The testimonials on this blog are from real people who (mostly) come from the USA. This blog serves to document common circumcision complications and the prevailing ignorance surrounding this archaic practice. Singly, reports of circumcision harm are dismissed as anecdotal. Collectively, these reports are proof that
circumcision damages boys and the men they become.
"Intelligence is being able to learn from your mistakes; Wisdom is being able to learn from the mistakes of others."
Do you think that this 9-10 year old child has gangrene or frostbite on his penis? THINK AGAIN!He has been diagnosed with a normal and natural penis, which calls for an IMMEDIATE SURGICAL intervention!
In a recent study, 93 percent of Malaysian Muslim women admitted to being circumcised. We took a look at what's driving this painful boom.
I meet 19-year-old Syahiera Atika at the mall. She spends most Sundays prowling Kuala Lumpur's mega malls like other women her age, but as she eagerly points out she's also different. Syahiera is a modern incarnation of Malay culture: She happily embraces Western-style capitalism, while at the same time strictly following the local interpretation of Islam. And as she proudly informs me, that also means she's circumcised.
19 year-old Syahiera Atika (center), poses with her friends in front of a Kuala Lumpur mall
"I'm circumcised because it is required by Islam," she says. The Malay word she uses is wajib, meaning any religious duty commanded by Allah. Syahiera is aware of how female circumcision is perceived in the West, but rejects any notion that it's inhumane. "I don't think the way we do it here is harmful," she says. "It protects young girls from premarital sex as it is supposed to lower their sex drive. But I am not sure it always works." She giggles at this thought.
Female circumcision, as you may know, involves surgically removing part or all of a woman's clitoris, which is classified as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) by the World Health Organization. FGM has no medical benefits whatsoever, and a WHO fact sheet says that it "reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women." In 2012 the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution calling it a "human rights violation" and urged nations to ban the practice.
A mother and daughter stand in the waiting room at the private Global Ikhwan clinic. Women from all over the region visit the Islamic clinic where FGM is performed regularly
Regardless of how cruel FGM is, the majority of Muslim women in Malaysia are, like Syahiera, circumcised. A 2012 study conducted by Dr. Maznah Dahlui, an associate professor at the University of Malaya's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, found that 93 percent of Muslim women surveyed had been circumcised. Dahlui also discovered that the procedure is increasingly performed by trained medical professionals in private clinics, instead of by traditional circumcision practitioners called Ma Bidans.
Dahlui insists Malaysia's version of female circumcision is less invasive than some types practiced around the world—she says it involves a needle prick to the clitoral hood and is performed on girls between the ages of one and six. However, as I discovered, more invasive procedures are also widespread.
Obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Mighilia of the Global Ikhwan private clinic located in Rawang, north of Kuala Lumpur, admitted that she performs a more drastic version with a needle or scissors. "I just take a needle and slit off the top of the clitoris, but it is very little," she said. "Just one millimeter."
Dr. Mighilia demonstrates how she performs female circumcisions with scissors
Genital mutilation isn't banned in Malaysia, although public hospitals are prevented from performing the surgery. In 2009 the Fatwa Committee of Malaysia's National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs ruled that female circumcision was obligatory for all Muslim women, unless it was harmful.
That's not to say, however, that all Malaysians support it. Syarifatul Adibah, who is the Senior Programme Officer at Sisters in Islam, a local women's rights group, insists that sunat (Malaysian for circumcision) isn't once mentioned in the Quran. Instead she points to its popularity as stemming from an increasingly conservative interpretation of Islam.
"Previously it was a cultural practice, but now, because of Islamization, people just relate everything to Islam," she said. "And when you link something to religion, people here follow it blindly."
According to Adibah, FGM became more socially acceptable in 2012, when the Ministry of Health announced it was developing guidelines to reclassify the procedure as medical. To her, this misleads people into thinking mutilation is medically sound. "If you come up with the guidelines and you medicalize it this means you're OK with it, despite it having no medical benefit," she said. (The Ministry of Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Not that the "medicalization" of female genital mutilation is unique to Malaysia—the practice was recently identified as a new "disturbing trend" by the UNFPA, UNICEF, the International Confederation of Midwives, and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.
But some Malaysians believe that international organizations like those shouldn't be telling them how to live. "The problem with the West is that it's just so judgmental," said Abdul Khan Rashid, a professor at Penang Medical College. "Who the hell are you to tell us what to practice and what not to practice? A lot of women now do it in private clinics in safe conditions, but if you're going to make it illegal, the practice will just go underground."
