Conference announces that female circumcision against Islam CAIRO: In a move that is likely to win international support but fuel domestic dissent, the International Conference for Preventing the Violation of Women's Bodies announced Thursday that female genital mutilation (FGM) is contrary to Islamic beliefs and is considered an attack on women. The conference, held from Nov. 22-23, under the auspices of Ali Gomaa, grand mufti, and funded by Rüdiger Nehberg's human rights organization TARGET, recommended that governments and concerned legislative bodies are required to issue a law outlawing those who practice it or even help in the process. They further called on the media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to combat the practice, which is not sanctioned by the Quran or the Sunna, the oral traditions of the Prophet Mohamed. However, Gomaa did say circumcision could be allowed in "rare cases - only defined by a medical professional - to correct a physical defect. Dr Amr Al-Tabakh, consultant gynecologist at Cleopatra Hospital in Heliopolis, told The Daily Star Egypt that some women are born with genital defects to the labia minora - the small inner lips of the outer female reproductive tract. In some cases, one of the lips will be much larger than the other, which can only be remedied by a circumcision to correct the deformity. In other cases, there are excessively big labia minora. It all depends on the clinical assessment whether to amend it or not, he added. Al-Tabbakh also said he was firmly apposed to FGM, "No operation should be performed to the female clitoris. It is the same as cutting a part of a man s sexual organ, which will definitely affect his libido to the extent that he may not reach orgasm. Could the clause on clitoral deformities give FGM supporters a loophole, however? The necessity of performing circumcision in some cases will definitely be made use of as a loophole for those who insist on practicing it, Hisham Ahmed Mustafa, attorney at law, said. So far there is no clear-cut law that specifically bans the practice or criminalizes it, though it can be outlawed under other laws related to assault and bodily harm. But Mustafa is not optimistic that the conference resolutions will be enough to halt the practice. Mustafa believes the legal system has not yet matured enough to issue "such a law at a time when it can be faced with rejection from diverse extremist trends and even moderate ones. Although many countries have outlawed female circumcision, the law is poorly enforced and prosecutions are rare. In the 1950s, the government tried to stop midwives from performing the custom, while allowing doctors to do so, fearing that otherwise families who insisted on circumcising their daughters would have the operation carried out in unsafe conditions. In 1994, due to public outcry over a CNN television broadcast of the procedure performed on a nine year old girl by a barber, the Minister of Health at that time decreed that the procedure should be performed one day per week at government facilities but only by trained medical personnel and only if they failed to persuade the parents against it. In 1996, the health minister imposed a total ban on the practice. Later in December 1997, the Court of Cassation (the highest appeals court) upheld a government ban on the practice of FGM/FGC.
