Today at 11AM Eastern: Blog Talk Radio ALL-STARS panel!

Updated
You can listen to the podcast here
In today's podcast, an all-star lineup:
Elizabeth Blackney of Media Lizzy, Jazz Shaw of Midstream Radio, Shane Burgess of Political Vindication, and Siggy will be discussing sexual mores in the West and in Islamic countries.

We'll start by talking about Lisa Schiffren's post Sex and the Single Muslim Girl, with a panel discussion, followed by conversation.

Chat's open by 10:45AM, and the call-in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!

The missing top models, and other Sunday items

The other day Matt was posting about the disappearance of Waris Dirie, who had launched a campaign against female genital mutilation in 1996. The Waris Dirie Foundation website has more information on her campaign.

Dirie was later found on Friday and the police are investigating the disappearance:

Dirie's manager, Walter Lutschinger, said she had been involved in an altercation in a hotel reception area after a taxi driver took her to the wrong branch of the Sofitel hotel chain. The police were called and drove Dirie around Brussels looking for the correct hotel because she had apparently forgotten where she was staying.

UPDATE
Model Dirie apologizes for 3-day disappearance
'A little misunderstanding,' she says of absence from women's conference.

Earler last week the police had found the body of another model who had spoken against FGM:

News of Dirie's disappearance came a week after French police said they had found the body of another former model of African origin who had campaigned against female genital mutilation. Guinean-born Katoucha Niane was discovered floating in the River Seine in Paris.

The French police said an autopsy showed no signs of foul play, raising the possibility that she may have fallen accidentally into the river. However, Katoucha's family members say they suspect homicide.

French police

initially said an autopsy showed no signs of foul play, pointing to the possibility that the could have fallen accidentally into the river.

The ex- model and mother of three died from "rapid submersion with no traces of violence," said a source close to the investigation. "She fell into the water and went straight to the bottom," he added.

Her family insists that a homicide investigation continue, and have requested a second autopsy.

France2 did a report on Katoucha's campaign against FGM which you can watch on YouTube (in French)

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The WSJ's Five Best books on gambling, selected by Richard Hoffer:



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Pat has the Carnival of the Insanities
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Today's shoes, looking forward to warm(er) days, the Clarks Hydrangea in bronze.

NYT glosses over FGM

As regular readers of this blog know, I have been posting about female genital mutilation (FGM) for a long time. My position is as follows:

I do not care whether this is a tribal, religious, and/or cultural tradition at all, the practice of female genital mutilation is a barbaric custom that must be stopped.

Yesterday for some (probably insane) reason I picked up the dead-tree edition of the New York Times and found that the magazine has an eight-page full-color article and spread on the barbaric practice, titled A Cutting Tradition
Inside a female-circumscision ceremony for young Muslim girls


The description by Sarah Corbett makes it sound like the girls were going for a pedicure (emphasis added):

When a girl is taken — usually by her mother — to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals. Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds. The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girl's genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where she's given a small, celebratory gift — some fruit or a donated piece of clothing — and offered a cup of milk for refreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14.

I was actually shaking with anger when I finished reading this.

For starters, it is not circumscision. It is mutilation. It doesn't take much to mutilate a woman's external genitals.

The procedure itself is designed to deprive a woman from enjoying her sexuality for as long as she lives and carries dire medical consequences.

My friend Phyllis Chesler was reading the NYT article, too, and has this to say, Exactly Who are the Barbarians? Female Genital Mutilation as Pictured in the West

What is a human rights atrocity with life-long and life-threatening consequences is here being presented as a "tradition," often a harmless one, sometimes not, but always a well-intentioned one.

According to the article, there is "little blood involved" - well, how bad can that be? And, "antiseptic is used" - well, this is not dangerous at all, is it? Finally, afterwards, the child is given a "celebratory gift" - what, am I the kind of westerner who, Grinch-style, would deny the child her gift in order to make my twisted, "racist" argument? As the article states , the child clutching (or drinking) her gift "has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia."

These photographs were taken in 2006 on a day where 200 girls were genitally mutilated . In honor of the "prophet Mohammed's birthday," the Assalaam Foundation subsidized both the mutilation - and the "gift." According to the Foundation's chairman of social services, the cutting/mutilation will "stabilize her libido;" "make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband"; and "will balance her psychology."

Because you know, those husbands wouldn't want any hysteria getting in the way.

Ninety six percent of all Indonesian families have sliced their daughters’ clitorises right off.

No orgasms for you, you naughty, wicked hussy of a child.

