Is Female Genital Mutilation( FGM) Islamic?

Is Female Genital Mutilation( FGM) Islamic? 

Before condemning FGM as an “Islamic” practice, it’s a necessary to know that Islam simply doesn’t approve of female circumcision.

Nowhere in the Qur’an and Hadith does one come across even a vague reference to female circumcision, though it’s still practiced in isolated Muslim communities of North African countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.

Imam Ghazali, considered to be the greatest ever authority on Qur’an, criticised FGM in no uncertain terms in his eleven treatises.

Female genital mutilation predates Islam in North Africa. The African tribes of pre-Islamic North Africa used to practise ‘Geza’ which is an old Swahili word meaning “cutting an unnecessary growth.”

To the primitive people of North Africa, a woman’s tiny growth in vagina was a ‘witch’s curse.’

After the advent of Islam, this undesirable practice became less widespread. Cultural and ethnic undercurrents are always stronger and deeper than religious influences. So this practice is still sporadically prevalent in that region reverting to Pre-Islamic Jahalia days.

And as regards the prevalence of FGM in Egypt, one ought to be aware that it was the custom of Coptic Christians .

Almost all Egyptian Muslims are descendants of Coptic Christians,.

The great blind Muslim scholar, Professor Taha Hussain of Egypt, explained this pre-Islamic phenomenon in his book Perpetuation and percolation of primitive practices. Arab society never approved of this heinous practice.

Europe conveniently forgets that during medieval ages, it had introduced chastity belts for women and there was a device called infibulations( way to prevent sexual intercourse), meant to lock a woman’s genitalia, so that she could not sleep around except for her husband.

In a nutshell, those who live in glass-houses, ought not to throw stones at others.

P.A.Mohamed Ameen