‘Something has been taken away’: Pakistan’s well-kept FGM secret | FGM

Seven-year-old Mariam was excited. Her mother dressed her in her favorite powder pink dress, her hair in two buns with butterfly clips, and told her she was going to a surprise birthday party for her cousin.

Instead, her aunt led Mariam, holding hands, to a dilapidated building with layers of peeling walls and a cold metal table waiting inside.

There, an old woman with curly hair softly mumbled reassurances that Mariam did not understand, grabbed her and held her on the table. Then the pain began – it was sharp, burning, unforgettable. The next 20 minutes will divide her life into “before” and “after” – and shatter her trust in the person she trusted the most: her mother.

Two decades later, the 27-year-old survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) still bears the scars from that day. “I feel like something is missing in me. It was like something was taken from me and it turned into a negative part of my body.”

“It’s an emotional lack. You can’t describe your emotions when you talk about sexual needs,” she says. “When you’re looking for a partner,” she adds, “you’re at a disadvantage [your] emotional and sexual response”.

Mariam belongs to Pakistan’s Dawooda Bohras, a sect of Shia Muslims mostly from the Gujarat region, among whom female genital mutilation is a common practice. Estimates suggest that between 75 percent and 85 percent of Dawoodi Bohra women in Pakistan undergo FGM either in private residences by elderly women—without any anesthesia and with unsterilized tools—or by medical professionals in urban centers like Karachi. Pakistan has a Dawoodi Bohra population of about 100,000 people.

However, many Pakistanis remain unaware that this practice is common in their country. Even as female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa grabs global headlines, a culture of silence in Pakistan means the practice has largely continued, unchecked by public scrutiny or legal intervention.

A shroud of secrecy protects the ritual, and Pakistan does not have comprehensive national data on how widespread FGM is. Girls are subjected to female mutilation at an age when it is difficult for them to solve it themselves. And the Dawoodi Bohra community doesn’t even call clitoral hooding mutilation – they call it circumcision, a rite of passage that must be undergone – that must not be questioned.

Women who choose to speak out against this practice are sometimes threatened with excommunication from the community. “When you question authority, you are shown a way out,” says Mariam.

“Where are you going? You were born here.”

Resistance to permanent practice

“Your parents want what’s best for you.” It’s a belief that children hold fast – until it breaks. As it was for Aaliya.

The 26-year-old remembers fragments of a process that was so painful that for years it seemed like a bad dream, too cruel to be real.

But the truth remained in flashes: the cold, unyielding table, the whispered promises that it was “necessary,” the sharp, physical and emotional, sting. “It seemed like a bad dream, like it couldn’t happen,” she says, her voice shaking with the shock of the trauma she didn’t understand at the time.

Fear was the emotion she felt as she lay on the metal table. She is betrayed by what she felt afterwards, with excruciating pain. “What surprises me is that there is a whole generation of people who are willing to do this to a child without even knowing why,” says Aaliya.

Globally, the push to end female genital mutilation has gained momentum in recent years. Earlier this year, Gambia’s parliament rejected a controversial bill to lift a 2015 ban on female genital mutilation.

But the Dawoodi Bohra community has stuck to the practice so far. In April 2016, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the current global leader of Bohras, reaffirmed the need for female circumcision, or khatna, in his sermon at Saifee Masjid in Mumbai, despite growing opposition within the community and around the world.

“It has to be done… if it’s a woman, it has to be discreet,” Saifuddin said, insisting that it is good for both body and soul.

However, doctors say female mutilation can lead to reproductive complications.

“Young girls can have an abscess, problems with urination; they can face a lot of problems in their married life because their sexual health is very compromised, they can also have dyspareunia,” says Asifa Malhan, consultant gynecologist and assistant professor at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center in Karachi. Dyspareunia is persistent or recurrent genital pain that occurs immediately before, during or after intercourse.

“As a healthcare professional and gynecologist, I do not recommend anyone to do this. It is very harmful.”

