|
Muslim cleric threaten Kurdistan opposition, if Barzani signs
the law against FGM |
|
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page |
|
Muslim cleric threaten Kurdistan
opposition, if Barzani signs the law against FGM
19.8.2011
By Irfan Al-Alawi |
|
|
|
Female Genital Mutilation "An Obligation" According
to Iraqi Muslim Cleric
August 19, 2011
ERBIL-Hewlęr,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — In June, the
parliament of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) adopted a ban on domestic violence,
including female genital mutilation (FGM), a
"procedure" that is widespread among Iraqi Kurds.
The law will come into effect once it is signed by
KRG president Massoud Barzani, who represents the
Kurdistan Democratic Party.
But a local cleric, Ismail Sussai, in the major
Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil, has delivered a
televised sermon in which he described FGM as
"obligatory," called on fathers to kill themselves,
on pain of losing their "honor," if they are legally
prevented from abusing their daughters for using
mobile phones; and he defended the beating of wives
and children.
The Kurdish cleric was particularly offended by use
of mobile phones among girls,
|
Mullah Ismail Sussai in Erbil city, Iraqi Kurdistan, talked in a
Friday sermon about the new bill against domestic
violence that passed the parliament of Iraqi
Kurdistan last June.
To see the video in Kurdish
click here |
as well as by suggestions that the beating of women
and children should be legislatively curbed, along
with the FGM that was inflicted on the mothers and
grandmothers of present-day Iraqi Kurdish leaders,
and is still suffered by a majority of Kurdish
girls.
He went on to threaten political opposition to the
KRG if Barzani signs the law against domestic
violence and FGM.
Sussai's diatribe included the claim that sanctions
against FGM were forced on the Iraqi Kurds by a
conference of "Jews" in the Chinese capital of
Beijing -- a bizarre charge that is apparently based
in the condemnation of FGM by the Fourth World
Conference on Women hosted by the United Nations in
Beijing in 1995.
Sussai based his argument for FGM on support for it
by the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence, one
of four Sunni schools. While Shafi'i legalists have
declared FGM obligatory, its imposition on girls has
not been uniform. Shafi'i jurisprudence is widely
adhered to in Muslim communities in East Africa, as
well as in Egypt and Indonesia, with additional
enclaves of support in the other Arab lands, the
Indian ocean, and Southeast Asia. But FGM is rare in
large areas of the Muslim geographical region that
recognizes Shafi'i religious law.
FGM is a pre-Islamic practice that appears to have
been assimilated into Shafi'i jurisprudence through
adoption of local customs. It is more common among
Black Africans of differing religious affiliation,www.ekurd.netas
well as Arabs in diverse areas of Saudi Arabia and
its neighbours, including Egypt. Immigrants from
both parts of the globe have introduced FGM into
Europe and the U.S., where it is banned. Parents who
insist on it may send their daughters back to their
homelands for infliction of FGM, but in doing so
violate the law.
Along with many Western countries, Indonesia and
Egypt have prohibited FGM, although some extremist
clerics in both countries emphasize their support
for it in the style of the Kurdish Ismail Sussai.
FGM is unknown in the Muslim Balkans, rare in Turkey
and Central Asia, and absent from India and
Bangladesh. The custom is controversial and despised
by most of the Islamic global community. Even the
radical cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is influential
in Egypt, has averred that while he supports the
practice in a "moderate" Islamic way "indicated" in
some of the hadiths (oral commentaries) of Prophet
Muhammad, "such hadiths are not confirmed to be
authentic."
Muslims should work to end FGM, so-called "honour"
murders, beatings, and other abuses imposed on women
and children under cover of religion. With all its
many problems, the intentions of Barzani's Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP), which has a secular history,
and of the Kurdistan Regional Government, are
correct in banning these practices.
President Barzani should sign and enforce the law
against domestic violence, including its anti-FGM
components, and disregard the retrograde harangues
of extremist clerics like Ismail Sussai.
But members of the Shafi'i school and non-Shafi'i
Muslim clerics must also recognize a duty to
unambiguously repudiate "Islamic" pretexts for FGM
and other family crimes.
Copyright ©, respective
author or news agency,
hudson-ny.org
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page
|
|
|
®
