7-year-old Mariam was very happy. Her mother had dressed her in her favorite pink dress, her hair in two pig tails with butterfly stickers, and told her that she was going to her cousin's surprise birthday party.
Instead, her aunt took Mariam by the hand and led her into an old house with cracked walls and a cold metal table waiting.
There, an old woman with curly hair softly murmured something Mariam couldn't hear, grabbed her and held her to the table. Then the pain started – it was sharp, hot, unforgettable. The next 20 minutes would divide his life into “after” and “after” – and undermine his trust in the person he trusts the most: his mother.
Twenty years later, the 27-year-old survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) still bears the scars from that day. “I feel like something is missing inside of me. It is as if something has been removed, and it has become a painful part of my body.”
“I'm losing my mind. “You can't express your feelings by talking about sexual desire,” he says. “When you are looking for a partner,” he adds, “you lack (failure to) respond emotionally and sexually”.
Mariam belongs to Pakistan's Dawoodi Bohras, a group of Shia Muslims mainly from the Gujarat region, among whom FGM is a common practice. Estimates show that between 75 percent and 85 percent of Dawoodi Bohra women in Pakistan undergo FGM either in private homes by older women – without surgery or sterile equipment – or by medical professionals in urban areas such as Karachi. Pakistan has a Dawoodi Bohra population of about 100,000 people.
However, many Pakistanis do not know that this practice is common in their country. As FGM in other parts of Africa gets international headlines, the culture of silence in Pakistan means that the practice has continued, without public scrutiny or legal intervention.
A veil of secrecy protects the practice, and Pakistan does not have enough national information on how widespread FGM is. Girls are abused when they reach puberty when it becomes difficult for them to do things on their own. And the Dawoodi Bohra community does not refer to the removal of the clitoral hood as circumcision – they call it circumcision, a ritual that must be undergone – which should not be questioned.
Women who choose to oppose this practice are sometimes threatened with expulsion from their communities. Mariam said: “If you ask the elders, they will show you a way to escape.”
“Where are you going?” You were born here.”
Refusal of long-term practice
Your parents wish you the best.” It's a belief that children hold on tight – until they break. Like he did to Aaliya.
The 26-year-old remembers pieces of a process so painful that for years, it seemed like a nightmare, too cruel to come true.
But the truth is about to flash: the cold, unmoving table, the whispered promises that this was “important,” the sharp edge, physical and emotional. He said: “It felt like I had a bad dream, if it didn't happen,” and his voice was shaking because of the horrors he didn't understand at the time.
Fear was how he felt lying on the metal table. Betrayed by what he felt next, along with excruciating pain. “What makes me happy is that there is a whole generation of people who are willing to do this to a child without knowing why,” says Aaliya.
Around the world, the push to end FGM has grown exponentially in recent years. Earlier this year, Gambia's parliament rejected a controversial bill to repeal the 2015 anti-corruption law.
But the Dawoodi Bohra group has been practicing this practice. In April 2016, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, an international leader of Bohras reaffirmed the importance of female circumcision, or khatna, in his sermon at the Saifee Masjid in Mumbai, despite growing public and international opposition.
“It has to be done…
Doctors say, however, that FGM can cause reproductive problems for women.
“Young girls can have acne, complain about urine; they can face many problems in their married life because sexual health is very affected, they can also suffer from dyspareunia,” says Asifa Malhan, consultant gynecologist and assistant professor at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center in Karachi. Dyspareunia is a chronic or recurring pain that occurs before, during or after intercourse.
“As a health expert and gynecologist, I do not advise anyone to do this. It is very harmful. “
The real reason girls are cut is not for health, say critics of the practice.
Chilicho, the area where a woman finds sexual pleasure, is called Haram ki boti (sinful piece) by most of the community. “When our ritual is called haram ki boti, it is clear that this practice is not done for reasons of hygiene or cleanliness,” says Aaliya. “This is done to suppress a woman's sexuality.”
The clitoris has more muscles than any other part of the human body and is the most sensitive part of the female body. When they are cut, the nerves are cut, resulting in a loss of sensation.
Sana Yasir, a Karachi-based life coach with a degree in clinical psychology says:
Medically, too, FGM is dangerous. Without the clitoris, injuries during sex are much more difficult, Yasir says.
Breaking cultural barriers
According to the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18, 28 percent of women aged 15 to 49 in the country have experienced physical violence, and 6 percent have experienced sexual violence. Also, 34 percent of married women have been abused or abused.
In a country with such brutality, the practice of FGM causes people to suffer a lot.
“It's a very aggressive type, the results of which are not immediate, but last for a long time,” says Aaliya.
Pakistan has no specific law against this practice. Although under the Pakistan Penal Code, more provisions such as Sections 328A (cruelty to children), 333 (mutilation or mutilation) and 337F (dismemberment) can be applied, no such objection has been registered so far.
Domestic violence and child protection laws in the provinces focus on physical injury but do not mention FGM. In the 2006 National Plan of Action, the government acknowledged the issue, but nothing has been done to make it happen.
According to a 2017 Sahiyo surveya non-profit organization based in Mumbai, India, which works to end FGM in South Asia, 80 percent of respondents were laid. The study focused on women from the Dawoodi Bohra community. Sahiyo is an international organization that works with campaigns to reach countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and other areas where FGM is practiced.
Health experts say they are facing huge challenges in trying to end the practice. They can give advice to a patient, but it doesn't end there. What's needed, they say, is community engagement to explain, medically, the practice's many negatives — and that there are no scientifically proven benefits.
“The government should cooperate with doctors and visit the areas where this practice is taking place,” says Malhan. “Without this, there will be no solution to this problem, and we will face the same problems in the future.”
This approach, Yasir says, should be done carefully, respecting the traditions of the community.
Huda Syyed, who published a study in the Journal of International Women's Studies by Bridgewater State University on the lack of data and discussion on FGM in Pakistan in 2022, said that the practice is sometimes related to the girl's identity in the community. Among the Dawoodi Bohras, it seems to have religious and spiritual significance. It is often presented as a multi-generational practice.
“When I did my research, my approach was compassionate, social and cultural because often the community is discriminated against, persecuted and punished in different ways because of the traditions and customs that belong to the society, and sometimes they are stigmatized and painted in a negative way. ,” says Syed.
“Change is not possible by attacking people and avoiding them because then we risk the act or ritual of FGM being done in secret; what we need to focus on is engaging the community, working with them and bringing change from within. “
Syyed says that solutions must come through discussions with the community, and imposing ideas from the outside will not work.
“There are two groups when they talk about this act: some people who are open to talk and take action on this issue but in a safe way where their community is not attacked because no community wants to be insulted, then there are others who want to keep it. communities and their traditions,” says Syyed.
Al Jazeera reached out to community leaders for their views but they did not respond.
For Aaliya, the community's own reaction to the concerns of women like her is more difficult: “It's important to promote the idea that I can live in this community and reject female genital mutilation,” she says.
But whether or not the community is paying attention, for survivors like Mariam, the time for silence is over.
“This practice took something from me,” he says, “and it ends with giving back.”
*Names of survivors have been changed to protect their identities.