Gharbiya (Egypt), SVM News, August 11, 2007: A 13-year-old Egyptian girl named Karima Rahim Masoud has died at a private clinic during an operation to mutilate her genitalia as female circumcision in the Nile Delta village of Gharbiya in Egypt on August 9.
According to media reports on Saturday, she died on Thursday night as the result of problems with the anasthaesia. Her death was discovered after her father sought a death certificate from another doctor.
In fact, girl's father went to obtain a burial license from the coroner's office, but the doctor there demanded to know the cause of death. He argued that his daughter died from natural causes. But the doctor became suspicious and demanded to examine the body when the father broke down and confessed what had happened.
The medical practice where the operation took place has been shut down by the police, and the preliminary investigation shows that the doctor did the operation by himself without the help of anyone else.
The Salem Voice Ministries (SVM) News Service learnt that the general prosecutor is currently investigating the two defendants, the father and the doctor. Female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, is a practice that dates back to pharaonic times in Egypt. It is common in a band that stretches from Senegal in West Africa to Somalia on the east coast, and from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south.
A government survey in 2000 said the practice was carried out on 97 percent of the country's women aged between 15 and 45 years of age. Religious leaders, usually silent on taboos relating to female sexuality, have also started to speak out against the practice, which many Egyptians believe is a duty under Islam and Christianity.
Female circumcision can cause death through haemorraging and later complications during childbirth. It also carries risks of infection, urinary tract problems and mental trauma.
Human rights groups and religious leaders have spread awareness about the hazards of the operation and asked to stop it. And Egypt's Grand Mufti has issued a fatwa, stating circumcision is not a religious act, but a social one and must be banned. Therefore it was banned in 1997, but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases."
Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the sheikh of Al-Azhar university, the top Sunni Muslim authority, and Coptic Patriarch Chenouda III also declared it had "no foundation in the religious texts" of either Islam or Christianity.
In June, following the death of 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker, chief mufti Ali Gomaa declared female circumcision forbidden under Islam.
The female circumcision carried out despite stiff penalties for anyone found doing so. Penalties include revoking physician's medical license, closing their clinic and time in prison.
News at SVM site: http://salemvoice.org/news216.html
According to media reports on Saturday, she died on Thursday night as the result of problems with the anasthaesia. Her death was discovered after her father sought a death certificate from another doctor.
In fact, girl's father went to obtain a burial license from the coroner's office, but the doctor there demanded to know the cause of death. He argued that his daughter died from natural causes. But the doctor became suspicious and demanded to examine the body when the father broke down and confessed what had happened.
The medical practice where the operation took place has been shut down by the police, and the preliminary investigation shows that the doctor did the operation by himself without the help of anyone else.
The Salem Voice Ministries (SVM) News Service learnt that the general prosecutor is currently investigating the two defendants, the father and the doctor. Female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, is a practice that dates back to pharaonic times in Egypt. It is common in a band that stretches from Senegal in West Africa to Somalia on the east coast, and from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south.
A government survey in 2000 said the practice was carried out on 97 percent of the country's women aged between 15 and 45 years of age. Religious leaders, usually silent on taboos relating to female sexuality, have also started to speak out against the practice, which many Egyptians believe is a duty under Islam and Christianity.
Female circumcision can cause death through haemorraging and later complications during childbirth. It also carries risks of infection, urinary tract problems and mental trauma.
Human rights groups and religious leaders have spread awareness about the hazards of the operation and asked to stop it. And Egypt's Grand Mufti has issued a fatwa, stating circumcision is not a religious act, but a social one and must be banned. Therefore it was banned in 1997, but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases."
Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the sheikh of Al-Azhar university, the top Sunni Muslim authority, and Coptic Patriarch Chenouda III also declared it had "no foundation in the religious texts" of either Islam or Christianity.
In June, following the death of 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker, chief mufti Ali Gomaa declared female circumcision forbidden under Islam.
The female circumcision carried out despite stiff penalties for anyone found doing so. Penalties include revoking physician's medical license, closing their clinic and time in prison.
News at SVM site: http://salemvoice.org/news216.html
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