The only achievement of Muslims is to cut and mutilate genitals of all babies and girls
Violence, Killing, Beheading, Mutilation is part of Muslim religion and culture.
Read here how many millions of women live with this horror.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting
Female genital mutilation cannot be defended as part of Islam
Ken Livingstone is wrong to describe Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a leading progressive in the Muslim world
Should a man who supports female genital mutilation (FGM) really be considered a "leading progressive in the Muslim world"?
When I recently asked this question, I thought that the only people to answer "yes" would be far-right bigots who, choosing to ignore the many mainstream Muslims opposed to FGM, believe that Islam is inherently backwards and violent.
I shouldn't have been so naive. My expression of concern at Ken Livingstone's continued endorsement of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptiantelevangelist who supports FGM, as a "progressive" swiftly led to me being denounced on one prominent leftwing blog as writing a "dishonest hatchet-job against a leading Muslim figure".
The facts are this: Qaradawi, who has been described as the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, issued a fatwa (hosted on the Muslim Brotherhood's Islam Online website) arguing that "circumcision [in this case cutting the labia minora, not the clitoris – what the World Health Organisation (WHO) refers to as Type IIa FGM] is better for a woman's health and it enhances her conjugal relation with her husband" and that, while it is "not obligatory", "whoever finds it serving the interest of his daughters should do it, and I personally support this under the current circumstances in the modern world".
Rather than sharing my horror at Qaradawi's support for FGM and the fact it is a direct, physical and brutal tool of patriarchal control, some so-called leftists responded to my article by trying to downplay the regressiveness of Qaradawi's views. Bob Pitt, writing at Socialist Unity, and Andy Newman, that blog's editor (commenting on Pitt's article), suggested that Type IIa FGM is merely an "anatomical equivalent" to male circumcision. As they know that most audiences are likely to be pretty au fait with male circumcision, this is a neat way of arguing that Qaradawi's views are not that bad after all.
But not only is Type IIa FGM far from anatomically equivalent to male circumcision, there are absolutely no health benefits for its subject. According to WHO, if male circumcision is carried out professionally in hygienic conditions it "has significant health benefits that outweigh the very low risk of complications".
How is it that two people who claim to be leftists – a term I would also apply to myself – are defending a man who advocates one of the most violently patriarchal acts imaginable, FGM, by downplaying the regressiveness of his views? And how can they possibly reconcile this with their claimed leftwing values?
The answer lies in their misunderstanding of multiculturalism. Newman argues that Qaradawi's support for FGM is not really that bad because "a truly multicultural society cannot regard the current state of social attitudes we have in Britain as self-evidently normative, and that anyone who disagrees is a bigot". Put in less abstruse terms, he is saying the right of young girls not to be mutilated is culturally specific rather than universal and that, as FGM is part of some, mainly African, cultures, we should just accept it. Similarly, we should not hold Qaradawi's support for it against him. Who are we, Newman is effectively asking, to judge that FGM is so wrong?
By suggesting that Qaradawi and his pro-FGM views are progressive relative to those of other Muslims, these so-called leftists are unwittingly mirroring the anti-Muslim bigotry of people such as Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders and others who suggest that all Muslims are inherently violent, misogynistic and backwards and therefore we shouldn't expect anything better from them than support for mutilating the genitalia of female offspring.
But Muslims speak out against FGM just as much as anybody else. The former head of al-Azhar, Shaikh Tantawi, and 34 Mauritanian scholarswho did so are just two examples among many. And it is not "culturally insensitive" to highlight this statement on FGM from WHO and various other UN agencies:
"Female genital mutilation has no known health benefits. On the contrary, it is known to be harmful to girls and women in many ways."
FGM of any kind is unacceptable. No leftist should be making excuses for its advocates, nor should they be whitewashing it as "anatomically analogous" to male circumcision. Instead, we should be leading the charge against this most brutal example of patriarchy and all those who support it.