Examining FGC Survivor and FGC Impacted Community Involvement Behind FGM/C Legislation in the United States: A Response to Bader's “From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalism in the United States”

As an American-born woman who grew up in the South Asian Dawoodi Bohra Shia Islamic tradition, I have been aware of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) my entire life. Only as a child, I thought of FGM/C as Khatna (what we called it in the Bohra community), something all girls went through, and not a form of harm that is considered a human rights violation by the United Nations. As an adult, as I have learned more about this harmful practice, and as I have sought to work with survivors and community members impacted by FGM/C, I have begun to understand how truly and deeply entrenched FGM/C is within various communities, cultures, religions, and identities. I understand FGM/C as a social norm justified by a variety of reasons, and I understand there is a wide gap in knowledge in recognizing how global this issue is, having been reported in over 92 countries around the world (Equality Now, End FGM European Network, and US End FGM/C Network, 2020). I understand these realities and have witnessed firsthand how intersecting oppressions such as racism, classism, sexism, and xenophobia have interacted to impact both the wide-scale awareness of the global nature of FGM/C and the availability and access to prevention and support services that survivors and impacted communities might have in their search for healing and abandonment of FGM/C among future generations (Boudreau, 2021).

So when I was asked to give commentary on “From the War on Terror to the Moral Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation: Anti-Muslim Racism and Femonationalisim in the United States” by Dina Bader, I immediately agreed to do so. Despite, at the time not knowing what the word “femonationalisim” meant. What instead drew me to the manuscript was Bader's investigation of the first federal criminal court case of FGM/C in the United States occurring in 2017, and the aftermath that landmark court case had on the issue of FGM/C within this country—particularly since those involved in that case all came from the Dawoodi Bohra community. What captivated me about the manuscript was the deep dive Bader made into the reasoning for these legislative acts both at the federal and state levels through the lens of femonationalisim and anti-Muslim racism. And while I do not necessarily disagree with Bader and her observations, I do believe that additional context and analysis are needed to understand the legislative history of how our current FGM/C laws in this country have come to be and the influence that survivors and advocates’ voices have had in this movement (Anderson, n.d.).

Survivor and Community Advocacy

In 2016, a year before the first federal case in Michigan, I found the courage to go in front of a news camera for ABC News and share my story of undergoing FGM/C (Smith, 2016). The decision was not made lightly, but I did so to share a different narrative about FGM/C than what existed. I was not born in another country. I was not African. I did not grow up in conditions of poverty or lack access to education. I came from a well-to-do, upper-middle-class, highly educated family, and FGM/C was done to me at the age of seven due to a mixture of beliefs surrounding that women were not to be sexual and that FGM/C was a religious requirement. However, after my story's release, I soon began seeing that some news sources (particularly, conservative, right-wing, news sources) were using taglines that read, “The gruesome practice of female genital mutilation is at record highs in America due to the influx of Muslim immigrants.” These news sources twisted my story of a survivor speaking up into “proving” why immigrants should be kept out of the United States. These news sources ignored the part where I mentioned I was born in the United States, and somehow, even without ABC News not mentioning the religion I was raised in, these news sources immediately assumed it was Islam (Taher, 2017). In reading Bader's manuscript, I recognize this tactic to be associated with femonization—the association between a nationalist ideology and some feminist ideas, especially when having xenophobic motivations.

At the time it was shocking to me to have to deal with this type of backlash—to determine whether or not in sharing my FGM/C story, I had unintentionally stoked the flames of Islamophobia and xenophobia in this country. In reading through Bader's article, I see how my experience parallels what occurred during the 2017 federal case with the resulting zeal of many Republican legislators to pass FGM/C laws. Yet, a missing component in her analysis is the passion of survivors and advocates engaged in this work who have tirelessly been working to address FGM/C in the United States long before the Michigan case came to trial, and how their partnership with legislators of all political affiliations also moved the needle in terms of states passing laws in record numbers after the original 1996 federal law was ruled unconstitutional.

Survivors and advocates have been working with policymakers for decades around FGM/C. In fact, in 2003 after Khalid Adem was arrested for conducting FGM/C on his 2-year-old daughter in Atlanta, Georgia survivors, and advocates flocked to Atlanta to rally around ending FGM/C. Three months after the arrest, a 4-day conference on FGM/C was held by Equality Now. In 2005, Fortunate Adem, the ex-wife of Khalid Adem, worked with Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur) to get a law passed outlawing FGM/C (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2017). In 2014, Jaha Dukureh, a survivor of FGM/C from the Gambia stared a Change.org petition to ask the Obama administration to take action and recognize that FGM/C happens to children here in the United States. After generating more than 220,000 signatures, a bill went through Congress that in time led the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct a study highlighting that over half a million girls are at risk or have undergone FGM/C in the United States (Madlena, 2014). ¹ This initiative led to more survivors sharing their stories and also led to further government action including the White House forming an interagency FGM/C working group and Former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) taking the leads in Congress to pass the 2011 Girls Protection Act, which closed a loophole that allowed girls to be taken outside the country for purposes of FGM/C (Quast, 2021). A few years later, in December 2016, the first-ever U.S. End Violence Against Girls: Summit on FGM/C was organized. The summit brought together over 300 key stakeholders: lawmakers, policy-makers, domestic and foreign, civil society, survivor advocates, doctors, religious leaders, educators, and donors. This was the culmination of years of intense efforts to raise awareness of FGM/C of girls in the United States (US End FGM/C Network, n.d.). All of this activity and more that I have not mentioned occurred prior to the 2017 first-ever federal case on FGM/C in Michigan.

