So are pierced ears and lips. The really bad form, (still less than a clitorectomy) was found to have been imposed on 22% of the women surveyed prior to the survey nearly 20 years ago and the numbers have been falling. The versions most applied, today, inflict the same level of injury as a pierced ear, nose, or lip.
This is interesting. I make an observation about circumcision and you go haring off on a complaint about FGM. In point of fact, the forms of male circumcision that are applied in Indonesian rituals have only a bare resemblance to the form found in American hospitals and is much closer to the FGM against which you rail. And that is the point. Whatever claims you want to make about North American hospital-based male circumcision, (claims that are, themselves, controversial and are often regarded as being made to cater to cultural beliefs), they have little to do with the male circumcision imposed on pubescent boys in Indonesia. In other words, the children of both sexes are treated about the same, making your claim that FGM demonstrates that women in Indonesia are being oppressed (particularly in contrast to men), so much invented fulminating.
Not really. Most of the pro-circumcision studies are mirrored by anti- studies. But that is really irrelevant since the way that it is carried out in Indonesia, (scarring rather than removal of the foreskin, imposed with minimum antiseptics or anesthesia, often performed in public places with no effort to maintain a sterile environment, etc.), renders your great health claims so much nonsense in the context of this discussion.
The article that you cited stated that there is serious social and religious resistance to the less severe forms of mutilation, and that all of the forms are both physically and psychologically harmful. And unless you can point to a nation where 90% of infants have their ears pierced, that comparison is pretty meaningless, leaving aside the fact that an earlobe is not a clitoris.
WTF do you mean a “bare resemblance”? They cut off the foreskin in both cases, and in both cases the procedure has a known medical benefit.
All kinds of things are “controversial” among those who disregard science. Hell, the damn moon landings are “controversial” to some. Male circumcision has been shown to greatly reduce the chance of catching and especially of spreading sexually transmitted diseases.
No, they are not treated the same. Not. At. All. Boys are given an operation with known medical benefits, and girls are mutilated by having their clitorises cut.
I don’t know what world you inhabit where 90% of girls undergoing genital mutilation does not demonstrate that women are oppressed, but I would like to know where it is so I can make sure to never go there, and so I can let every girl and woman I know so that they to can stay as far away from there as possible.
They are not “pro-circumcision” studies, they are pro-not spreading AIDS and other STD studies, which have shown that circumcision is very effective in reducing the spread of disease.
Your original comparison was the false equivalence to North America. Also:
No, a country where 90% of girls undergo genital mutilation and must undergo state sponsored rape style “virginity tests” to join the army is in no way an example of a place that respects women’s rights. To claim that it is is** absurd**.
You are presuming that they remove the foreskin in both cases, but that is not the case. In the Indonesian culture, sometimes the foreskin is removed and sometimes only a portion is removed and sometimes the foreskin is just scarred. Your need to have any and all forms of circumcision be a wonderful benefit, like your need to have any and all phenomena identified as FGM be horrible mutilations is based on your desires and not on the reality of the phenomena.
I am not going to hijack this thread into a discussion of male circumcision, but there is not a unanimous opinion among doctors or researchers associated with Western medicine that circumcision is all that wonderful. Despite your desires, it is still a controversial topic within the medical community. And that is even without getting into your unsupported belief that circumcision is universally practiced in the same way.
Bullshit. There have been recent efforts to practice more sterile operations on both boys and girls, but there is no universal practice in Indonesia that treats boys differently than girls. That is more wishful thinking on your part. A claim that “Boys are given an operation” in a country where cities promote performing thousands of circumcisions in a day as a sporting event is not “giving them” a medical operation.
meh. You wave around your buzzword while demonstrating that you are not even informed on the topic regarding either boys or girls.
The virginity tests are finally an example of not respecting women. (It actually addresses the issue in the way that your FGM hysteria and your pretending that male circumcision, there, is the same as it is in the West, does not.) However, that demonstrates only that Indonesia has a way to go to approach Western standards (for military recruitment), not that all women are constantly oppressed in Indonesia.
I’ve been reading but not posting so far, so I may have missed something, but I’m not understanding the relevance of the FGM argument to the debate about Islam per se. If there’s one thing we know about FGM, it’s that it’s not religion-specific.
In some African countries a higher percentage of Christian women than Muslim women undergo FGM; in others, it’s the other way around. Many Animist religious groups also practice FGM. Most African countries, whether majority-Muslim or otherwise, have officially outlawed the practice of FGM.
Nothing is based on my need, it is based on facts. A mutilation of a girl’s genitals is horrible, by default.
The WHO and UNAIDS recommend male circumcision as a means of reducing the rate of HIV infection,[65] but this has also proved controversial, with doubts raised about the efficacy of mass circumcision campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa.[66][67] Critics have themselves been the subject of criticism; Kalichman writes: “Anticircumcision groups have long existed and are increasingly vocal as MC programs for HIV prevention are promoted. Anticircumcision groups resemble other antiscience and antimedicine extremists including AIDS denialists who refute public health realities to maintain entrenched belief systems”[68] Three separate studies in Africa designed to clinically assess the connection between circumcision and a lower risk of getting AIDS, each involving thousands of subjects, showed dramatic decreases in AIDS transmission in the circumcised individuals.
Indeed.
And: A survey of the scientific literature on the topic published in 2014 by Mayo Clinic Proceedings reviewed about 3,000 studies published since 1988. The analysis concluded that the health benefits of male circumcision outweigh the costs. Specifically, the study found that the chances of contracting urinary tract infections, human papillomavirus, HIV, and other diseases were significantly reduced with circumcision.
There is no controversy over the fact that circumcision provides medical benefit, the controversy is, like many beneficial surgeries, is whether the benefits are worth the risks. The evidence points very strongly to the benefits outweighing the risks, and the evidence also points strongly to Indonesia’s low rate of HIV infection being due in large part to circumcision.
Circumcision, as it exists in Indonesia, very likely reduces the spread of STDs there, as it does in the rest of the world. It is a beneficial procedure, with risks. FGM is cutting of girls for no medical benefit, that’s why it’s mutilation. Your observations, that you seem to think to be so profound, that both circumcision and FGM are often performed in unsanitary conditions, or that circumcisions are not performed uniformly, does nothing to change this profound difference.
So now your standard is that ALL women need to be CONSTANTLY harassed in Indonesia. No, ALL women are not CONSTANTLY being penetrated against their will by strangers; only once if they want to join the Army or civil service, and ALL girls aren’t CONSTANTLY having their genitals mutilated; just 90% of them once in their lifetimes, to varying degrees of severity. Boy, you really showed me.
This whole portion of the discussion was started by this claim (likely a parroting of of REZA Alsan’s CNN appearance, IMHO):
[QUOTE=wolfpup]
And yet, women’s rights are recognized and respected in heavily Muslim countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh. Bangladesh has a freaking female Prime Minister fer Christ’s sake. I don’t know if she can sing but I’m pretty sure she’d be allowed to. :rolleyes
[/QUOTE]
Using Indonesia as an example of a country that respects the human rights of women is absurd, because of rampant female genital mutilation, and the violent practice of “virginity testing”. None of what you have posted changes this conclusion at all.
And scraping a needle across the area withourt drawing blood or even nicking a small bit of skin so that a drop of blood appears does not meet any definition of the word “mutilate.” That is simply your attempt to create a scare tactic (while you ignore the fact that, in the same country, “circumcision” can mean similar actions performed on the penis without the actual removal of the foreskin).
I agree that a ‘symbolic’ circumcision is not mutilation, any more than taking the sacrament is cannibalism.
That doesn’t change the fact that the real kind of mutilation is still apallingly common. And it doesn’t change the fact that on a wide range of issues, significant percentages of Muslims are horribly intolerant - even in ‘moderate’ Muslim countries. See my previous link to the PEW study earlier.
I’m still surprised how many people on the left are willing to trash Christianity at the drop of a hat, but will do flips and twists to ignore or even condone behaviors and thoughts in the Muslim community that are far more ‘conservative’ and intolerant than even the most conservative western Christians.
People who will freak out and march against a couple who don’t want to sell a cake to a gay couple will turn around and reflexively defend Muslims when some of them advocate stoning a gay couple to death. People who will instantly blame the Catholic church for the actions of a few priests who molest children will turn around and reflexively repeat that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance whenever something awful happens in its name - even though large percentages of Muslims believe some incredibly intolerant things.
Why is it so hard to admit that Islam is facing a crisis - it is a faith with a warrior prophet who ordered that the faithful carry out jihad, that ‘infidels’ have no right to live, that gay people should be killed, that leaving the faith should be punishable by death, that women are inferior to men and so on.
Of course there are many, many modern Muslims who see this stuff through a modern, enlightened lens and have found a personally acceptable way to bring their faith into peaceful, tolerant societies, but there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who still adhere to some very extreme beliefs.
For example, even in the U.S., the Muslim community as a whole is second only to devout evangelical Christians in its opposition to gay marriage. I hear an awful lot of Christian bashing over this issue, but almost nothing against Muslims even though more Muslims are against gay marriage than are Catholics, mainstream Protestants, Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists. And by a pretty big margin. Only Muslims and Evangelicals have a majority that opposes gay marriage in America.
Yes…and we’re right to do so. We were right to defend the right of people to march in public in Nazi uniforms. We would be right to defend the freedom of speech, even such hateful speech as you describe (so long as it is abstract, and not inciting an immediate violent offense.)
(That was Tom Metzger’s blunder. Instead of saying, “White people need to get rid of all black people,” he was explicit in urging harm against a specific black person in a specific place and time.)
Islam is no more the enemy than Christianity, just because Tom Metzger was a Christian.
That’s quite an extraordinary set of claims and allegations. If you can find someone who “freaks out and marches” against homophobic bakeries but is just fine with stoning gay couples, by all means tell us who these remarkable people are, or better still, bring them on over and have them explain how they rationalize this bizarre position.
Or, if no such people exist, perhaps you might acknowledge that you’ve just created a rather ridiculous straw man for the purpose of further Muslim-bashing.
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. The homophobic evangelical Christian baker is following his Bible just as the devout Muslim follows his Qu’ran, and the Bible is explicitly clear in its exhortation to kill gays – I’ve quoted the relevant verses before. The only real difference is that the evangelical is forced to exercise his bigotry within the limits of law and culture in western society, as does the western Muslim, but Muslims in third-world backwaters have no such constraints. Neither do Christians, for which I cite the example of Eritrea, which is half Christian, in which homosexuality is illegal and punished by jailing and beatings and occasionally executions, and in which the practice of female genital mutilation is among the most widespread in the world. Similar horrors prevail in Christian-dominated backwaters in Africa and elsewhere.
The most severe form of mutilation is not present in Indonesia. A form that is horrible, but not the most severe, is a mnority phenomenon that has been shrinking.
I have no problem with people opposing any form, but that was not the topic, which was a claim that the presence of any form khafd indicated that women in Indonesia were oppressed. Your post is not really a follow-on to that discussion.
The most probable reason for this is that there are fewer Muslims than Episcopalians (who are a numerically tiny group) in the U.S. and Muslims in the U.S. wield no political power while Evangelical Christians wield considerable power. I have never seen any serious attacks on the Amish for their opposition to gay marriage, either.
I think you meant to type “Evangelicals” not “Episcopalians” since while I don’t know if the if the Episcopal Church of the US has taken a stand on gay marriage, having at least one openly Gay bishop, Eugene Robinson, they clearly don’t condemn homosexuality.
This example does not precisely meet your criteria, but it shows the reality of a phenomenon similar to what Sam Stone is describing: the current controversy at Goldsmith University in London over the appearance of Maryam Namazie, a feminist human rights activist accused of being Islamophobic because of her criticisms of Islam and Islamism. Her speech was interrupted by members of the University’s Islamic society. Here is an edited video of the interruptions, hereis the entire event. It is obvious who the aggressors are in this scene: the thugs from the Islamic society. But amazingly, both the Feminist Society and the LGBT society have released statements condemning the Atheist and Humanist society for their behavior during the event, and supporting The Islamic Society. The same Islamic society that has invited Hamza Tzortzis, who “compared homosexuality to cannibalism and necrophilia and asserted how he believes that it should be a criminal act.” (PDF, page 17)
Here is Maryams statement. Here is the response of the Islamic Society.
No, this is not make believe, we are discussing a real phenomenon, a new bizarre world where LGBT activists and groups of supposed feminists will side with chauvinistic bullies who promote second class citizenship for women, over a female human rights activist who campaigns against stoning of women and regularly stands up for the rights of migrants and refugees.
Egypt, where FGM is rampant and where the biggest university is virulently homophobic, has not been a backwater for thousands of years. And the biggest Muslim group in the world came out in favor of FGM. You are mistaken in this notion of yours that you can neatly factor out Islam as a religion, or Islamism as a movement, from observations about the many socially destructive behaviors more common among Muslims than Westerners.
The reference to Episcopalians alludes to the size of the group. While powerful, politically, (due to the number of members who have had positions of power in government and industry), it is a fairly small group.
The reference to Evangelicals is an allusion to the political power they have exercised since the late 1970s, taking greater and greater control of the Republican Party.
There is a big difference between the claims. Indonesia has FGM. Indonesia has virginity tests. It is absurd to use Indonesia as an example of a country where women are not suppressed. All of these things are true.
WTF is all this stuff you just posted? Did you understand the question? Sam Stone claimed that “People who will freak out and march against a couple who don’t want to sell a cake to a gay couple will turn around and reflexively defend Muslims when some of them advocate stoning a gay couple to death.” Nothing you posted is even remotely close to demonstrating this outrageous claim. I’m still waiting.
All I get from your posting is evidence of sectarian rabble from all sides shouting at each other as usual. Namazie seems like an odd bird of strong views – a Central Committee member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, no less – who might arouse all kinds of opposition all over the political and religious spectrum.
And this kind of crap is certainly not limited to Muslim activists:
A federal appeals court ruled that local authorities in Dearborn, Mich., failed to protect the constitutional rights of Christian evangelical street preachers whose protest of the city’s Arab festival led to a mini-riot that ended when police ordered them away … The dispute involved a protest by a group called Bible Believers at Dearborn’s 2012 Arab International Festival, where they paraded with signs preaching hatred against Islam and brandished a severed pig’s head on a spike — seen as an insult to Muslims — to repel the Muslim crowd. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/10/28/appeals-court-defends-speech-rights-of-christians-who-protested-arab-festival/
I’m not saying Christian religions and Islam are equivalent, and they certainly dominate in radically different cultures. I’m just saying that the Islamophobic hysteria that is so predominant now is way over the top and totally uncalled for. It’s not about how some sectors of various shitty cultures carry on in the shit-holes they live in, it’s about curtailing bigotry in free and enlightened societies.
Except that description seems like a pretty good characterization of a regressive backwater.
Sam Stone was referring to the climate around this subject, where certain sections of the regressive left will defend gays or women from much smaller incidents of harassment, if the harassers or rhetoric come from political tribes that are their rivals. The recent incident with Maryam Namazie is a perfect and blatant example of this. You have supposed progressives siding with theocratic fascist thugs against a feminist human rights campaigner.
She has extreme views, the difference being that her views can be openly criticized on UK campuses, but Maryam must constantly battle against those who threaten, harass, and try to silence her when she criticizes the extreme parts of Islam and Islamism.
This was a case of Muslims attacking non-Muslims in order to silence their crass but constitutionally protected religious speech, which is not a counterexample to what happened to Maryam, not in the least. It is another example of Muslims using force and intimidation to silence speech about religion that they disagree with.
Islamophobia is a made up concept, a sort of Jedi mind trick resulting in the conflation of criticism of Islam and Islamism, which are ideas, with bigotry against humans. Islam is not a race of people, it is a stupid set of ideas, like Communism. Bigotry is targeted at immutable characteristics of people. Anti-Muslim bigotry certainly exists, but is not exemplified by criticism of Islam or Islamism, because Islamic ideas are not an immutable characteristic of Muslim humans.
The “Bible believers” showed up in the middle of an Arab festival hurling anti-Muslim slurs and claiming that the participants would burn in hell. A dozen or so teens hurled eggs and insults at the “Bible Believers” and were then separated from the targets of their anger by adult organizers of the festival.
The sheriff deputies told the “Bible Believers” to take their protest outside the area to reduce the probability of more conflict and the court ruled that the deputies should not have told the festival disrupters to leave.
The actual organizers of the event made no effort to silence the “Bible Believers” and actually got between the group and the teens, telling the teens to leave the group alone. Portraying the incident as “Muslims attacking non-Muslims” or ludicrously claiming “It is another example of Muslims using force and intimidation to silence speech about religion that they disagree with.” in the context of the actual events (a dozen teens and a dozen purported adults exchanging insults with a couple of eggs tossed in) is silly.
