Female Circumcision: Comparing Muslim and Non-Muslim African Communities

This post is by AJ Morgen as part of the series ‘Culture and Human Rights: Challenging Cultural Excuses for Gender-Based Violence’ hosted by Gender Across Borders and Violence Is Not Our Culture.

What is commonly referred to in the West as “female genital mutilation” (FGM) and in practicing parts of Africa as “female circumcision” or “female cutting” is a tradition widely applied to females in an estimated 28 countries in Africa to various surgical degrees and for differing reasons.  While estimates vary, approximately 100 to 140 million females living in the world today have been circumcised, of which between 90 and 100 million live in Africa.  Until very recently, however, researchers were largely unaware of the variations in the custom as it applied to geographical, religious, cultural and ethnic differences.  Discussing these cultural differences, particularly between Muslim and Non-Muslim communities in North Africa is essential for determining the efficacy of outreach, advocacy, and preventative initiatives.  Since anti-FGM efforts have tended to view these different traditions as a singular custom, they have often applied a uniformed plan of action across all practicing communities.  This monolithic approach has been ineffectual.

The tradition of female circumcision is as varied between Muslim and non-Muslim African communities as it is similar.  While Muslim communities in countries like Egypt, Somalia, and Sudan primarily continue circumcising young girls because of a belief that the practice is mandated by Islam, non-Muslim communities most often continue the procedure for the sake of honoring tradition and because of biological misconceptions concerning fertility and the perception of the “un-cleanliness” of the vagina.  While both groups of people have different cultural reasons for perpetuating the procedure of female circumcision and methods for carrying out the practice, girls and women experience the same psychological and physical pain regardless of location and belief.  Even if a circumcised female is fortunate enough to escape life-threatening complications, she is almost guaranteed to experience the other painful, daily, and often life-altering health consequences associated with female circumcision, such as difficulties with urinating and menstruating, especially if she has undergone infibulation.

The methods used to combat female circumcision must vary according to the habits of beliefs of the community targeted.  Unfortunately, programs emphasizing the potential health consequences of the procedure have largely failed in both Muslim and non-Muslim areas because of the high level of disease and civil conflict these communities face on a regular basis.  These groups of people are often already at an increased risk of death and injury from disease, poverty, and the political and geographical conditions of their respective countries, so highlighting potential health risks of female circumcision – especially if most women are unlikely to experience life threatening complications – is not shocking enough to override the strong traditional and religious values placed on the procedure. 

Programs specifically targeting Muslim Africans that seek to prevent any form of female circumcision based on the improvement of female education or an increase in awareness of health issues have been largely unsuccessful due to the cultural environment in which these girls and women find themselves. While there is no mention of female cutting in the Qur’an, it is nonetheless a common belief in North Africa that female circumcision is mandated by Islam.  For this reason, human rights defenders working in Muslim African communities frequently cite the need for religious proclamations against female circumcision.  Any Muslim African who believes female circumcision is a mandate of Islam is not going to be deterred from continuing the practice by programs aimed at educating men and women on the dire health consequences women face.  Nor will a person with said religious conviction, if she is a practitioner, be convinced to discontinue her work by the lure of alternative job training and increased income potential often offered by anti-female circumcision activists.  The call to fulfill what is believed to be mandated by religion is often greater than the threat of physical injury or the temptation of prosperity.  Yet in Senegal, a country in which 94% of the population practices Islam, there has been a very recent shift in ideology towards ending female circumcision in large part due to the focused efforts of Senegalese advocacy groups to disprove the idea that Islam mandates female cutting. This example helps illustrate that the greatest chance for creating systemic change in Muslim African communities is to definitively prove that female circumcision is not mandated by Islam.

Contrarily, some of the most successful advocacy efforts to date have been in non-Muslim areas of West Africa where the tradition of female circumcision has continued without Islamic mandating.  Projects targeting circumcision practitioners in these areas have done particularly well by providing job training for other fields.  Without the Islamic religious conviction that continues to keep female circumcision rates in Muslim African communities at a near plurality, non-Muslim practitioners are often eager to discard their cutting devices in exchange for training in a job field that will not only provide a more reliable livelihood for their families but also offer an escape from the pain and trauma of their current profession demands.  Offering these alternative livelihood options is crucial when campaigning for the cessation of practitioner activity: it is difficult for activists to ask these non-Muslim practitioners who are most often struggling in extreme poverty to stop performing any task that brings in a limited income, much less a traditional practice that often improves their social status as well, without providing an economically viable alternative.  In addition to projects targeting only practitioners, education efforts in non-Muslim areas in general have proven more effective than in Muslim areas.  For instance, when activists provide evidence that undergoing female circumcision does not improve fertility and actually increases the risk of complications during birth, the percentage of girls undergoing the procedure slowly begins to decrease.

Ultimately, those wishing to campaign against the perpetuation of female circumcision must understand not only the obvious differences in the practice between Muslim and non-Muslim African communities, but also the more subtle nuances within each of these groups of people.  Even within each of these two categories, there are vastly different ideologies and cultural traditions surrounding female genital cutting.  Simply breaking the practicing community in northern Africa into these two separate groups shows us how even the crudest of divisions illustrates how varying the procedure can be and how aware we must be of these variances if we are to holistically understand and address the issue of female cutting in the international political arena.  For instance, while there are overarching similarities amongst Muslim African groups that practice circumcision, there are vast disparities between urban areas in Egypt where female circumcisions are becoming increasingly sterile as they’re performed in hospitals by medical professionals and rural villages in Somalia where girls are not likely to be administered anesthesia or taken to a hospital.

Likewise, without thoroughly understanding the community’s reasons for circumcising their young girls, human rights defenders will undoubtedly fail in their efforts.  Supporters of female circumcision are not “bad” people and should not be treated as such.  They are trying to help their young females lead a successful life by making them culturally marriageable and/or ensuring they follow a perceived religious mandate.  By previously stigmatizing the procedure and its supporters, activists have done themselves a great disservice by essentially closing the lines of communication with the very people they are trying to educate.  Recent successes in lowering the rates of female circumcision in Africa seem to indicate that this damage is not irreparable and that if human rights defenders approach their work with cultural understanding and strategies specifically designed for the community of people with whom they are working, there is hope for eradicating female circumcision in all of Africa, Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike.

About the author

AJ Morgen is currently a PhD candidate in International Relations and Diplomacy at the American Graduate School in Paris, France, focusing on the role of African women in conflict transformation. Before beginning her doctorate research, Morgen worked at Sanctuary for Families in New York City as an advocate for domestic violence victims. Additionally, Morgen has worked with the International Center for Transitional Justice, Amnesty International USA and Waging Peace.  She holds a Master’s in Trauma and Violence Interdisciplinary Studies from New York University and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Vanderbilt University. 

Are you new to Gender Across Borders? Please read this first. We may update the site, and you can stay in contact with us through our Twitter feed and our newsletter. Like Gender Across Borders on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter and Tumblr. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.