The Female Circumcision Controversy. Ellen Gruenbaum
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but because so little is written on the specifics of the practices noted, it is difficult for scholars to conclude whether there was a single origin for both infibulation and milder forms that then spread or whether there were many similar practices that influenced one another over the centuries of migrations and contacts.
In the Nile Valley, it appears certain that the practices predated and survived the spread of Christianity to the ruling groups of Nile Valley kingdoms in Sudan in the sixth century C.E. Waves of Arab migration came later, initially nomadic groups who began to intermarry with the indigenous Nile Valley peoples. Later, Arab identity was strengthened when Islamic teachers and Sufis successfully spread the new religion in northern Sudan, where it became the dominant religion by about 1500 C.E. and the language of its sacred texts eventually became the lingua franca.
In Sudan, pharaonic circumcision, along with other pre-Islamic or non-Islamic beliefs and practices, was successfully syncretized into the Sudanese Islamic belief system. These practices were incorporated in such a way that they acquired meaning that was consonant with Islamic beliefs. Indeed, the ability to absorb and incorporate preexisting beliefs and practices, at least for some generations, is one of the characteristics of both Islam and Christianity that has allowed many people to convert without immediate dramatic change to their cultures. Today, however, some of the accepted practices have come under criticism by reformers claiming to speak for a more “authentic” and orthodox Islam, including zar spirit possession practices (discussed further in Chapter 3), folk rituals for agricultural fertility or curing, and even the visits to tombs of venerated holy men. The spread of Islam carried with it the use of amulets and quasi-magical practices and the belief in the special status of descendants of holy men, all of which are still found in Sudan and elsewhere today, but some have almost had to go underground as the Islamist movement has challenged them.
But although pharaonic circumcision is considered one of those pre-existing practices syncretized into Islam, there is reason to believe that some Arabs, too, may have practiced some form of female circumcision in ancient times. During my short period in Saudi Arabia in 1990, I learned that the older generations in certain areas of the country had practiced some form of female circumcision in recent decades, but that people now considered it un-Islamic and the practice was dying out. However, given the fact that long-distance trade and enslavement of peoples resulted in movement across the Hijaz for many centuries, surely Arabs were aware of the practices. Indeed, that the question should have arisen for the Prophet Mohammed (according to the Hadith traditions, discussed below) indicates that this was so. Indeed, one Sudanese writer, Ahmed Al-Safi, draws upon the work of the noted Sudanese linguistic and literary scholar Abdalla al Tayib to note that a “mention in early Islamic verse suggests that at least in so far as the Sudan is concerned the custom [of pharaonic circumcision] could have been derived from Arabia” (Al-Safi 1970:63).
Custom
In the Nile Valley and especially in Sudan, over the centuries the practices have remained or become deeply embedded in local cultures, and the symbolic significance as a marker of socially approved female fertility plays an important role in individuals’ repetition of the custom in the way of life that Janice Boddy documented in rural northern Sudan (Boddy 1989).
To call female circumcision practices “customs” is not, however, a sufficient explanation for their persistence. Yet much of the writing on this topic has not gone much further than to call the practices “customary,” which is an oversimplification of complex meanings that is sometimes deeply resented by writers from these societies. For example, Nahid Toubia wrote that “the implicit and explicit message [is] that it is something we inherited from an untraceable past which has no rational meaning and lies within the realm of untouchable sensitivity of traditional people” (Toubia 1981:4).
A more meaningful analysis results if we take the time to understand how female circumcision fits with the complex sociocultural arrangements of women’s subordination in a patriarchal society. For it is in most cases women themselves who are the strongest advocates for the preservation of the practices and who in fact carry out the operations, and this simply does not make sense without understanding the economic, social, and political constraints of their lives.
Where women must derive their social status and economic security from their roles as wives and mothers, we can anticipate that the rules of marriageability will be carefully followed. Even if, as is the case for a broad spectrum of circumcising groups in Africa, women have significant roles in subsistence production, wage employment, trade, production of commodities, and family work, economic well-being and even survival may require the efforts of a large family production unit that can take advantage of different environmental and economic niches and allow its members to weather the vicissitudes of the economy. A husband and children are necessary to a woman’s economic security for many reasons. There may be limitations or barriers to access to land, cattle, grazing rights, or cash income without a husband. There may be control of production that reinforces economic dependency. There may be a need for physical defense. But in any case, children contribute their labor at an early age to family production, especially in rural areas, making a large family not a drain on resources (as is the experience in industrial countries) but a boon to family prosperity in the short term.
Further, since the majority of people in most circumcising societies have no provisions for old age security other than reliance on family members and kin group loyalties, anything that interferes with a woman’s ability to reproduce in a socially acceptable way and to keep her relationship with her children as they grow up into competent adults would undercut her economic security. A childless woman might face a future of poverty or dependency in one of the undesirable social roles such as childless widow or old maid aunt or cousin, entitled to live with kin, but with no one to look out for her interests and provide her with more than the bare necessities.
Where female virginity at marriage is considered vitally important, as in Sudan, even rumors that question a girl’s morality may be sufficient to harm a family’s honor and effectiveness in a community and bar her from marriage. In this context, clitoridectomy and infibulation serve a clear and compelling purpose: they guarantee virginity, morality, marriageability, and the hope of old age security, all in one decisive action taken when she is too young to object. Any girl known to have been properly circumcised in the pharaonic manner can be assumed to be a virgin and marriageable, since there are usually a number of older women to bear witness to the thoroughness of the infibulation. People can therefore assume that there is both an attenuation of the girl’s sexuality (because of the clitoridectomy) and a barrier to penetration (because of the infibulation), so even if she had had the opportunity, they can assume she will not have engaged in premarital sex. But for a girl who has not been properly infibulated, as in the case in which her parents might have chosen to follow contemporary ideas about having only a milder form such as sunna circumcision, doubts can be raised about her virginity and her morality, leaving her vulnerable to being passed over in marriage.
I argue that attempts to formulate policies or activate programs against female circumcision must recognize the significance of the linkage between the operations and the social and economic goal of maintaining the reputations and marriageability of daughters under patriarchal economic arrangements. To that assertion, I must also add the need to consider social class, ethnic relations issues, and the particular structures resulting from economic development strategies, as well as the current political struggles in each of the social contexts. Examples are the Islamist movement in Egypt and Sudan, rapid alteration of traditional cultural life in Kenya and Uganda, rapid urbanization in the countries of West Africa, and of course wars and conflict wherever they are occurring.
In short, there is more to this issue than meets the eye. By no means is female circumcision a single phenomenon with a single purpose such as “controlling women” or “suppressing female sexuality.” To the extent that those occur, they are important to analyze, but often the control of women is not the core reason or conscious purpose for female genital cutting. Conscious reasons as well as the effective functions of the practices must both be addressed. The oppression or subordination of women, their poverty, and their restricted opportunities are a more fundamental issue to address if we wish to understand people’s willingness to continue