Female circumcision not required by Islamic law

Female circumcision is not required by Islamic law according to Islamic clerics in Egypt. Click here for the full story.

Good for the clerics, then.

This reminds me of how John Paul II admitted the Catholic Church was wrong to torture Galeleio over 400 years after his trial.

Female circumcision has always been a cultural, not a religious practice. The religious justifications for it don't hold any water. Good for these clerics for acknowledging that fact.

You missed the target by a fucking mile.

The only places where female circumcision is practice are some African nations. The practice isn't limited to Muslims.

Turks don't circumcize their girls. They do still follow the barbaric practice of circumcizing their male children. That's also common in other countries.

While I agree with the point you're making here, you're not strictly correct: female circumcision is not limited exclusively to Africa, but is also practiced in parts of the Middle East and (more rarely) Southeast Asia.

A friend of mine - a Malay Muslim - had three sisters who, like him, underwent circumcision as adolescents. The procedures they underwent involved nothing more than removing tiny bits of skin, though, and were more symbolic than anything else.

Now, if you're referring to the more severe forms of female circumcision - the kinds usually described as "female genital cutting" - then you're right, the practice is limited almost exclusively to Africa.

Okay, fine, I get it... The Egyptians don't do Female Genital Mutilation, and that IS a good thing. I just find the Clerics' declaration to be a statement of the obvious from a religious authority, same as John Paul's "Apology". I am aware such things as FGM are practiced almost exclusively in sub-saharan Africa.

And male circumcision is not the same thing, its religious origin comes from the belief that humans were born guilty, same as baptism- but you don't circumcise men because you hate men. You circumcise men because you actually think you're doing them a favor. Not to mention Circumcised men can still feel pleasure when they have sex.

Call me lazy for not looking, but is Male Circumsision mandatory in Turkey and Israel? It isn't in the US.

Many people who circumcise women think exactly the same thing.

Whatever reason they do it, it is fucking barbaric and I wish they would stop.

It makes me crazy that men seek to regulate women's bodies because they cannot regulate their own fucking (pardon the pun) libidos.

Female circumcision is performed as a method of social control.

The idea behind it is that women who have been circumcised are unable to experience pleasure during sex (or their pleasure is greatly reduced due to absence of clitoral stimulation). Hence, instead of being an activity that a woman partakes in for her own pleasure, sex becomes a service that a wife provides as her duty to her husband.

The purpose of removing / reducing a woman's ability to experience sexual pleasure is to reduce the likelihood that she will either...

A. have pre-marital sex or
B. commit adultery once married.

Female circumcision is performed in order to enable men to control womens' sexuality and to enable a man to feel sure that his children are actually his own children. It's all about subordinating female autonomy in order to assuage male insecurity.

Male circumcision performs no such function. Circumcision of the penis originated as a health measure in order to reduce the likelihood of the penis becoming diseased.

Male circumcision (according to its proponents) enables a man to enjoy the benefits of having a healthy penis while the purpose of female circumcision is to prevent women from enjoying sex.

As such there really is no comparison between the two.

Thank you, archon.

That's generally what I meant- I'm sorry I'm so inarticulate.

I personally find circumcision to be antiquated... should I ever have sons (Shame on me if I create people with my lousy genetic material) I will never have them circumcised, even though I was.

But it is not comparable to female genital mutilation. In some places, the labia are sewn together until the woman is married. A man loses some skin around his penis, he doesn't get his cock superglued to his belly.