In last week's New York Times there is a great article about the movement gaining momentum in Egypt to end the brutal and senseless practice of female genital mutilation (a.k.a. circumcision). However, it is important to say that circumcision is an inaccurate term for it. Female genital mutilation is the preferred and more accurate term. It is in no way comparable or parallel to circumcision in men.

Genital mutilation is barbaric and no one should care how deeply rooted it is in certain societies. This is a huge issue at least in Egypt, Sudan and many other parts of Africa. It is unfortunate that genital mutilation is considered a cultural heritage in that part of the world, but respecting other cultures does not extend to allowing them to violate the basic rights humans and their bodies.

Having said that, people who justify this are people watched their parents and grandparents do it because it is part of their culture but this does nothing to change the fact that it is an assault on women and a violation of their human rights and bodies. We have to admit that this practice is a sick way to control women and their sexuality. In other words, it is that part of the society which does not respect women as equals, and this is nothing new in Africa in general and majority of Arab world. However, to say these people are backward and they just do not respect women in general is a bit shallow. It is that ignorant part from the uneducated Egyptians - and other societies - that let them do this act with women.

Anyway, it would be a victory for millions of women if the movement continues to gain influence.

Here are some of the key excerpts (full article here):

"Circumcision, or female genital mutilation, as some opponents refer to it, was suddenly a ferocious focus of debate in Egypt this summer. A nationwide campaign to stop the practice has become one of the most powerful social movements in Egypt in decades, uniting an unlikely alliance of government forces, official religious leaders and street-level activists.

Though Egypt's Health Ministry ordered an end to the practice in 1996, it allowed exceptions in cases of emergency, a loophole critics describe as so wide that it effectively rendered the ban meaningless. But now the government is trying to force a comprehensive ban.

For centuries Egyptian girls, usually between the ages of 7 and 13, have been taken to have the procedure done, sometimes by a doctor, sometimes by a barber or whoever else in the village would do it. As recently as 2005, a government health survey showed that 96 percent of the thousands of married, divorced or widowed women interviewed said they had undergone the procedure - a figure that astounds even many Egyptians. In the language of the survey, "The practice of female circumcision is virtually universal among women of reproductive age in Egypt."

The challenge rests in persuading people that their grandparents, parents and they themselves have harmed their daughters. Moreover, advocates must convince a skeptical public that men will marry a woman who has not undergone the procedure and that circumcision is not necessary to preserve family honor. It is a challenge to get men to give up some of their control over women."