Dr. Ariza Mohamed is a prominent member of the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia, which condones "Holistic ,edicine based on Islam"
Malaysian medical practitioners also defend the practice by passing judgment onto other countries. "We are very much against what is going on in other countries like Sudan," said Dr. Ariza Mohamed, an obstetrician and gynecologist at KPJ Ampang Puteri Specialist Hospital in Kuala Lumpur. "That is very different from what we practice in Malaysia," she added. "And there is a big difference between circumcision and female genital mutilation."
Think that circumcision is just for boys? Think again. Sunat is where you remove the "unwanted piece" of (for)skin from a girl. It's a "choice" for the girl's family to make for her.
BANDUNG, INDONESIA – Thrashing wildly, 5-year-old Reta wails as she is hoisted onto a bed during a circumcision ceremony in a school hall-turned-clinic on Indonesia’s island of Java. “No, no, no,” she cries, punching and kicking as her mother cups her tear-soaked face to soothe her.
Doctors cheer encouragingly. One of them gently swipes the girl’s genital area with antiseptic and then swiftly pricks the hood of her clitoris with a fresh sewing needle, drawing no blood. The ordeal is over in seconds.
Doctors say the procedure will have no effect on the girl, her sexual pleasure in later life or ability to bear a child.
“I’m happy. My daughter is now clean,” her mother Yuli, a 27-year-old seamstress who goes by one name, said at a mass circumcision of 120 girls at the Assalaam Foundation’s Islamic school in the city of Bandung.
She believes the ritual will nevertheless have an effect.
“Many girls are getting pregnant out of wedlock these days,” she noted. “Circumcision hopefully will prevent my daughter from becoming oversexed, and will make her less amorous when she grows up.”
Indonesia, home to the world’s biggest Muslim population, argues that this form of circumcision is largely symbolic, not harmful and should not be seen as mutilation.
The U.N. thinks otherwise. In December, it passed a resolution banning female genital mutilation, which extends to the form of circumcision practiced in Indonesia. Procedures such as pricking, piercing, incising, scraping, cauterization or burning that are carried out for nonmedical purposes are classed by the WHO as mutilation, along with practices that alter or remove any part of the genitals. The more extreme practices can lead to severe bleeding, urination problems and complications during childbirth, according to the WHO.
A ritual dating back thousands of years and typically seen in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, its most brutal forms require stitching together the inner and outer labia, or excising all or part of the clitoris.
Indonesia says genital cutting does not take place and that it has worked to eradicate other more extreme circumcisions as it seeks compromise between conforming with international standards and placating cultural and religious traditions. It banned female circumcision in 2006 but backtracked in 2010, arguing many parents were still having their daughters circumcised, often by unskilled traditional doctors who often botched the procedure.
In response to the ban, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the country’s top Islamic clerical body, issued a fatwa in 2008 allowing the practice but did not make it compulsory.
While no official data is available to measure the extent of the practice in Indonesia, it is common among its 240 million people, according to aid agencies. A 2003 study by the Population Council found that 22 percent of 1,307 female circumcision cases were excisions, meaning part of the clitoris or labia was removed. Of the rest, 49 percent involved incisions while 28 percent were “symbolic.”
Jakarta issued a 2010 regulation allowing “scraping the clitoral hood, without injuring the clitoris” — a practice that is nevertheless defined by the WHO as mutilation — while criminalizing more severe procedures.
Islamic foundations such as the Assalaam Foundation in Bandung say they ditched scissor-snipping for pinpricks. “In the past, we had used one or two doctors and more traditional healers and they used scissors to snip a bit on the hood. We abandoned that method many years ago,” said the foundation’s coordinator, Eulis Sri Karyati.
Health Ministry official Budi Sampurno said Indonesia wants to replace scraping with swiping “with a cotton bud,” hoping the U.N. would not view this as mutilation. Jakarta has not indicated how it would enforce it.
Despite the U.N. resolution, the custom still has deep meaning for Indonesian Muslims and will likely remain, officials say.
Housewife Tita Lishaini Jamilah, 28, said Indonesia should not bow to the U.N.’s ban on the practice, insisting that the ritual was safe. “Why would any parent hurt her child? If any doctor were to mutilate my daughter, I’d be the first to protest,” she said.
