’s not compulsory.

One could think it was a farce that in the year 2008 people serious discuss the issue of mutilation of woman on the grounds of what is said in hearsay stories from 850 AD to 1000 AD.