Move to overturn FGM ban in the Gambia postponed
FGM was outlawed in the country eight years ago and is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment.
Hundreds of people protested outside parliament on Monday, most supporting a repeal of the ban, Agence France-Presse reported.
According to the country’s health survey, three-quarters of women between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, and anti-FGM campaigners fear the proposed bill is undoing years of work.
Introducing the bill to parliament, the MP Almameh Gibba said overturning the ban would “uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values”. Opponents of the ban have often framed it as contrary to Islamic rules, while anti-FGM campaigners say the practice does not have any basis in the Qur’an.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-devel...-postponed
FGM was outlawed in the country eight years ago and is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment.
Hundreds of people protested outside parliament on Monday, most supporting a repeal of the ban, Agence France-Presse reported.
According to the country’s health survey, three-quarters of women between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, and anti-FGM campaigners fear the proposed bill is undoing years of work.
Introducing the bill to parliament, the MP Almameh Gibba said overturning the ban would “uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values”. Opponents of the ban have often framed it as contrary to Islamic rules, while anti-FGM campaigners say the practice does not have any basis in the Qur’an.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-devel...-postponed
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"