CAIRO: A man forced his 20-year-old wife to be circumcised after a year of marriage, resulting in her hospitalization for acute bleeding, the state-run news agency reported Saturday. According to the police commissioner of the Cairo s gritty northern suburb of Shubra El-Kheima cited by the Middle East News Agency, a dispute erupted between Shaaban El-Menshawi and his wife because she had never been circumcised, a once common operation that has since been banned by the government. When her husband started beating her, Ashgan Riyadh Abdelati fled to her mother s house. Once there, however, her mother brought in a doctor to conduct the illegal operation on the spot, said the news report. Abdelati was later admitted to Nasser General Hospital for acute bleeding. Hospital officials declined to comment on her condition. Egypt has been reeling from two cases of young girls, 12 and 13 years old, dying from the operation of the summer, prompting the government to renew its largely ineffective ban on the practice. Female circumcision, which is also known as female genital mutilation, is a widespread traditional procedure in Egypt, practiced by Muslims and Christians alike. Despite the fact that top clerics insist the practice has nothing to do with Islam, many Egyptians, especially in lower income rural and urban areas, believe the removal of the clitoris lowers a women s sexual desires and thus helps maintain their honor. Female circumcision is still practiced in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, as well as in Yemen and Oman. A 2003 survey by Unicef said that 97 percent of married women in Egypt have undergone genital mutilation, though a recent study by the country s Health Ministry found that only 50.3 percent of girls between the age of 10-18 years have been circumcised. Associated Press
