The Maldives: Addu atoll, where FGM/C is returning, is the most southerly
Last year we came across some worrying articles describing the rise of female genital cutting in the Indian Ocean islands of the Maldives. It seems that this time the entire FGC community has been a touch slow on the uptake, as this article is dated 2009.
In December 2009 the Attorney General of the Addu atoll in the Maldives told a human rights event of a worrying trend towards female genital cutting being practised on Addu, in the name of Islam. Husnu Suood, the Attorney General, described their knowledge of FGC in the region as new information, something they had worryingly come across very recently. He also said that, given that the practise of FGC had been almost totally wiped out in the Maldives, it was imperative to mount a full-scale, government led campaign to ensure that it did not return. The article also says that the FGC is returning as Muslim clerics are decreeing it essential for all Muslim women.
It is obviously distressing to hear that FGC is returning to the Maldives, and particularly that it is being championed by Muslim scholars who are issuing fatwas saying genital cutting is compulsory for girls. Given the opposing fatwa of January 2010 in Mauritania against female genital cutting, issued by thirty-four Muslim clerics in the country, and the Cairo fatwa against female genital cutting as a result of a conference of Muslim clerics in 2006, we thought we would re-cap what this means. A fatwa is a religious opinion issued by a religious scholar and regarding Islamic law. A fatwa may be either a recommendation or a condemnation, or something in between.
The Cairo fatwa against female genital cutting
On 22-23 November 2006 a conference of Muslim scholars met in Cairo, Egypt, at the world-renowned Al-Azhar mosque, instigated by German organisation TARGET. Over the course of this two-day conference, the group of respected Muslim theologians, clerics and scholars discussed female genital cutting, proscribing it as a ‘criminal offence’ and not in keeping with their religion. This declaration was then set in stone as a fatwa in the Golden Book, a precious Islamic object for distribution to mosques in countries where FGC is practised. The Golden Book includes speeches and declarations from scholars present at the conference as well as information about why FGC is a harmful practice. The Golden Book has been distributed to many mosques around the world, translated into several languages, but TARGET lacks funding to print enough copies to share it more widely. Al-Azhar is the home of Sunni Islam and the Grand Mufti of Egypt wrote the introduction to the Golden Book.
Given the influence of Al-Azhar mosque and the goals of TARGET to use Islam’s own methods of discussing and outlawing issues, the opposing notions of Muslim clerics in the Maldives are alarming. In the case of Mauritania, a law professor commented that the fatwa would remove the ‘religious mask’ behind which the practice hides in that country, which is precisely what the Golden Book also seeks to do.
FGC pre-dates religion, evidenced by the fact that Ethiopia, a country with a population almost evenly split between Christianity and Islam, remains one of the countries with the highest prevalence of FGC, reportedly up to 85%.
For Orchid, the aim is to see an end to female genital cutting all around the world because it is a violation of human rights.
