A system paralysed by political correctness has condemned thousands of women to genital mutilation.

Leyla Hussain anti-FGM activist

Note: Even if you don’t want to read this article, please scroll down and sign the petition at the end.

I recently watched the programme The Cruel Cut on the subject of Female Genital Mutilation, which is an issue that I am familiar because of my research into the parts of the world where this happens, but as we found, it is not a subject that is known much about by the man or woman in the street.

Apart from giving the general population an insight into the appalling and illegal in the UK, practise of female genital mutilation (FGM), the programme also showed how there has been no political outcry about this issue, although there quite plainly should have been.

The programme will have shown many viewers how there have been countless opportunities to deal with this problem, other countries in Europe are doing so, yet we in Britain have not yet had a single conviction for this vicious form of child abuse. Our political, administrative, social care and health systems seem to have all had a collective bout of amnesia or multi-sensory failure on the issue of FGM. Those agencies and individuals who could have helped these women, and help to stamp out FGM in Britain were not trained to recognise it or report it or not informed that it even existed.

The generalised lack of attention paid to this issue by the various departments of state who should have had some interest in monitoring or stopping, FGM was compounded by a combination of political correctness and the racism of low expectations. A desire not to interfere in ‘cultural matters’ for fear of giving offence or being called a ‘racist’ has meant that this practise has not been challenged anything like it ought to have been.

There has also been elements of a ‘racism of low expectations’ where nothing was done because it was only happening to Somali or Nigerian or Sudanese or other women. An attitude of ‘It’s just what those people do’ from those who could have done something, has condemned thousands of women to pain so bad that it was described by one of the survivors of FGM as something that ‘never goes away’. I agree with the protagonists in the programme when they said that there appears to be an attitude by those who should care, of not caring that black women’s genitalia is being mutilated.

In the name of ‘cultural sensitivity’ Britain has done NOTHING about this sort of child-abuse. Because Britain has been so wonderfully culturally sensitive and have not clamped down hard on this offence, Britain is now the FGM hub for Europe. Child abusers, because that’s what they are, flock to Britain to put their daughters under the razor blades of visiting ‘cutters’. The European hub for those who want to chop off bits of girls genitalia is not an accolade we should be ambivalent about having, it is something that we should be deeply ashamed of. We used to lead the world in technology and learning, now we lead Europe in our toleration of barbaric mutilation of young girls. That alone should make us sit and think.

There is one area of the programme where I disagreed and that is when the script said that FGM has no basis in religious dogma. On that the programme makers are incorrect. Although it is an issue that is disputed in Islamic jurisprudence, there are Hadiths, which recommend circumcision, but do not specify gender, which have been used to give FGM a religious stamp of approval. Also Islamic clerics from various schools of Islamic thought have ruled in favour of FGM.

That criticism aside, this programme and the pre-broadcast publicity on outlets like This Morning, will have introduced to many people, who were not otherwise aware, to the nature and extent of this problem. Another positive note was sounded by the young Somali heritage men, who took part in the programme. They started off all macho about the issue but, at the end of a process that included breathtakingly vivid teaching techniques, ended up saying that they did not want this sort of horror to happen to their future daughters. That sort of change of attitude is to be welcomed. It is to be hoped that by questioning this aspect of their culture and background ideology, they will go on to question others.

There were two things that really stood out for me. The first was the ‘Vagina Tent’ on the South Bank, I couldn’t help thinking that there may be young people there for whom this may have been the first time they had seen someone advocating that a cultural practise by brown or black people really should be criticised. This may have been the first time that they had been given something outside the diversity programming, the very programming that has condemned black and brown women to torture in the name of culture. It is to be hoped that these young people also start asking questions about what other horrors have been pushed under the carpet in the name of ‘sensitivity’.

The second thing that grabbed me and made an impression was the fake petition in favour of FGM, which was to highlight people’s politically correct paralysis. Although I’ve written about this aspect of the programme before on here, seeing this part in the context of the rest of the programme makes this section all the more powerful. To see people who were once free to condemn an evil like FGM, so in thrall to the idea of ‘cultural sensitivity’ that it has robbed them of the knowledge of right and wrong, made me and I hope many others, angry.

The tolerance that Britain’s governing, caring and administrative classes has shown to the practise of FGM is shameful. It is a stain on our nation and testament to the folly of seeing people not, as I believe they should be, as individual children of God, but instead as members of ‘groups’. Seeing the group and not the individual has been the policy of the multiculturalists. In seeing and recognising only the group, too often the suffering individual has been ignored.

An indication of how little emphasis has been put on the pain of those who have survived this, and the thousands of girls who are at risk from this, is that none of the guidance notes, best practise papers, briefings or instructions from the various ministries on FGM was ever made mandatory. Such guidance surely should have been made mandatory? We are talking serious offences against the person here, to prevent such offences, there is a strong case for making anti-FGM guidance mandatory. It is almost impossible to believe that nobody thought to do that.

We must not let any more women in Britain go through this. It must be protested. The shackles of ‘cultural sensitivity’ need to be broken and we should deal with this evil, for there is no other word suitable to describe the cutting off of a girls genitals. For nearly 30 years FGM has been illegal in the UK but for a considerable part of this time a desire to be ‘sensitive’ to different cultures has also prevailed. This cultural sensitivity has, ironically, helped to stop people asking why FGM goes on and also assisted in silencing those who wish to stop it. The policies of the multiculturalists have hurt members of the very communities they thought they were trying to help.

FGM should have no place in a 21^st century world, it is a form of child abuse and misogynist gyno-hatred that exists only to control women and control their bodies.

We should not even be tolerating the rumour of such a thing happening in Britain, let alone being a centre for it.

Stop FGM now.

Please sign the petition put up by Leyla Hussain via the link below and lets get some action on the issue of FGM.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/52740

Links

The Channel Four programme, The Cruel Cut

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-cruel-cut/4od

From this site on the subject of those who signed a pro-FGM petition

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2013/10/29/from-elsewhere-political-correctness-preventing-people-from-denouncing-evil/

Daughters of Eve is a group fighting FGM

http://www.dofeve.org/

Telegraph article on Leyla Hussain who made and presented The Cruel Cut programme