I am not impressed to learn that Bristol is second in a national league table. Nothing like good schools, best restaurants or most efficient public transport (as if). No. Something much worse. Bristol is the runner-up for the number of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) victims identified by the NHS since April 2015. Not good.
FGM is also known as female circumcision.It involves, and I quote, “the removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans; removal of the inner labia; and removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the vulva. In this last procedure (known as infibulation), a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid; the vagina is opened for intercourse and opened further for childbirth.” Thank goodness for small mercies. We are told that FGM, which has been inflicted on something like 200 million women all around the world, is not a religious requirement, in particular an islamic practice because, historically, it predates islam, but come on: look at the women who are butchered in this way and they are overwhelmingly muslim.
Islamic scholars (surely an oxymoron there) say that there is nothing on the Qu’ran about FGM, but guess what? The practice is praised by several hadith, or sayings by the alleged prophet Muhammad who pronounced that FGM was noble but not required. (My dictionary defines ‘noble’ as “having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles.” So chopping up a woman’s genitals is noble? Really? FGM is patently not noble. In fact, it is child abuse of the worst order.)
What it is with religion, with the various gods, that they obsess with genitalia? Judaism requires male circumcision, but why? If God was this perfect designer, did he switch off when inventing the foreskin?
FGM brings shame on society and if we didn’t have it before, we need a zero tolerance policy with it. Not just a minor slap on the wrist (currently a maximum of 14 years in jail, actually), but a crime to be dealt with my the full weight of the law. We should be as angry about GGM than we are with every child abuser in the land. As a minimum sentence, I’d bang up the perpetrators for life and for life to mean life.
The BBC reports that girls are being brought to FGM “parties”, which presumably do not provide a McDonald’s Happy Meal, or Halal equivalent at the end. A party? Where the singing and dancing circumcision is carried out in a jovial atmosphere whilst some crazed lunatic take a blade to a girl’s genitals, as she is physically held down?
This is paedophilia gone nuclear, with sick and evil violence thrown in. And Bristol should have no part in it.
