Seven-year-old Mariam was excited. Her mother dressed her in her favorite powder pink dress, tied her hair in two pigtails with butterfly clips, and told her she was going to her cousin’s surprise birthday party.
Instead, her aunt led her hand in hand to a dilapidated building with layers of peeling walls and cold metal tables inside.
There, an old curly-haired woman gently reassures Mariam that she won’t understand, then grabs her and restrains her on a table. Then the pain started. It was sharp, searing, and haunting. Over the next 20 minutes, her life is split into before and after, and her faith in the person she believed in most is shattered: her mother.
Twenty years later, the 27-year-old female genital mutilation (FGM) survivor still bears the scars of that day. “I feel like something is missing inside me. It’s like something was taken away from me and it became a negative part of my body.”
“It’s an emotional flaw. When you talk about sexual desire, you can’t explain how you feel,” she says. “There is a lack of emotional and sexual response when looking for a mate,” she added.
Mariam belongs to Pakistan’s Dawoodi Bohra sect, a sect of Shia Muslims primarily from Gujarat, among whom female genital mutilation is common. Estimates suggest that between 75% and 85% of Pakistan’s Dawoodi Bohra women are treated with unsedated and unsterilized tools by older women in private homes, or by medical professionals in urban areas like Karachi. She is said to have undergone FGM. Pakistan’s Dawoodi Bohra population is estimated at 100,000.
However, many Pakistanis remain unaware that this practice is common in their country. Despite FGM in parts of Africa making global headlines, there is a culture of silence in Pakistan, where the practice continues with little public scrutiny or legal intervention. It means that there is.
The ritual is shrouded in secrecy, and Pakistan lacks comprehensive national data on how widespread FGM is. Girls undergo FGM at an age when it is difficult for them to handle it themselves. And the Dawoodi Bohra community doesn’t even refer to the removal of the clitoral foreskin as amputation – they call it circumcision, a rite of passage that must be passed – but there are doubts about this. must not be exhibited.
Women who choose to speak out against this practice are sometimes threatened with excommunication from the community. “When you question authority, you find solutions,” Mariam says.
“Where are you going? You were born here.”
resistance to persistent habits
“Your parents want what’s best for you.” It’s a belief that children hold tight until they break. As was the case with Aaliyah.
The 26-year-old remembers bits and pieces of a process so painful that for years it felt like a bad dream, too brutal to be real.
However, the truth does not disappear in an instant. A cold, unyielding table, a whispered promise of “I needed it”, a sharp physical and emotional sting. “I felt like I was in a bad dream, like it couldn’t happen,” she says. My voice was shaking from the shock of a trauma I didn’t understand at the time.
The emotion she felt while lying on the metal table was fear. After that, she felt an excruciating pain and betrayal. “What struck me was that there was a whole generation of people who would do this to their children without knowing why,” Aaliyah says.
In recent years, the movement to end FGM has gained momentum around the world. Earlier this year, Gambia’s parliament rejected a controversial bill that would have repealed the 2015 ban on FGM.
However, the Dawoodi Bohra community has so far stuck to this practice. In April 2016, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the current world leader of the Bolas sect, called for female circumcision in a sermon at Saifi Masjid in Mumbai, despite growing opposition within the community and around the world. In other words, we reconfirmed the necessity of Hatuna.
“You have to do it…if you are a woman, you have to be careful,” Saifuddin said, insisting that it is beneficial for both body and soul.
But doctors say FGM can cause reproductive complications for women.
“Young girls may develop abscesses and urinary problems. Their sexual health will be greatly affected and they may also suffer from pain during sexual intercourse. They may face many problems in their marriages,” Karachi Asifa Malhan, assistant professor and gynecology consultant at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, said: Dyspareunia is persistent or recurrent genital pain that occurs immediately before, during, or after sexual activity.
“As a medical professional and gynecologist, I would not advise anyone to do this. It is extremely harmful.”
Critics of the practice say the real reason girls are subjected to FGM is not for their health.
