According to the FBI agent’s statement, when Nagarwala removed part of the prepuce from young girls’ genitalia, it constituted an illegal sexual act, because one purpose of FGM is to “curb the sexuality of girls and women.”

Ärztin wegen Genitalverstümmelung angeklagt

A subsequent medical examination showed that the girl’s genitals did not appear normal and a section had been altered or removed, according to the court filing.

A subsequent medical exam showed the girl’s genitalia had a small incision and a small tear.

According to the complaint, despite her oath to care for her patients, Dr. Nagarwala is alleged to have performed horrifying acts of brutality on the most vulnerable victims,

This is going to be a complex” case, Smith said.
The judge replied: “I agree with you.”

During the hearing, a federal judge decided to keep Nagarwala incarcerated while the criminal case is pending.
“I think there’s clear and convincing evidence that your client poses a danger to the community,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Mona Majzoub said, according to the Detroit Free-Press.

The other girl said she screamed after a painful “shot.”

Authorities arrested another doctor, Fakhruddin Attar, 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, both of Livonia, Mich., on Friday. Federal prosecutors say Fakhruddin Attar owns the clinic where Nagarwala performed genital mutilations, while his wife, the clinic’s office manager, assisted during the procedures.

On social media, some genital autonomy advocates say that the case could bring up two equal rights issues, given that male circumcision is legal.


For starters, genital autonomy advocates point out that there are four types of female genital mutilation procedures. All four are illegal in the United States. NHS reports that female genital mutilation is known by people who practice it as “female circumcision.” They say that the procedures described in the complaint removed less tissue from the female victims than the infant circumcision procedure routinely performed on boys removes.

News is blowing up over female Dr accused of FGM in Michigan. Media hypocrisy ignoring baby boys cut every day in the United States legally

— Kelly Moore ✌️ (@WritesMoore) April 18, 2017

Secondly, they say that the accused could use the defense that the FGM law violated their own rights to equal freedom of religion, because even non-medical, ritualistic circumcisions are still performed by Ultra-Orthodox Jewish mohels in the United States. In that ritual, known as metzitzah b’peh, the mohel orally removes the blood off the end of the infant boy’s genitals after removing the infant’s foreskin and then spits the blood aside. The practice is fully legal, despite some boys having contracted herpes from the ritual.

I underwent genital mutilation as a child - right here in the United States

the centuries-old practice.

...has no known health benefits...

Her attorney, Shannon Smith, insists that Nagarwala conducted a benign religious ritual that involved no mutilation

Psychologically, it feels like a violation, even though I don’t remember it,

Critics, though, say it can cause complications during childbirth,..

...make intercourse painful and eliminate any pleasure a woman can derive from sex

Prosecutors on Friday charged two other Bohras, Dr. Fakhruddin Attar and his wife, Farida Attar, with conspiracy.

Other human rights organizations have frowned upon using the term “genital cutting,” saying that it does not accurately describe the suffering placed on young girls.
“It establishes a clear distinction from male circumcision,” the United Nations Population Fund explained. “Use of the word ‘mutilation’ also emphasizes the gravity of the act and reinforces that the practice is a violation of women’s and girls’ basic human rights.”

...female genital cutting is very different from male circumcision...

Cutting can sound like a ritualistic bloodletting committed with minimal harm.

However, the other types of FGM— removal of the clitoris or clitoral hood; removal of part of all of the labia; removal of the clitoris and labia, sewing the labia shut to narrow the vaginal opening—entail far more than just “cutting.”

Touching or harming a child’s genitals for anything other than medical purposes is a crime in the U.S

Readers would no doubt bristle if the Times published a piece calling any other kind of child abuse a “practice” that is “widely seen” as brutal. It is objectively brutal—in any degree of severity, it draws blood from a child’s genitals for no medical reason—and it is a crime people commit, not a procedure people practice.

FGM is not a benign practice of culture or religion—it is a practice of patriarchal oppression.

Now lawmakers are rushing to introduce legislation to make the arguable religious based procedure a felony crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The Federal government is considering making failure to report suspected child abuse a felony. This makes me reflect on one of the most universally observed commandments in Judaism, the Brit Milah (literally the Covenant of Circumcision) and commonly referred to as a “bris.” G-d commanded the Jewish people (Leviticus 12:2) “On the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” It is my belief that the act of circumcision of a young Jewish male, marking the completion of the body, is a human act. This teaches us that our spiritual, emotional, moral, and ethical perfection requires human efforts. G-d cannot do it for us.

You be the judge.

