Ultra-modern Singapore's dark secret: female genital mutilation
Quote:Singapore is modern and cosmopolitan but social values remain conservative and female genital mutilation -- banned in much of the world -- is not illegal.
Saza Faradilla was 22 when she discovered her genitals had been cut when she was a baby, part of a quietly persistent traditional practice among Singapore's minority Muslim community.
"Mother said that you were cut because I didn't want you to be adulterous, because it's clean -- and because it's part of the religion."
Known in Singapore by the Malay language term "sunat perempuan", it often involves cutting the clitoris or clitoral hood.
The activists against FGM have been accused of not being good Muslims, while some members have not told their families about their involvement to avoid tension.
The true scale of female genital mutilation worldwide is unclear, but the United Nations estimates at least 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone the procedure in 31 countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
There is no official data on how common it is in Singapore but 75 percent of Muslim women surveyed by Saza's group had undergone genital cutting.
Activists are not pushing for a ban for fear the practice could be pushed underground, but want health officials to state publicly it is not medically necessary and the Islamic council to state it is not a religious obligation.
https://news.yahoo.com/ultra-modern-sing...38089.html
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"