The clitoris, the part of the body where women derive the most sexual pleasure, is referred to by many in the community as “haram ki boti” (sinful piece of flesh). “When our clitoris is called haram ki boti, it becomes very clear that this practice is not done for hygiene or cleanliness purposes,” says Aaliyah. “This is being done to suppress women’s sexuality.”
The clitoris has more nerve endings than any other part of the human body and is the most sensitive part of a woman’s body. When cut, the nerve endings are severed and sensation is lost.
“Girls whose clitoris is removed are unable to feel certain sexual pleasures,” says Sana Yasir, a Karachi-based life coach with a background in psychology.
FGM is medically dangerous. Without a clitoris, you’re more likely to get injured during sex, says Yasir.
break down cultural barriers
According to the 2017-18 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey, 28% of women aged 15-49 in the country have experienced physical violence and 6% have experienced sexual violence. Additionally, 34 percent of women who have ever been married have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence at the hands of their spouse.
In a country where gender-based violence is so prevalent, the practice of FGM further exacerbates the struggle for female victims.
“This is a very serious form of gender violence, and the effects may not be immediate, but are experienced over a long period of time,” Aaliyah says.
Pakistan has no specific law criminalizing this act. Although the Pakistan Penal Code could theoretically apply broader provisions such as Section 328A (child abuse), Section 333 (dismemberment or mutilation) and Section 337F (mutilation of flesh); To date, no such prosecutions have been documented.
Each state’s domestic violence and child protection laws broadly cover physical harm but do not mention female genital mutilation. In its 2006 National Action Plan, the government acknowledged the problem, but no steps have been taken to end the problem.
A 2017 survey by Sahya, a Mumbai-based nonprofit organization working to end female genital mutilation in South Asian communities, found that 80 percent of respondents had experienced female genital mutilation. The study focused on women from the Dawoodi Bohra community. Sahiyo is a multinational organization with activities and campaigns in the US, UK and other regions where FGM occurs.
Health experts say they face major challenges in eradicating the practice. They can provide counseling to patients, but that’s not all. What is needed, they say, is to work with the community to medically explain the practice’s many drawbacks and the fact that it has no scientifically proven benefits.
“The government should work with doctors and visit the areas where this practice is taking place,” Mulhan said. “Without that, there will be no solution to this problem and we will face similar challenges in the future.”
Yasir points out that this assistance needs to be carried out carefully and with respect for the cultural traditions of the community.
Huda Syed, who published a study in 2022 on the lack of data and dialogue on FGM in Pakistan in the International Journal of Women’s Studies at Bridgewater State University, said the practice is sometimes tied to a girl’s identity within her community. said. Among the Dawoodi Bohras, it is considered to have religious and spiritual significance. Usually it is passed down as a habit between generations.
“While conducting my research, my approach was compassionate and focused on communities in context, as communities are marginalized in many ways due to customs and customs that are social norms. They are often harassed, persecuted, punished, and sometimes vilified and portrayed in a negative light,” says Syed.
“We cannot bring about change by attacking communities or excluding them, because then we risk the practice and custom of FGM going underground, which is what we really need to focus on. It’s about involving the community, working with them, and bringing about change from within.”
Syed says solutions must come from dialogue with the community and that ideas imposed from outside won’t work.
“When we talk about this practice, there are two parties. There are people who are open to dialogue and engagement about it, but there are people who are open to dialogue and engagement about it, but in a safe way where the community is not attacked because they don’t want the community to be demonized.” and people who want to preserve that’s their community and customs,” Syed says.
Al Jazeera reached out to community leaders for comment but did not receive a response.
For Aaliyah, how the community itself responds to the concerns of women like her is extremely important. “It’s important to spread the idea that you can be part of this community and still say no to female genital mutilation,” she says.
But whether or not the community reacts, the time of silence is over for survivors like Mariam.
“This practice took something away from me, and this time it ends with me taking it back,” she says.
*The names of survivors have been changed to protect their identities.
