Sexual Ethics in Islam (20 page)

Islamic or un-Islamic?

The debate over whether or not female circumcision is “Islamic” is a specifically modern way of framing the question, although the relevance of Islamic legal categorizations to Muslim life is ages-old.
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The “Islamic-ness” of excision is relevant to ongoing controversies because internal Muslim debates occur in a con- text of Western scrutiny and criticism. Externally motivated attempts to stop all female genital cutting began with European colonial officials and have continued through the efforts of Western feminists and some missionaries. (Notably, at the time Westerners were beginning to campaign against FGC in Africa, clitoridectomy was being selectively practiced in England and the United States as a cure for various female ailments.) The desire to combat stereotypes of Islam as uniquely misogynist is the primary motivation for many to argue that FGC is not an “Islamic” practice. Noor Kassamali, a physician with clinical expertise as well as activist credentials in the struggle against what she prefers to call female genital cutting, suggests that the “alleged association of Islam with FGC” by“the Western media”

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is “an even more basic issue” than whether it is “Islamic” or not. She argues that the portrayal of the practice “as a violent custom whose aim is to subjugate women and girls ... perpetuates the stereotype of Islam as a violent faith and of Muslim women as subjugated and submissive.”
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This outwardly focused critique reflects a set of power relationships that often does stand in the way of an honest scrutiny of Muslim practices.
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At the same time, it is naïve to expect Muslims to be entirely unconcerned with dehumanizing stereotypes when the resultant Othering of Muslims contributes to the devaluation of Muslim lives and serves as justification for violence and repressive international policies.

In any case, female genital cutting is neither universal among nor exclusive to Muslims. The majority of Muslims do not practice any form of female circumcision and where it is common, it is generally performed by members of all religious groups; in Egypt, for instance, both Muslims and Christians practice female genital cutting. Kassamali notes that “Muslim groups that practice this custom often cite religious justifica- tions ... [y]et religion is not a determining factor.”
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The severity of the practice – which varies considerably – depends on vari- ables of locale, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status, rather than religious affiliation.
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In the majority of Muslim societies, by contrast, female circumcision is virtually unknown. In those regions where it is practiced, it almost always predates Islamization.
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Exceptions occur in instances where immigrant groups carried the practice with them to new areas.
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In Southeast Asia, female circumcision seems to have been unknown before the coming of Islam; in Malaysia and Indo- nesia, only Muslims practice female circumcision. One can speculate that the transfer of the practice to this region is due to the historical pre-eminence of the Shafi‘i law school there. The Shafi‘is, unlike the other Sunni schools, have held that circumci- sion is obligatory for females as well as males, as the passage quoted at the beginning of this chapter demonstrates.

Several typologies describing female genital cutting dif- ferentiate between less and more severe procedures.
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The least invasive procedure falling under the rubric would be the

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removal of the prepuce or hood of the clitoris, effectively analo- gous to the removal of the penile foreskin that constitutes male circumcision. This delicate operation – clitoridotomy, but sometimes erroneously called clitoridectomy – is rare, especially in Africa, and, in any event, is extremely difficult to perform on small girls where it can be difficult to distinguish between the clitoris and its prepuce. Clitoridectomy more properly refers to full or partial excision of the clitoris itself; this procedure may or may not involve removal of part or all of the labia minora. The most drastic form of genital cutting is infibulation, where not only the clitoris and labia minora but also portions of the labia majora are removed, and the vaginal orifice sewn closed, with only a small aperture left for the release of urine and menstrual fluid. Often known as the “pharonic” circumcision, it is common in certain parts of Africa such as the Sudan. The final type of “circumcision” escapes the name FGC, because in many cases it involves only a symbolic pricking, rubbing, or scraping.
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This type seems to be most common in Southeast Asia, although it has been advocated and implemented occasionally elsewhere, including in Africa, as an interim measure in the struggle toward eradication.

Beyond combating stereotypes, the desire to eradicate female genital cutting is the second, and more compelling, reason for denying it normative status. Sheikh Ahmed’s statement, perhaps inadvertently, heeds an appeal issued by activist Asma A’Haleem several years earlier for “a final religious announce- ment clearly stating that [female circumcision] is a form of muti- lation and therefore forbidden. It is not sufficient for religion to shun female circumcision. Religion should be used as a tool for condemning and preventing its occurrence.”
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A’Haleem’s state- ment raises crucial questions about how Muslim thinkers are to engage in public discourse, and if it is ever acceptable or even ultimately productive to engage in methodologically problem- atic oversimplifications for strategic aims, if the alternative is not being able to affect oppressive social and cultural practices.

The instrumental use of religion promoted by A’Haleem returns us to contests over the meaning of the term“Islamic.”One definition would hold that Islamic can be properly used as an

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adjective to describe anything that significant numbers of Muslims do. If this were the only salient defi then FGC could reasonably be called Islamic on these grounds, at least for certain regions of the Muslim world. However, this definition lacks rigor: many Muslims do, in fact, drink alcohol despite its clear prohibition in scripture and jurisprudence. Another level of definition reserves the term for a practice that is defined by its practitioners as religious: Muslims who drink alcohol would not dream of suggesting such a practice is permitted, let alone encour- aged or mandated, by their religion, but those Muslims who practice female genital cutting often justify it with reference to Islam. Opponents of the practice seek to undercut this rationale when they insist that“FGM is a practice of culture, not religion.”
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FGC, however, is not merely a customary practice incorrectly understood as having religious authority despite its lack of sanction in authoritative scholarly sources. Rather, female circumcision of some type is either recommended or required by the dominant classical view of all Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and seems to have been generally approved by Shi‘i jurists as well.
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Jonathan Berkey surveys the legal literature, and demonstrates that although jurists’ opin- ions “differ[ed] in nuance” they “were overwhelmingly favor- able to the practice of female excision.”
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A number of modern jurists have suggested the question is open to re-examination. These include Egyptian scholars Shaikh Tantawi of al-Azhar, who has suggested that it is an appropriate question for medical doctors to decide, and Muhammad al-Ghazali, who noted that there is no account of the Prophet having his daughters circum- cised.
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Yet other members of the ‘ulama support it as either
sunnah
or, in the words of Egyptian jurist Gad al-Haq‘Ali’s fatwa, “a laudable practice that does honor to the women.”
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Thus, a blanket denial, such as that by Sheikh Ahmed, that “Islam” per- mits FGC is patently false and obscures the very real status of some type of circumcision for women as an accepted practice according to traditional jurisprudence, even if the majority of

