Clitoridectomy, Identity and United States Aid
Or Mutilation, Identity and Aid

Sherif Hetata

12/8/97
The issue of female genital mutilation has once more been revived, to become a subject of debate in some newspapers and magazines.
Some months ago the State Council court abrogated a decree issued by the Minister of Health forbidding medical doctors and other health personnel from performing this operation.

Following the court decision a flurry of articles and interviews appeared in the press and the debate was reopened. The exchanges were sometimes sharp notably when Nawal El Saadawi opened fire on the well known religious “guru” Sheikh Sharawi.

However this time a new and unexpected element was introduced into the debate. Clitoridectomy was linked to United States “economic aid” to Egypt!! A campaign starting in the American senate was launched by a well known congress man against the regime in Egypt for permitting this barbaric practice, to go on unchecked. The authorities were accused of abusing human rights, and in particular the rights of women. An appeal was addressed to the American administration requesting the suspension of all “aid” to Egypt if rigorous measures were not taken to prevent its continuation.

However more than two decades of “friendly relations” with the United States have shown that American diplomacy uses a wide range of arguments, and pressures to attain its economic and political ends. These in the last few years have included such lofty aims as the defense of human rights, religious freedom and the rights of Copts and of women, not to speak of democratic practice and the multi-party system.

When the United States speaks of suspending financial aid there are responsible circles in Egypt that tremble. Then efforts must be made to avoid the impending catastrophe. This of course does not mean knuckling down completely to the great superpower. A certain amount of resistance, of bravado must be shown, but not too much lest the superpower (Mr. Clinton) get really angry. A few newspaper articles or figures may be published to show that Egypt can do without “aid” and not find it too difficult. The idea is to exert some counterpressure and “save at least part of your face”.

Perhaps this explains why some of our newspapers and magazines took up the issue of female circumcision with a moderate degree of enthusiasm, against those who defended it as a salutary moral practice. Even out spoken, controversial writers were allowed to have their say for a while.

However now that the question of “aid” is solved, or on its way to being solved clitoridectomy can go into cold storage. Women’s issues remain of minor importance and can be easily sacrificed in the name of higher causes, or national interests, or national unity, or opposition parties seeking to win an electoral seat or two, or in order not to shake the already badly shaken family system, or to ensure that United states “aid” continues to flow in, only to be over recuperated in record time. What is a “little clitoris” compared to the interests of men who still think in terms of several wives, or our cultural heritage, or national identity, or traditional values, and interpret Islam to their best interests? For in the name of all these, women can be mutilated, or humiliated, or beaten, or isolated, or incarcerated or made to wear a black tent. In the name of all these they can be submitted to an operation which maims them physically, sexually and emotionally for life.
But in addition what seems to me one of the most striking aspects in the debate over female circumcision is the position taken up on issues like this by a growing number of well – known intellectuals, and the kind of attitudes and thinking which are gaining ground in the way they envisage important areas of our social and cultural life.

Faced with the campaign launched against Egyptian society by high level circles in the American administration they have responded by defending the practice of clitoridectomy still prevalent in our society. Seized by a patriotic fervour against American pressures and interventions in our way of life, they maintain that amputating the clitoris of female children and young girls is an integral part of our culture, our heritage and our identity not to be abandoned if we are to resist the cultural invasion of the West. This solid unyielding wall of resistance to such western ideas as abolishing the amputation of an important sexual organ in women is what will ensure that our society does not fall apart.

This is the type of reasoning which is at the basis of fundamentalist tendencies even if it is promulgated by intellectuals who wear secular clothes, drink beer, work on a computer, and lecture at the American University. It hides behind slogans like patriotism, national pride, cultural heritage, identity etc. It has become a common denominator in, and an integral part of, the intellectual, cultural and political struggles going on in our country. To be a patriot means the unconditional defense of what we do, or have done in the past, a refusal to see our failings, to engage in critical appraisal. Thinkers and intellectuals who are not only critical of Western policies but also of their own societies are labeled as traitors, or heretics, as being westernized, or out of touch with our local realities.

This defensive reaction or reflex is self defeating. It disarms its proponents in the face of the neo-colonialist forces they seek to resist, by buttressing our backwardness in many areas, maintaining a rigid dogmatism, a lack of adaptability and inventiveness, and a failure to integrate knowledge and science into our lives.
Thus it is that the campaign launched in the United States against clitoridectomy is producing results opposite to the very ones it professed to attain. By making the issue of female circumcision part of a political game post – modern capitalism is sacrificing women in Egypt, as it is every where else in the world.
I can find no better illustration of how cultural fundamentalism in all its shades and grades, despite appearances to the contrary, remains the ally, the other face of capitalist global culture than an article written by the well known author Galal Amin published in the July issue of the monthly magazine “Al Hilal”. The article appeared under the title “Was Taha Hussein promoting enlightenment or something else?” and includes a commentary on the novel written by Chinua Achebe called “Things Fall Apart”. I quote from page 82 paragraph 3 in the magazine “thus it is that the writer devotes more than half his novel to convince the reader thoroughly with this culture1, and even make him love it, and empathize with it. And once he loves it and empathizes with it, then any attempt to evaluate or judge each part of it separately from the rest, to decide whether it is of utility or not, whether there is or isn’t something better in another tribe, or whether it makes sense or not, whether it is scientific or not becomes a ridiculous exercise. For each element, each part of this culture derives its logic, from the function it performs, in preserving and maintaining the tribe as a whole”2 (end of quote).

In other words what Galal Amin is saying is a metaphysical.
“Take it or leave it”

1- Meaning the culture of the tribe which in the subject of Achebes novel.
2- My translation from the Arabic.

The author is a writer, medical doctor and was a Visiting Professor at Duke University.