Kurdish Girls Suffer Sexual Abuse, Mutilation
The Washington Post reports that more than 60% of Kurdish women in the northern part of Iraq have had their clitoris “circumcised” as part of what some Kurdish women consider a cleansing procedure demanded by Islam.
Is there a more vile crime a woman could inflict on another woman? Usually it takes a man inflict such horror on a young girl. Whenever I read about the mutilation of young girls like these I am reminded of Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey, a fantasy novel in which a woman recounts how her mother-in-law had her clitoris removed because she enjoyed sex too much. “She cut out the heart of my love,” she says, giving very apt description of the practice.
The mother of a just-cut Kurdish girl might be speaking for Islamic women everywhere when she gives her reasons for tricking her daughter:
“This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”
Kurds do have two reasons for the practice, though. First, it helps women control their sexual desires. Second, it purifies their spirits and allows others to eat the food they prepare. This from an elderly village woman:
“I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure,” said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.
Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan’s eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said “Of course” and explained that the procedure is painless.
“They just cut off a little bit,” she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.
Starve then, crone, and just deserts to you.
Contrary to modern belief systems, some acts are objectively wrong and cannot be rationalized by perspective or cultural history. Female genital mutilation is such an act.
Consider the rape of a woman by a man. In the aftermath of such a devastating personal invasion there is, however remote and/or distant in time, the possibility of recovery and the resumption of a normal sex life. Not so for these innocent young girls in Iraq and elsewhere, maimed as they are by their culture and their elders’ religion.
Marc, I suggest you do some research before blaming Islam for this. “The mother of a just-cut Kurdish girl might be speaking for Islamic women everywhere when she gives her reasons for tricking her daughter…”
For Islamic women everywhere. Really? Have you talked to the average Turkish woman? Most of whom are religious Muslims? I just talked to my Turkish Muslim fiancee who said, literally, “they are barbarians” and “lets talk about something else it makes me sick.”
This is not Islam. It is culture. These people may think it’s Islam but that does not make it so. It happens, by the way, in certain cultures only. You can make a map of them. That’s it.
From what I have been able to determine in my (admittedly limited) research in this area, the practices of female mutilation generally predate the introduction of Islam to a given area. That means that Islam is not the cause of these practices and cannot be without reversing the flow of time.
Also, there are just as many Islamic areas where these practices are banned as there are Islamic areas where they are practiced. Thus, any claim of association between these practices and Islam cannot be honestly said to exist.
Jason: both your comments are correct. It predates Islam and… it is illegal in quite some Muslim countries.
But the issue is that it’s happening with our friends the Kurds in northern Iraq. I wonder how prevalent this was under Sadam?
This article says it is predominantly a rural practice in Kurdistan.
I’m a kurdish girl, and every Kurd I speak to thinks it is a horrific practice.
It takes place in more rural parts of kurdistan just as it takes place in remote areas of many other islamic countries, e.g. saudi arabia and syria. it is a cultural practice which others try to justify by religion, just like the full burqua and other such traditions.