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Hundreds of British schoolgirls are facing the terrifying prospect of female genital mutilation (FGM) over the Christmas holidays as experts warn the practice continues to flourish across the country. Parents typically take their daughters back to their country of origin for FGM during school holidays, but The Independent on Sunday has been told that "cutters" are being flown to the UK to carry out the mutilation at "parties" involving up to 20 girls to save money."Cultural sensitivity" vs. the good kind of sensitivity? No need to tell you which side of that issue I'm on.
The police face growing criticism for failing to prosecute a single person for carrying out FGM in 25 years; new legislation from 2003 which prohibits taking a girl overseas for FGM has also failed to secure a conviction. . . .
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugged is also adamantly pro-clitoris. Perhaps President Obama will appoint a Clitoris Czar to lead U.S. efforts against genital mutilation. I hereby nominate Mark Steyn.
(Via Memeorandum.)
UPDATE: Commenter Elizabeth:
Who honestly thinks that this would be tolerated if someone was mutilating the genitals of little white girls?Indeed. The Independent notes:
An estimated 70,000 women living in the UK have undergone FGM, and 20,000 girls remain at risk, according to Forward. The practice is common in 28 African countries, including Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria, as well as some Middle Eastern and Asian countries such as Malaysia and Yemen.This is one of those situations whre "cultural sensitivity" becomes a synonym for racism.
Good god...I hate to pay the race card here, but I think I have good cause in this case. Who honestly thinks that this would be tolerated if someone was mutilating the genitals of little white girls? If some, say white Christian sect did it and claimed it was their untouchable culture?
ReplyDelete"The Independent on Sunday has been told that 'cutters' are being flown to the UK to carry out the mutilation at 'parties' involving up to 20 girls to save money."
ReplyDelete"Cutters" and "parties." That doesn't sound very Arabic to me. Doesn't that language have an analog for "mohel" and "bris?"
it's my body i will do what i please with it........................oh wait they are being forced nvm where are the pro-abortion idiots to lambast the uk for this?
ReplyDeleteAlong the same lines of Elizabeth's comment, my standard for judging whether a liberal's insistence on "tolerance" of foreign cultural practices, is to ask how they would respond if told that this was going on in some small town in Arkansas. If they think it would be wrong there, then it is wrong no matter where it is happening.
ReplyDeleteLiberal "tolerance" is just another word for racially based low expectations.
As many as 168,000 FGM's may have occured on American soil!
ReplyDeletewww.freedomfolks.com/?p=2058
Celebrate that in your classrooms!
Elizabeth, if Christians of any color were pulling this crap, the UK Thought Police would be on it like, pardon the expression, white on rice. The entire reason these people aren't being prosecuted is they're Muslim, and prosecuting Muslims isn't safe for the prosecutor.
ReplyDeleteSDN
"if Christians of any color were pulling this crap, the UK Thought Police would be on it like, pardon the expression, white on rice."
ReplyDeleteDemonstrably untrue. The UK is still a majority Christian country. As of 2000, about 3.8% of males were subjected to elective/religious genital mutilation. Since only 0.5% of the UK's population is Jewish and only 2.8% Muslim, it's a reasonable supposition that there's at least some Christian elective genital mutilation.
@Kn@ppster,
ReplyDeleteYou're technically correct, but circumcision is of antiquity comparable to beer & wine. In the same 'spirit', I'll be on you like poor speeches on W if I see you say 'drugs and alcohol'.
I favor the response of British General Charles James Napier, who demanded an end to Indian widow-burning with these words:
ReplyDeleteYou say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. The we will follow ours.
Smitty,
ReplyDeleteDrugs and alcohol are two of my very favorite things!
And, being cut myself, I can't say that I personally have found male circumcision to be a handicap (we decided not to have it done to our boys, though -- I don't blame my parents for having it done to me, but I'd blame myself for having it done to someone else).
I don't think antiquity cuts it (pun intended) as justification.
For one thing, female "circumcision," like its male equivalent, dates back to ancient Egypt and is mentioned in writing at least as early as 163 BC, making it more "antique" than the Sermon on the Mount.
For another, whatever one may think of some aspects of modernity, it's just a fact that as time goes on society tends to re-evaluate, and ultimately reject, many "antique" practices as barbaric.
Both male and female "circumcision" involve cutting off sensitive portions of infants' genitalia. Both male and female "circumcision" are justified primarily on grounds of religion and tradition (the medical justifications for routine male circumcision tend to ... reach). I'm far from anti-Semitic, but I don't see why one should be treated as a protected custom while the other is treated as a crime.
@Kn@ppster,
ReplyDeleteI suppose that if you assert male==female, then your argument makes sense.
My understanding is that the female flavor of circumcision is relatively deleterious to function compared to nipping the foreskin.
As far as the cultural aspect goes, circumcision is an explicit commandment in the Torah. Chopping daughters, not so much.
My chief interest in the topic, shifting slightly, is that radical feminism ignores the burqa and female circumcision, yet cheerfully attacks western manhood for seemingly lesser crimes.
What an inverted world.