by ASGHAR VASANWALA
Bohras, a sect of Shia Islam, are better educated than many other Muslim groups. However, this does not stop them practicing ritual of cutting clitoris of their young girls when they reach age seven. The young girls are held tight during the process; her cries and sobbing bring no mercy from their mothers/aunts/grandma, who are misguided into thinking that the ritual is a do or die mandate. The clitoris cutting called Khatna snatches away sexual pleasure, weak or no orgasm, when girls grow up, because the organ does not develop its full potential. The World Health Organisation has campaigned against the practice, saying it exposes millions of girls to dangers ranging from infections, hemorrhaging, complicated child-birth, or hepatitis from unsterilised tools.
I think all communities must write to their governments, ministers, politicians, social workers and exhort them taking action against this inhuman practice. Please help save suffering of these helpless girls. Even though in western countries the practice is strictly banned yet the tightknit, clergy controlled Bohras, manage practicing this ritual clandestinely. No one reports the crime. If school authorities are informed about a specific incident, they will involve Social Services and punish the parents.
Please read the full story.
Female circumcision anger aired in India
by RUPAM JAIN NAIR
Eleven years ago, Farida Bano was circumcised by an aunt on a bunk bed in her family home at the end of her 10th birthday party.
The mutilation occurred not in Africa, where the practice is most prevalent, but in India where a small Muslim sub-sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra continues to believe that the removal of the clitoris is the will of God.
“We claim to be modern and different from other Muslim sects. We are different but not modern,” Bano, a 21-year-old law graduate who is angry about what was done to her, told AFP in New Delhi.
She vividly remembers the moment in the party when the aunt pounced with a razor blade and a pack of cotton wool.
The Bohra brand of Islam is followed by 1.2 million people worldwide and is a sect of Shia Islam that originated in Yemen.
While the sect bars other Muslims from its mosques, it sees itself as more liberal, treating men and women equally in matters of education and marriage.
The community’s insistence on “Khatna” (the excision of the clitoris) also sets it apart from others on the subcontinent.
“If other Muslims are not doing it then why are we following it?” Bano says.
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