In the article, an Italian physician who is also a World Health Organization official states: "To judge them (the female mutilators) "harsly is to isolate them. You cannot make change that way. These mothers believe they are doing something good for their children."

The Indonesian "cutting" is presented as less severe, less "extreme" than African versions. Oh yeah? Then why does one photo show us a child in extraordinary pain. Yes, right there in the New York Times. The caption is: "A girl cries as she is circumcized." Well, it's like being vaccinated, right? And there is a second photo of a highly anxious child just before the mutilation. This one is captioned: "A girl is soothed by an attendant before her circumcision."

The photographer has captured a live human rights atrocity in progress and we are seeing it in color with our morning coffee and croissants. Or bagels. Or muffins. Whatever.

Who exactly are the barbarians here? Those who genitally mutilate their daughters or those who deem the atrocity as something of a soft core "tradition" to be "enjoyed" at Sunday brunch?

Phyllis is unsparing in her indictement of the NYT's puff piece. She also links to Dr. Andrew Bostom's article, Clitoral Relativism—Female Genital Mutilation in "Tolerant" Islamic Indonesia where he quotes from the British Medical Journal

An August 1993 report in the British Medical Journal (abstracted here) on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) stated plainly, in its summary conclusions:

Female genital mutilation, also misleadingly known as female circumcision, is usually performed on girls ranging in from 1 week to puberty. Immediate physical complications include severe pain, shock, infection, bleeding, acute urinary infection, tetanus, and death. Long-term problems include chronic pain, difficulties with micturition [urination] and menstruation, pelvic infection leading to infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labor during childbirth.

Not surprisingly, FGM is outlawed in theUnited States and most Western countries, and there are concerted efforts to eradicate this barbaric practice, globally.

But just today, the barbarism of FGM is indeed referred to "misleadingly" as "circumcision" in a quintessential culturally (or if you prefer, clitorally) relative depiction by Sara Corbett published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine

My other friend Mary Madigan notices that Sara Corbett has a history of perverting the truth.

All the same, the NYT has now slipped from moral equivalence, dhimmitude and political correctness into embracing child abuse and mysogyny.

Update
Pushing the limits of cultural relativism: the lighter side of cannibalism

Update 2
Can’t Drive, But Hey! There’s a Strong Sense of Family

Unsurprisingly, todays co-called “feminist” blogs are awash with false outrage at meaningless trivialities, like Michigan Tech’s president implying that women should not be pressured into attending college if their ambition is not higher education, the societal implications of the new “skinny” offerings on the Starbucks menu, a Post-It ad, and some half-baked rant about Chris Matthew’s treatment of Hillary Clinton. There is nothing dealing head-on with the horrors women around the world are experiencing at the hands of real Patriarchal societies whose laws, practices, and yes, backward version of religion have established an inescapably oppressive construct that is now affecting a brand new generation.

It begs the question, of course: what is it that these women are afraid of? Is it so simple as a fear of the demon of multiculturalism, or a fear of being perceived as intolerant that leads them to do nothing more than pay lip service to the cruelty? Or is it something more? If this was such an innocuous practice, they certainly would not object to undergoing it themselves, but you would, rightfully, find none that would, so it cannot be that they believe this kind of thing is merely an artifact of a bygone era. Something must be preventing them from acknowledging a real cause for concern, a real plight of gender equality…something bigger.

It remains to be seen of course. Tomorrow, feminists across the country will celebrate a court decision that paved the way for international policies encouraging abortion as a legitimate reproductive right, which has in turn empowered countries to impose one-child policies, and for women in those countries to take advantage of international help to commit a genocide of the female gender — allowing nearly 60% of all female babies born in China and India to be killed.

So much for tolerance. Its time for a new idea.

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Female Genital Mutilation destroys lives in Britain

Warning: Post may not be suitable for workdue to graphic descriptions of FGM procedures

Let me make myself clear on this:

I do not care whether this is a tribal, religious, and/or cultural tradition at all, the practice of female genital mutilation is a barbaric custom that must be stopped.Again, I don't want the issue clouded by any kind of ethnic/religious bias. THE PRACTICE ITSELF must be condemned.

Additionally, I must stress again that FGM is a social custom, not a religious practice, which has been reiterated in this MEMRI video.

The UK's Daily Mail has a well-researched article on FGM that you should read,
The unspeakable practice of female circumcision that's destroying young women's lives in Britain

Most people will be unfamiliar with this practice, which involves removing part or all of the clitoris, the surrounding labia (the outer part of the vagina) and sometimes the sewing up of the vagina, leaving only a small opening for urine and menstrual blood.

