{"id":270,"date":"2016-09-09T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hanifkhan.co.uk\/en\/?p=270"},"modified":"2022-07-09T12:37:29","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T12:37:29","slug":"fgm-no-place-in-modern-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hanifkhan.co.uk\/en\/2016\/09\/09\/fgm-no-place-in-modern-society\/","title":{"rendered":"FGM \u2013 No place in Modern Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FGM is something a short while ago I knew very little about. After taking up the batten to highlight this antiquated and barbaric crime, illegal in the UK, I have submerged myself in understanding it further. To be honest it has been a difficult challenge, making me very uncomfortable and hard to stomach. I guess many of us feel this way and can\u2019t bring ourselves to discuss it, learn about it and stop it from happening. When you get a glimpse of how horrendous this mutlilation is and damaging in every sense you quickly get passed it and realize you feeling uncomfortable is insignificant and inappropriate. Imagine the discomfort faced by the young girls and women cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\n would like to encourage you all to raise the awareness and take up the \nfight against\u00a0female genital mutilation.\u00a0There has been an international\n effort to stop this since 1970<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lady\n Rendell, is a long-term campaigner and is very outspoken. She has said \nthat it would be classified \u201cnot as a quaint custom but as child \ncruelty, as child abuse, because that\u2019s what it is\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven\n if it may be committed without child abuse or cruelty in mind, that\u2019s \nwhat it is. I think that if we can persuade the Home Office to do more \nwhen the police are doing so much, I see that at last there has been a \nbreakthrough and things are going to change. I hope so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\n wouldn\u2019t think school girls in the UK have to worry about female \ngenital mutilation (FGM), but we do. Its illegal in the UK, it is still \nhappening I was surprised to learn 24,000 girls in the UK are currently \nat risk of FGM. People just don\u2019t talk about it, doctors don\u2019t check for\n it and teachers don\u2019t teach it.\u00a0We need to change this attitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\n learnt\u00a0that French girls are sent to Britain to be cut and brutalised \nin this way. This is very shaming for us in the UK. France are very out \nspoken and have zero tolerance to this barbaric act, they have already \nprosecuted and jailed 100\u2019s of people, dozens of high profile cases. It \nwas defined as a crime under French Law in 1983 with a threat of 10 \nyears in Prison and up to 20 years if found cutting a girl under the age\n of 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSweden and Italy have prosecuted, you get the feeling that our government is not doing enough yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n the UK recently there was a petition calling on educating girls as \nyoung as 5 about this brutal act, FGM, it was started by\u00a0Fahma \nMohamed\u00a0and the final result was sent to the\u00a0Department for Education, \nthe then minister\u00a0Michael Gove. On the change.org website It\u00a0won with \n234,375 online signatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even\n though this might be a bloody, difficult to understand subject to teach\n at school to young people and some parent may object. But I would still\n say this culture is wrong and needs to be totally abandoned,\u00a0most girls\n are cut by the age of 5 and 10% of the children are killed in the this \nprocess.\u00a0The sooner we start to educate sooner we can save the next \ngeneration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth\n Rendell helped introduce tough new laws in 2004 making it an offence to\n send a child abroad for the procedure.\u00a0It was made illegal in the UK \n1985 but there have been no successful prosecution and in 2003 it was \nillegal to take out children to be cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FGM\n is child abuse.\u00a0It forces girls into a future of pain from the moment \nthey are cut. They face the risk of infertility, pain during urination, \nmenstruation, childbirth and sexual intercourse. The pain doesn\u2019t \ngo.\u00a0It\u2019s a traumatic experience they have to live with every single day,\n physically and emotionally. This must stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n involves removing external female genital area for non medical reasons,\n We have to talk about it and stop being.\u00a0Women who have undergone \nfemale genital mutilation are twice as likely to die in childbirth and \nfour times more likely to give birth to a stillborn child, experts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a religious act as it is being painted as, it is purely an antiquated, barbaric, cultural practice that has no place in this world, there is no Quranic text that FGM is allowed or has place in Islam.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n