The real reason why girls are forced to perform female genital mutilation is not health, say critics of the practice.

The clitoris, the area where a woman experiences the most sexual pleasure, is called Haram ki boti (sinful piece of flesh) by many in the community. “When our clitoris is called haram ki boti, it becomes very clear that this practice is not done for hygiene or purity purposes,” says Aaliya. “This is done to suppress female sexuality.”

The clitoris has the most nerve endings of any part of the human body and is the most sensitive part of the female body. When mutilated, nerve endings are severed, leading to loss of sensation.

“Those girls whose clitoris has been removed cannot feel a certain sexual satisfaction,” says Sana Yasir, a Karachi-based life coach with a medical background in psychology.

And medically, female genital mutilation is dangerous. Without a clitoris, injuries during intercourse are more likely, says Yasir.

Breaking down cultural barriers

According to the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18, 28 percent of the country’s women aged 15-49 have experienced physical violence and 6 percent have faced sexual violence. Additionally, 34 percent of women who have ever been married have experienced spousal physical, sexual, or emotional violence.

In a country with such widespread gender-based violence, the practice of female mutilation makes the fight for female victims more difficult.

“It is an extremely severe form of gender-based violence, the effects of which may not be felt immediately, but are experienced over a long period of time,” says Aaliya.

Pakistan has no specific law criminalizing the practice. Although broader provisions such as sections 328A (cruelty to children), 333 (amputation or dismemberment) and 337F (tearing of flesh) could theoretically be applied under Pakistan’s penal code, no such prosecution has been documented to date.

Domestic violence and child protection laws in the provinces broadly cover bodily harm but do not mention female mutilation. In the 2006 National Action Plan, the government acknowledged the problem, but no action was taken to end it.

According to a 2017 Sahiyo Surveya non-profit organization based in Mumbai, India, which works to end FGM in South Asian communities, 80 percent of respondents had undergone FGM. The research focused on women from the Dawoodi Bohra community. Sahiyo is a transnational organization with operations and campaigns spanning countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and other regions where FGM is practiced.

Health workers say they face major challenges in trying to eradicate the practice. They can advise the patient, but they don’t stop there. What’s needed, they say, is to engage the community to medically explain the practice’s many drawbacks — and the fact that there are no scientifically proven benefits.

“The government should work with doctors and visit the community where this practice is carried out,” says Malhan. “Without this, there will be no solution to this problem, and we will face similar challenges in the future.”

This expansion, Yasir points out, should be done sensitively, while respecting the cultural traditions of the community.

Huda Syyed, who published research in Bridgewater State University’s Journal of International Women’s Studies on the lack of data and dialogue about FGM in Pakistan in 2022, said the practice is sometimes tied to a girl’s identity within the community. Among the Dawoodi Bohras, it is considered to have religious and spiritual significance. It is usually passed down as an intergenerational practice.

“While conducting my research, my approach was compassionate, contextual, and community-centered because communities are often ostracized, persecuted, and punished in various ways for customs and practices that are social norms, and sometimes tarnished and portrayed in a negative light.” , says Syed.

“Change is not possible by attacking communities and avoiding them because then we risk that the practice or custom of female mutilation is practiced underground; what we really need to focus on is engaging the community, working with them and bringing change from within.”

Syyed says solutions must come from conversations with the community, and imposing ideas from the outside won’t work.

“There are two sides when talking about this practice: some people who are open to dialogue and engagement about it, but in a safe way where their community is not attacked because no community wants to be mean, and there are others who want to preserve their community and customs,” says Syyed.

Al Jazeera contacted community leaders for their views but did not receive a response.

For Aaliya, how the community itself responds to the concerns of women like her is key: “It’s important to promote the idea that I can belong to this community and still say no to female genital mutilation,” she says.

But regardless of whether the community responds, for survivors like Mariam, the time for silence is over.

“This practice took something away from me,” she says, “and this ends up taking it back.”

*Survivors’ names have been changed to protect their identities.