It is carried out for a variety of cultural reasons. Such is the secrecy that surrounds the practice that even those aware that it occurs in large swathes of Africa and Asia will be shocked to learn that it is prevalent in Britain.

During a highly disturbing, four-month investigation, however, we uncovered evidence that thousands of British-African girls, in towns and cities throughout the country, have been forcibly "cut".

By conservative estimates, 66,000 women and girls living in Britain have been mutilated. This figure, accepted by the Metropolitan Police, came in a report by a volunteer organisation funded by the Department of Health and carried out with academics from the London School of Tropical Hygiene and the City University.

The article states that political correctness rears its cowardly head, again:

The Met team also educates regional police forces about FGM, and speaks to mosques, community groups and local authorities.

Usually their visits are well-received, but we found that at least one London council declined to publish material highlighting the suffering and danger the practice causes - for fear of offending ethnic African residents.

This kind of attitude incenses Detective Inspector Hamilton. "We are all becoming very culturally sensitive," she says. "People are a bit frightened of saying 'You can't do this here' because people shoot back with 'But it's our culture'.

Among them,

Several leadings Imams have openly condemned the practice. This, though, does not deter its proponents, who maintain that it is their inalienable right to live according to their traditional beliefs and customs, rather than conform to British values. Indeed, some argue that the freedom to carry out FGM is a fundamental principle of our multi-cultural society.

Let's look at the dictionary definition of inalienable:

not alienable; not transferable to another or capable of being repudiated

FGM is worthy of repudiation, and as civilized people we must repudiate it. The "freedom" to carry out FGM is the "freedom" to carry out (and without the benefit of anesthesia) the following,

• Remove the clitoral hood with or without removal of part or all of the clitoris.


• Remove the clitoris together with part or all of the labia minora.


• Remove part or all of the external genitalia (clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora) and stitching and/or narrowing of the vaginal opening leaving a small hole for urine and menstrual flow


• Or,
  Pricking, piercing, stretching, or incision of the clitoris and/or labia;
  Cauterization by burning the clitoris and surrounding tissues;
  Incisions to the vaginal wall;
  Scraping (angurya cuts) or cutting (gishiri cuts) of the vagina and surrounding tissues; and
  Introduction of corrosive substances or herbs into the vagina to cause bleeding or for the purpose of tightening or narrowing it.

Now, read that again carefully.

The physical health consequences of FGM are horrendous. The psychosexual and psychological health are equally severe.

Ponder each one of those items and tell me WHO in their right minds would defend the inalienable right to perform any of these barbaric butcherings.

The FGM Education and Networking Project is making great strides in ending this barbaric practice.

UPDATE
Via SC&A, three links to those defending FGM:
Besotted multiculturalist anthropologists defend female genital mutilation
Cultural rights or human rights: the case of female genital mutilation
Healing the wound

Update 2
Genital Mutilation Practice Growing In Britain

(ht/ Pamela)
Previous posts on FGM and female genital mutilation.



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The American feminists' silence on the subjection of Islamic women

Christina Hoff Sommers writes about The Subjection of Islamic Women And the fecklessness of American feminism,

The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?

The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.

Sommers explains,

One reason is that many feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgment on non-Western cultures. They are far more comfortable finding fault with American society for minor inequities (the exclusion of women from the Augusta National Golf Club, the "underrepresentation" of women on faculties of engineering) than criticizing heinous practices beyond our shores. The occasional feminist scholar who takes the women's movement to task for neglecting the plight of foreigners is ignored or ruled out of order.

Sommers mentions Katha Pollitt, who

casually places "limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex" and opposing abortion on the same plane as throwing acid in women's faces and stoning them to death. Her hostility to the United States renders her incapable of distinguishing between private American groups that stigmatize gays and foreign governments that hang them. She has embraced a feminist philosophy that collapses moral categories in ways that defy logic, common sense, and basic decency.

I can't say that I would expect decency from the American feminists. After all, these are the women which, as I have said before, equate women with their gonads and see nothing wrong with a lesbian statutory rape, which is even presented as a "salvation".

Phyllis Chesler has written eloquently about the feminist establishment's unwillingness to take on Islamic sexism,

She faults it for "embracing an anti-Americanism that is toxic, heartless, mindless and suicidal."

In the irony-poor mindset of the feminist establishment, there is no notion that believing that our culture is ruinous for women, while failing to see the horrors routinely perpetrated against women in Arab countries and in other parts of the world, shows their argument in all its emptiness.