A lawyer says Michigan’s child welfare agency is moving to terminate parental rights in at least two Detroit-area families in an investigation of female genital mutilation.

The FBI’s Detroit Field Division has set up a tip line for anyone who has information pertaining to the illegal practice of female genital mutilation

Alan Dershowitz Joins Legal Team Defending Female Genital Mutilation on Religious Freedom Grounds

The defense team is expected to make a two-pronged argument, saying that what happened to the girls does not qualify as “female genital mutilation” but was instead “legal and benign.” Moreover, they are expected to argue that the practice is constitutionally protected as a religious practice.

At a May hearing, U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth Stafford denied bond to Fakhruddin and Farida Attar, calling their religious defense “a shield,” the Detroit Free Press reported.

In an order to keep Nargarwala behind bars until trial, a federal magistrate judge included graphic details in her explanation for the ruling to deny bond:"The girls were laid on an examining table, told to put their knees to their chests with their legs spread apart, that the doctor pinched them in the place where they "pee," that there was blood on the examining table, that they were in pain and could barely walk, and were given pads to put in their underwear.

A subsequent medical exam showed the girl's genitalia had a small incision and a small tear.

The girls had been brought into the clinic by their mothers but the parents have not been charged.

All three are accused of trying to keep the practice secret within their Indian-Muslim community, according to the indictment.

...a procedure 'to get the germs out,'

If convicted, Nagarwala and Fakhruddin Attar face up to life in prison, while Attar's wife could be imprisoned for up to 20 years.

Haidery’s experience is complex. Cut by a relative with medical training using an anesthetic, she remembers little pain, saying she was told that “I had to do this in order to be fit to be married.”

When an obstetrician examining her during pregnancy noticed nothing unusual, “I thought maybe it’s not a huge deal,” she said.

But more women now consider it “gender violence,” especially serious because “it’s happening to little girls,” she said.
“You’re tampering with female genitalia,” Mirza said. “It violates you as a human being and it shouldn’t be done, end of story.”

Does Female Genital Mutilation Have Health Benefits? The Problem with Medicalizing Morality

Four members of the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Islam living in Detroit, Michigan have recently been indicted on charges of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is the first time the US government has prosecuted an “FGM” case since a federal law was passed in 1996. The world is watching to see how the case turns out.

The defense team has already signaled that it will emphasize the “low-risk” aspect of the alleged cutting, claiming that it shouldn’t really count as mutilation. It is, after all, far less invasive than Jewish ritual male circumcision, which is legally allowed on minors in the US, no questions asked

Based on this discrepancy, if attorneys for the Bohra can show a gendered or religious double standard in existing law, the ramifications will be not be small. Either male circumcision will have to be restricted in some way, or “minor” forms of FGM permitted. The outcome either way will be explosive.

In fact, as the Bohra case will show, there are serious, even dangerous downsides to medicalizing moral reasoning – and to moralizing medical research. On both counts, I argue, at least when it comes to childhood genital cutting, apparently biased policies from the WHO are making things a great deal worse.

Some hint of where the bill might run into future opposition emerged Tuesday’s hearing when Rep. Linda Slocum, DFL-Richfield, spoke.
While condemning female mutilation, Slocum said it is equally repulsive when performed on young males in the form of circumcision — a Western cultural norm that she described as “kind of a white-man thing.”
“Is this a law that is race-based?” Slocum pointedly asked. “I think we need to think about that.”

Sen. Michelle Fischbach, R- Paynesville, the commission’s co-chair, discouraged that line of inquiry as complicating the discussion.

“Well, is male circumcision heinous and barbaric?” Sarr asked in response to a FOX2 Detroit journalist’s question about whether she considers FGM performed on girls brutal and backward. “Commonly, (male circumcision) not seen as being heinous and barbaric and people grow commonly in general to accept male circumcision as not being heinous and barbaric,” she said. In the same interview, she also failed to agree that performing FGM should be a crime in the U.S. “It's not about thinking shouldn't it be a crime or not be prosecuted,

Female genital mutilation trial moved to June 2018

“Nobody who forces their child to undergo (female genital mutilation) should be legally allowed to continue to be a parent to that child because they are clearly not concerned with the well-being of their own flesh and blood,”

Female circumcision performed by Dawoodi Bohras is absolutely harmless. There are no ill effects,

The merchant and Mrs. Ali described female cutting among Bohras as a symbolic ritual, akin to male circumcision. Mrs. Ali had her own daughter cut by a Bohra gynecologist, she says.
She compared the clitoral hood to extra clothes in a crowded closet. “You just move them out of your closet,” she says. “It’s like that.”