Recently, Tejaswi Surya, BJP MP from Bangalore South came into limelight when an eminent Kuwaiti citizen shared his 2015 tweet that said: “95% Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years! Every mother has produced kids as an act of sex not love”. Well, just to cut the clutter, Tarek Fatah, a Pakistan origin Canadian journalist (who is quoted by Tejaswi in this tweet) is referring to FGM or Female Genital Mutilation here.
Female Genital Mutilation and how is it done?
FGM or Female Genital Mutilation is a procedure, wherein, clitoris along with few other parts of a woman’s genitalia is cut off and, in this case, to deprive her of sexual pleasures as they are considered sinful in some communities. It is a very common practice in many countries in the Middle East, Northern Africa and a few in South-East Asia.
From the map given above, it could be clearly observed that it isn’t very widespread in India. It is because most Muslims living in India are Sunni Muslims who follow Hanafi school of thought which does not follow this barbaric medieval act. Those <1% cases come from Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community which is a well off and prosperous community so to say. Here is a video by Hindustan Times which helps us understand how things are in that community in this regard.
Similar to FGM, there is MGM or Male Genital Mutilation also called circumcision, wherein, the foreskin of a male’s penis is cut off. This form of genital mutilation is extremely common among Muslim communities and many developed western communities as well.
These genital mutilations are usually performed in young kids. What makes is even more barbaric is that they are done by religious heads and not medical professionals without giving any form of anaesthesia and without any pain killer. Just thinking about the unimaginable pain and trauma that the child must be going through gives shiver down our spine.
We agree that the words quoted by BJP MP Tejasvi Surya are outrageous and is clearly an overstatement, but, does that change the fact that there are hundreds of millions of Muslim children that have to go through this heart wrenching and traumatic experience just to satisfy the ages-old tradition that their community members have been following.
In our race to prove how politically correct and ‘tolerant’ we are towards their religious sentiments, are we suppressing the silent screams of these innocent men women and children? Are we unknowingly suppressing their rights by not giving them the right platform to voice their opinions? How are we going to justify our silence over these horrific malpractices?
It is about time that we start drawing distinctions about what is acceptable in our modern societies and what is not.
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