Unfortunately, it is suicidal not only for the feminist establishment, it is lethal to women all around the world.

Update
Via Dreams Into Lightning, Is Phyllis Chesler right?

The debate over FGM, on TV

MEMRI has a video clip of a debate between two Egyptian Islamic scholars that was broadcast on Al-Arabiya TV on February 12, 2007. One of them, Sheikh Mahmoud Ashur, who is a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic ResearchAcademy (or Islamic Research Council), specifically states (emphasis added),

Female circumcision is not part of Islam. Rather, it is a traditional custom. Under no circumstances should we follow this custom, because it leaves a deep wound in the souls of these girls, which has a psychological, emotional, and social impact on their lives. Female circumcision does a lot of damage. This damage is harmful, and it shatters the girl's soul. Therefore, it is absolutely forbidden to perform this custom. No person should do this, because it is harmful and causes damage.

Read the transcript here.

(h/t Sigmund, Carl and Alfred)

Two exceptional posts at Gates of Vienna

Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Georgia - From the Air
and
The Feminislamists: Women of Woe. Don't miss SC&A's comment,

I think the 'acceptance' of FGM (and thus the culture that allows for FGM), comes about as a response to 'white man's guilt over colonialism.

If we accept and endorse FGM, well, maybe that might mitigate some of the colonialist 'guilt' over colonialism.

This is the convoluted (and erroneous) logic that is behind so much of European anti semitism. If the Europeans can paint Israel as racist and evil, well, maybe the Holocaust wasn't perpetrated against innocents, but rather 'maybe they had it coming'- and thus, European ambivalence and acquiescence to the Holocaust might be mitigated.

To consider FGM as an 'acceptable cultural alternative' is to accept radical hatreds and bigotry as 'acceptable alternatives' and to assign them equal status to the values of free and civilized cultures.

What's next- the celebration of cannibalism, bestiality and pedophilia?

and Dymphna's reply.

Following up on Marie Claire's Mecca Stars, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A friend who visits my blog and who has a subscription to Marie Claire dropped by on Saturday to bring me the latest issue, February 2007.

She had read my post on the Marie Claire's Mecca Stars article from the December issue. Of course my friend was outraged over the glamorizing of the hijab. She wrote to Marie Claire asking that they cancel her subscription but she's still receiving the mags (sounds familiar, doesn't it?).

The latest issue has two letters to the editor, one deploring the work conditions endured by the workers who build the shopping malls in Dubai, and another one talking about how empowered the veiled women really are. Nothing new there.

On the last page of the magazine there's an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose book Infidel has come out, where she says, (emphasis added)

Q: As a Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament, you spoke out about how Islam violated women's rights.
A: People were hearing immigrants say the same thing [about assimilation] over and over. I said, "Certain things about Muslim culture, the way we treat our women and practice our faith, make it difficult for us to assimilate into Dutch society." It caused a huge commotion, which I have not been able to recover from in Holland.

Q: In Infidel, you write about your grandmother overseeing your genital mutilation in Somalia when you were 5. Was this typical for little girls there?
A: There are 6,000 girls mutilated very day, according to the UN., 135 million girls have been mutilated. Those who practice it see it as cleansing. I try to explain in the book how my grandmother believed she was doing us a big favor.

Q: In the Netherlands, as a refugee from a forced marriage, you gradually discarded Muslim attire and, at 22, bought your first pair of jeans. How did that feel?
A: Like jumping to the top of Mount Everest. On one hand, I thought I was sinning and would end up tortured in hell - if I put on jeans, or uncovered my hair or any part of my skin, I might drive strange men into a frenzy. On the other hand, I'd be able to ride a bicycle.

Q: What do you say to Muslim women who fight for the right to wear the head scarf?
A: I say that's fine - unless you impose your personal choice on others. If you wear the veil, the message you convey is that you're superior to women who do not, because you're saying they are whores. You're also saying men are incapable of sexual self-restraint, and that if they see women who are partly covered or not veiled, they will react like my grandmother's he-goat.

I haven't found the interview on the Marie Claire website, but if/when I do, I'll post the link.

Christopher Hitchens wrote about Ms Ali last May, before she was forced to leave the Netherlands.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel, is available from Amazon:


Update:
Atlas Shrugs posts on it today.
CUANAS blog posted on the Mecca Stars article last November: Fascist fashion and Hitler's home
Peaktalk links.

Related prior posts
The Veil Controversy
The Veil

Update, 24 January: Welcome, Andrew Sullivan readers.