We walk such a fine line here. Some readers write in and say they don’t want to read the news because it upsets them.
Others write in in great distress asking if such-and-such an event is true and what can they do about it. Whom do we respond to?
The only response we can make is to ask those who don’t wish to read the news to pass by the news stories unread. But if we’re to build a world that works, we first need to know what doesn’t work.
Perhaps the most distressing news to appear in the press recently, allegedly coming from the United Nations, was that ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq) had issued a fatwa (religious edict) saying that all young girls in Mosul would be circumcised. (1)
In human-rights circles, that practice is called “female genital mutilation” (2) or FGM and it’s unfortunately widespread in certain parts of the world (see map).
Because readers are distressed about this circumstance, I’m going to post on it now, rather than wait for tomorrow’s blogroll.
Please note that the preponderant probability is, as has been stated, that the fatwa is a fake. (3) Of course retraction statements get very little coverage so most people will continue to think that ISIS is verging on causing all women in Mosul to be mutilated. However as a fact, that’s probably not true.
We need to know about FGM and then we need to discuss how to stop it. Says Unifem:
“FGM refers to several types of deeply-rooted traditional cutting operations performed on women and girls. Often part of fertility or coming-of-age rituals, FGM is sometimes justified as a way to ensure chastity and genital ‘purity.’
“It is estimated that more than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, mainly in Africa and some Middle Eastern countries, and two million girls a year are at risk of mutilation. Cases of FGM have been reported in Asian countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and it is suspected that it is performed among some indigenous groups in Central and South America. FGM is also being practiced among immigrant communities in Europe, North America and Australia.” (4)
We are the generation who will stop FGM, and female infanticide, female child abandonment, sexual slavery, forced marriage, forced abortion, forced sterilization, acid attacks, honor killings, domestic abuse, etc. (5)
But that will take money and for that we need the Reval. It will be a priority after abundance arrives, I can assure you.
One case of FGM is one case too many. Don’t think it doesn’t happen in the developed world because it does. But here it’s cause for legal action; in many parts of the world, it’s not.
Not like legal action after the fact is any help or consolation to the victim.
How to stop it? Surely we’ve learned by now that we cannot meet hatred with hatred and expect hatred to cease. And FGM is not based in love. If it were, not a single case of it would happen.
We cannot approach it from the philosophy of an eye for an eye. As Gandhi said, that only makes the whole world blind. And a blind world will continue to act blindly.
Love is the only force powerful enough to have those who practice FGM stand down. Years ago, I would not have bought mystical solutions. But I do now. So sending love to those parts of the world, torching them with the violet flame, asking to have all FGM practitioners placed in Archangel Gabrielle’s blue-topaz love-containment box I now believe does work.
Prayer to the Divine Mother does work. It allows there to be a free-will component asking for the stop of this practice which the Company of Heaven can act in aid of, on a free-will planet. If total silence on the practice prevails, I’m under the impression it will go on in a free-will world. We have to wake up on the subject and demand that it stop.
And then there are a raft of organizations like Unifem, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), equalitynow.org, rivarefuge.org, and many others who are working against FGM. For a list of 16 orgs dedicated to stopping FGM, see footnote 6. (Thanks, Crystal.)
Footnotes
(1) “ISIS orders women and girls in Iraq city to undergo female genital mutilation, UN official claims,” National Post, July 24, 2014, at https://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/24/isis-orders-all-women-and-girls-in-iraq-city-to-undergo-female-genital-mutilation-un/.
(2) See “Female Genital Mutilation” at https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/women/fgm1.html.
(3) “Doubts grow over Isis ‘FGM edict’ in Iraq,” BBC News, July 24, 2014 at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28466434 and “Experts Say ISIS’s Female Genital Mutilation Order Is Fake,” Gawker.com, July 25, 2014, at https://gawker.com/experts-say-isiss-female-genital-mutilation-order-is-fa-1610815761.
(4) “Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)” from UNIFEM, Violence Against Women – Facts and Figures, 16 Feb. 2007, ownloaded from https://unifem.org/attachments/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures_violence_against_women_200611.pdf.
(5) “A Global Call for an End to Gender Persecution by January 1, 2015,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/building-nova-earth-toward-a-world-that-works-for-everyone/ending-gender-persecution/a-global-call-for-an-end-to-gender-persecution-by-january-1-2015/.
(6) “16 Organisations, Charities and Grassroots Groups Working to Stop Female Genital Mutilation,” 16 for 16, Dec. 1, 2012, at https://16days.thepixelproject.net/16-organisations-charities-and-grassroots-groups-working-to-stop-fgm/.