Article

2005-04-15 Iraq-Jordan

Female genital mutilation rampant in Iraqi Kurdistan

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Posted by Rex Rufus 2005-04-15 4:18:19 AM|| || Front Page|| [7 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Rex, your comments are spot on. It is barbaric, there is no other word for it. I know we can't fix everything at once, but at some point we need to put some sharp, quiet words to the Kurds and start changing practices there.

Posted by Steve White 2005-04-15 9:14:51 AM|| 2005-04-15 9:14:51 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Ok, I never, never, ever heard of female genital mutilation outside of Africa and some parts of Yemen. AFAIK, even in Saudi Arabia it is more or less unheard off, let alone in a land who is much farther of Africa, where Islam is taken with a grain of salt (remember that the Kurds don't want
Islam being the soure of Iraki law) and whose traditions give much more liberty to women than between Arabs.

And it doesn't fit with what I have seen of Kurdish women with their unveiled faces and freely dancing with men and looking quite joyous (has anyone seen an Arab woman laughing?).

So I will bite the bullet. I think it is a lie, a smearing campaign of the LLL aimed at denigrating a group who is relatively friendly to the US and at implying that women were better in times of Saddam.

Posted by JFM 2005-04-15 9:34:04 AM|| 2005-04-15 9:34:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

An international media development charity, IWPR is led by senior journalists and peace researchers, with staff drawn from established media such as the BBC, The Guardian and Reuters. The Institute is a partnership between the London-based charity established in 1991, and the recently formed IWPR (US), based in Washington, DC, 501(c)(3) charitable status pending.

I think JFM gets credit for a hit.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-04-15 9:54:33 AM|| 2005-04-15 9:54:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 "...staff drawn from established media such as the BBC, The Guardian and Reuters..."
Well, that's the trifecta of credibility, right there.
Salt, anyone? This needs a grain of it the size of a cattle lick.

Posted by Sgt. Mom 2005-04-15 10:24:01 AM|| [http://www.sgtstryker.com] 2005-04-15 10:24:01 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 ..IWPR is led by senior journalists and peace researchers,..

Peace researchers. That sets off warning bells right there.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-15 11:19:40 AM|| 2005-04-15 11:19:40 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 There probably are some primitive, tribal remnants of this in Kurdistan, but the scale certainly seems way off. Where woman-hating religions and superstition are strongest is where this practice is most widespread.

Seems to me the stopping of this might be a point of leverage for the US. "This practice needs to be outlawed in Kurdistan, or else..."

Still, nothing can compare to the infibulation in parts of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Remove anything that could remotely be connected to pleasure, sew it up, and cut it open when you want in or baby wants out. Human beings can certainly be disgusting creatures when they want to be.

Posted by Jules 187 2005-04-15 11:29:21 AM|| 2005-04-15 11:29:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Regardless of the extent this has occured in the past, its noteworthy that no one is quoted as defending the practice and the Kurds are clearly making good progress in eliminating it. Judge people not by what has happened in the past but by what they are working to achieve now.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-15 11:32:30 AM|| 2005-04-15 11:32:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Tribalism is the ultimate root of collectivism. And any place you find either, you find stupid things like this happening. The cure is a combined injection of knowledge and liberty, and the destruction of the tribalist/collectivist inertia.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-15 11:34:30 AM|| 2005-04-15 11:34:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 Ok I have googled a bit about it and I stumbled upon this

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=5327

The source is Kurdish and NOT recent (I discarded page dated April 12, 2005 as suspect, ie could have been made by the "peace" group). So it seems the peace moonbats were right for once

Posted by JFM 2005-04-15 12:35:08 PM|| 2005-04-15 12:35:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 The Kurds are not the blameless heroic democrats of Islam. The Turks used the Kurds to massacre Greeks and Armenians back in the 1900-1920

***Sufis are not harmless either. They've done Jihading in India

Posted by sea cruise 2005-04-15 12:52:16 PM|| 2005-04-15 12:52:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Honor Killings are also quite common in the Kurdish rural regions.

Posted by Paul Moloney 2005-04-15 5:44:25 PM|| 2005-04-15 5:44:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 ok so honor killings and this genital mutilation shit has to stop. Start with our allies teh Kurds, if it's happening (I have my doubts on the extent of both - once is too much) then step it up on the world stage. Why are we not bombarding the world's airwaves with ridicule of muslim men's insecure sexualities and the horrors that result from same? Start with rapes in Paris, Belgium, etc....Make these losers international pariahs as they should be, and awaken women to the general use that kitchen carving knife can come to when necessary!

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-15 6:12:47 PM|| 2005-04-15 6:12:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 You insensitive brute!

Posted by Abu Bruce 2005-04-15 6:47:36 PM|| 2005-04-15 6:47:36 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Frank G-Yep. The wrong starts with the shaming of men for their life force and finishes with extinguishing the offending "root cause"-females in sexual ecstacy.

And I accidentally stumble again on a word that keeps coming up in arguments around Islam-"root causes". Where there is no free will, people have no recourse-just doom from "root causes" in life. How incomprehensible and then ,when encountered, how completely shocking our political AND personal freedom must seem to those who do not believe in free will.

Posted by jules 2 2005-04-15 6:58:53 PM|| 2005-04-15 6:58:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 As a guy with a unit (i.e. extra brain) - it causes me pain to recommend societal removal of same in Islam, but it would cure a lot of worldly ills, wouldn't it?

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-15 7:05:07 PM|| 2005-04-15 7:05:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 I just want it all to stop. You know I usually write about women's issues and Islam, but I think that what Islam does to men is very ugly and debilitating. Islam insults the creation of life by intentionally causing pain, harm, destruction-they do it physically, through terrorism, honor killings and female genital mutilation, and they do it mentally and emotionally, too. It seems like a desecration of a gift, to me.

Posted by jules 2 2005-04-15 7:22:25 PM|| 2005-04-15 7:22:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 don't give men a pass by blaming it on Islam. They can/should do better. The misogynist attitudes they perpetuate do damage, but all it takes it as mass-awakening to the damage done to women, and boys buggered by mullahs (yes, I'm RC and our priests need to pay for their crimes as part of a cleanup), to know this is a seriously f*&ked up ~~cult~~ "religion"

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-15 7:36:16 PM|| 2005-04-15 7:36:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Tribalism is the ultimate root of collectivism. And any place you find either, you find stupid things like this happening. The cure is a combined injection of knowledge and liberty, and the destruction of the tribalist/collectivist inertia.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-15 11:34:30 AM|| 2005-04-15 11:34:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#19 Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]

Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-15 11:34:30 AM|| 2005-04-15 11:34:30 AM|| Front Page Top

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