Muslims reject FGC as abhorrent and do not practice it.

A further evaluation of the Swedish leader’s words leads to questions of terminology. Is he being deliberately evasive,

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implicitly accepting “circumcision” while explicitly condemn- ing “mutilation”? The context in which he made his remarks, at a conference opposed to FGC, suggests otherwise. His adoption of the terminology of mutilation used by the practice’s oppon- ents makes his position very clear. Islamic legal texts, such as that by Ibn Naqib al-Misri and ‘Umar Barakat quoted above, use the neutral/positive term
khitan
, circumcision, to describe the procedures carried out on both males and females, noting that
khifad
, “reduction” or “lowering,” is the proper term for the latter. This terminology, along with the occasional use of “
tahara
” (purification, also used for both male and female cir- cumcision), carries a specifically religious resonance, although the manual is devoid of explicitly religious appeals to its audi- ence. By contrast, Sheikh Ahmed makes explicit appeals to religion, referring to his religious title (“I as Imam”), his target audience (“the Islamic world”), and the basis for his verdict (“quite clearly forbidden according to Islam”).

This declaration, which demonstrates the type of authoritarianism that Abou El Fadl has so forcefully critiqued, is representative rather than unique.
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Rather than acknowledging the traditional legal view but critiquing its bases or conclusions, those opponents of female circumcision who invoke religion as support for their position simply bypass it while claiming their own position as “Islamic.” They may invoke, as evidence for the stance that Islam forbids FGC, the absence of Qur’anic statement on female circumcision and the lack of any “authentic” hadith supporting it. I will address the Qur’anic point here, and turn to the hadith sources below. A reductive definition of “Islamic,” characteristic of some feminist and reformist thought, equates the Qur’an with Islam. One implication of this view is that Qur’anic silence on a particular point means that there is no valid religious authority for it. Thus, because stoning as punishment for
zina
appears only in the hadith and not in the Qur’an, stoning may be understood as an illegitimate cultural practice rather than a religiously mandated penalty. When it comes to FGC, many opponents point out that there is no Qur’anic mention of female circumcision.
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The power for this argument is limited in the realm of circumcision, however; for one thing, the Qur’an

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does not make explicit mention of male circumcision either. Most who have argued against female circumcision on these grounds would not likewise present male circumcision as being un-Islamic based on the lack of Qur’anic references to it.

Other arguments speak to questions of principle rather than from Qur’anic silence. Although a number of anthropolo- gists have recently begun to consider the ways in which some women’s understanding of FGC relies on deeply ingrained notions about female beauty and gender dimorphism, most scholarship has shown that practices of, and justifications for, FGC relate to male control over female sexuality.
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However, the linkage between FGC and female sexual interest works both ways: opponents have argued for the practice’s impermissibility precisely on the grounds of wives’ sexual rights; because it pre- vents women from achieving sexual satisfaction,“the position of these religious leaders is not only contrary to the Prophet’s teaching but also the Qur’an.”
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Likewise, the Muslim Women’s League position paper on Sexuality argues that “The practice of clitoridectomy ... is totally un-Islamic because it is in direct violation of both Qur’an and hadith which clearly stress the importance of sexual satisfaction for both husband and wife.”
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Others have taken a more wholistic approach, arguing

for the sanctity of the body from a spiritual rather than a medical perspective. How could the jurists accept clitoral excision when they rejected “changing God’s creation” (
taghyir khalq Allah
) by tatooing, plucking hairs, or filing the front teeth to create an attractive gap between them? Egyptian physician and feminist Nawal el-Saadawi argues forcefully that excision of the clitoris is a violation of the divine plan for the human body:“God does not create the organs of the body haphazardly without a plan. It is not possible that He should have created the clitoris in a woman’s body only in order that it be cut off at an early stage in life.”
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The usefulness of this argument for activists, however, is significantly lessened by the fact that the same case could be made about the male foreskin, the removal of which is virtually universally accepted as a religious duty.
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However, one can make a strong case for rejecting female circumcision based on the severity of its consequences compared to male circumcision – medical

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complications, including pain, infection, and secondary infer- tility, as well as diminished sexual response. The“changing God’s creation” argument only works with those who, like Sami Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, also object to male circumcision. And as he acknowledges,“Male circumcision is considered to be obligatory by all Muslims. Contrary to female circumcision, it is still unimaginable, till today, that this practice could be prohibited in Muslim countries.”
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This unambiguously positive presentation of male circumcision in Muslim law and tradition can serve to highlight the persistent uncertainty and unease surrounding female circumcision, an unease manifested in the hadith sources to which I now turn.
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“Reduce but do not destroy”

On what sources and using what reasoning did the jurists arrive at their conclusions that female circumcision was, at the least, a meritorious act? The scant evidence concerning female circum- cision centers on a few hadith found in collections other than those of Bukhari and Muslim. The most important is this report, collected by Abu Dawud: