Female Genital Mutilation

Further to our May discussion on FGM and North American girls, I got this e-mail from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's foundation today:

Today is the first day of summer, and it's prime time for girls to be subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) or forced marriage, either here in the United States, or overseas.   

Does this really happen in the United States?

Yes.

Forced Marriage   

There are numerous reports of girls being taken out of school in the United States in their early teenage years and returned to their parents' home countries to be forcibly married.  For example, in 2007, the New York Daily News reported that a number of girls were being forced to return to Pakistan to marry men chosen by their families.  One woman recalled being tricked and drugged before being put on a plane to Pakistan and, once there, being forced at gunpoint to acquiesce to a marriage to a man chosen by her father.

FGM   

Research conducted by the African Women's Health Center of the Brigham and Women's Hospital found that approximately 228,000 women and girls in the U.S. have either suffered the procedure or are at risk of FGM, a number that increased by approximately 35% between 1990 and 2000.

Because the procedure can have very serious health complications, summer is the optimum time for families to have their daughters cut as they will not be missed from school.  Recovery can take the entire summer and may cause complications for the girls entire life.  Numerous authorities suspect that the actual numbers are far higher, though there have been few reported cases of FGM being performed in the U.S.  There is also a concern that families send their daughters out of the country to suffer the procedure.    

Currently, it is not a crime to take your daughter abroad to undergo FGM.  Representatives Crowley and Bono Mack introduced The Girls Protection Act last year that would make it a federal crime to transport a minor outside the United States for the purpose of FGM.  This bill has just been reintroduced and needs your support - contact your legislators today to ask them to pass this bill! 

What can you do?

Please consider making a donation to the AHA Foundation today to help us stand up for the rights of girls and women in the West.

With donations of $110 to the AHA Foundation, we will send you a package of 10 rare Ayaan Tulip bulbs when they are ready to plant this Fall*.

Your gift will help protect the rights of women and girls in the United States from abuses such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation and honor violence.

Step 1: Make a donation of $110.

Step 2:  Send an email to info@theAHAfoundation.org including the shipping address for where the tulips should be sent.

Review of Lady Chatterly's Lover

Here is an interesting review of Lady Chatterly's Lover, written by Doris Lessing for the Guardian in 2006. A snippet from her review:

Many novels do not gain by relating them to their times. Others, usually the polemical kind, may only be understood in context, and Lady Chatterley's Lover is one. To read it unenlightened, particularly the feverish third version, can only leave the reader wondering what on earth is all this urgent preaching about, particularly now, when it is hard even to remember what a mealy-mouthed society Lawrence was writing in. It was prudish, repressed and priggish, and as always in such a time the dirty snigger was never far away.

June Books

The books to read for June are:

Lady Chatterly's Lover, by DH Lawrence, and
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Read what you can . . . 

Hijab, burqa ....what's the difference?

Here are some handy illustrations to show the different types of Islamic coverings.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on YouTube

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's website: The AHA Foundation works to reinforce the following basic rights: the rights of women and girls to security and control of their own bodies, the rights of women and girls to an education, the rights of women to work outside the home and to control their own income, the rights of women and girls to freedom of expression and association, and the rights of women and girls to other basic civil rights of citizens and residents defined under the laws of Western democracies and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regardless of sexual identification. 

Ayaan on the veil (3 min)

Ayaan on Bill Moyer (7.5 min)

Ayaan on the political situation in Somalia (5 min)

Ayaan on losing her religion (5+ min)

Ayaan on Islam in Europe (9 min)

Hirsi Ali & Van Gogh's "Submission"

Click here to watch Submission in English.

Part two is here.

May book club selection: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

This month's selection is Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If you can't get a copy, then read her latest book, Nomad.