Massachusetts and Other States

Prior to the Michigan case, I had been working in Massachusetts with the Women's Bar Association to pass a holistic law that addressed FGM/C by (1) criminalizing the act, (2) allowing for civil remedies, and (3) providing components for outreach and education to be carried out by appointed state departments. Year after year, our bill failed to move forward simply because there was a lack of recognition or understanding of the impact of FGM/C in the United States (Taher, 2018). There was an “othering” occurring, which again speaks to the stereotypes associated with FGM/C that Bader touches on in her own manuscript. In a liberal legislature that prided itself on respect to reproductive rights, anti-discrimination laws, and equality issues, the fear of targeting already vulnerable and marginalized black and brown immigrant communities was at the top of the mind for many legislators. It was not until after the Michigan case when survivors living in the United States banded together to share their stories, did action occur and in 2020, Massachusetts became the 39th state in the United States to pass a state law (Khan, 2020). I do want to note that Bader comments that additional research is needed to understand the participation of left-leaning politicians in the “unholy alliance” with their right-wing counterparts. Massachusetts would be a prime example to study. As would Connecticut, a state that does as of yet have a state law, but where you do find dissent within left-wing organizations on the question of supporting anti-FGM/C laws exactly because of the fear of stigmatizing minorities further, even as FGC survivors are sharing stories with these left-wing organizations and advocating for a law.

Bader comments on the symbolic act of FGM/C and proposes that in many cases existing child abuse statutes are effective. While this is indeed how the Georgia case was prosecuted in 2006 (US ICE, 2017), and is done in France, on a practical legal point, various District Attorneys in Massachusetts had informed us that a specific law for FGM/C would be needed because otherwise as FGM/C is often associated with a cultural or religious practice or done for the good of the girl, providing an intent to harm under existing child abuse statues would be inefficient. Take this public testimony given by the former Attorney General of Massachusetts at a 2017 hearing to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, “… the nature of female genital mutilation and the manner in which it is bound up in cultural practices that perceive it as ‘honor violence’, nevertheless makes it difficult to prove under the existing child abuse statutes. This is because of the difficulty in proving intent” (Coakley, 2017). The bill that passed in Massachusetts helped to close the gap that required an “intent to harm” to be proven to hold accountable those who would intend to take a girl or child for FGM/C, and further cite that they had a lack of knowledge in recognizing FGM/C as illegal or harmful.

Removing the criminalization element for a moment, this law was vital in that it not only made clear FGM/C was illegal, it also provided civil remedies for survivors and it provided components that included education and outreach by state departments on the topic of FGM/C through a prevention lens. Often, such laws are needed before a problem can be recognized, and before any sort of funding will carry through to support those impacted communities in gaining access to prevention or support services. However, to Bader's point, currently, of the 40 state laws that are in existence, only 16 state laws have been thoroughly thought through and created with these additional components of community education and outreach in place—and so much more work needs to be done to help the other 24 states move away from having a purely criminal bill without the additional components (Equality Now, 2022). ²

At the federal level, we have seen education and outreach components have been added in with the passage of the STOP FGM/C Act of 2020 (H.R. 6100)—context that Bader left out. Yes, this law did reinforce and strengthen that FGM/C is a criminal act, and it did strengthen opposition to FGM/C by stating that religious or cultural beliefs may not be used in defense of the practice (as was the defensive strategy in the Michigan case before the 1996 Federal law was ruled unconstitutional). But, additionally, government agencies, such as the Departments of Education and Justice, ³ are now required to report to Congress on the estimated number of women and girls who have undergone or are at risk of FGM/C in the United States, and on efforts to prevent the practice. These departments are also required to give a report on the actions they take toward educating the community and preventing FGM/C from continuing (Kessous, 2021). Again, advocates and survivors had a huge role in ensuring these components were included in the bill by providing testimony, working with policymakers, and giving voice and input into the shaping of the legislation itself.

Backlash

Policies and law, even if only criminal, have been essential, giving legitimacy to the issue of FGM/C and supporting survivors and advocates who conduct outreach and prevention work, encouraging them to continue to uplift that FGM/C is indeed harmful, illegal, and considered a violation of girls’ bodily integrity. These laws are even more vital, considering that (1) Anti-FGC Advocates and organizations are hearing a rising backlash of pro-FGC individuals and groups ⁴ and (2) the UN has found that to support social norm change and abandonment of FGM/C, one step needed is to have clear laws against FGM/C (UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation, 2018).

Yet, it would be foolish to not recognize the intersectionality of FGM/C with Islamophobia or xenophobia, and survivors and advocates understand this as well. This is why they often have to actively dispel stereotypes around FGM/C while weighing their decision on whom to work with and whom not to work with when it comes to legislative advocacy. In speaking up on FGM/C, in sharing stories with legislators, with media, and with front-line professionals like health care providers or social workers, these survivors and advocates must weigh options, and they must contend with the backlash that can occur, not only from the anti-Islamic or xenophobic individuals but also from those within their community who might decry any FGM/C-related survivor story (Baldas, 2018; DBWRF, n.d.). This is another aspect to examine when it comes to the Michigan case and legislative advocacy that followed.

Bader has rightly noted certain anti-FGM/C vocabulary used to enforce an “otherness” of FGM/C based on preconceptions of those who perform it—“barbaric act” or “inhumane act” or “evil act,” etc. Yet, these racialized preconceptions can also come from those within practicing communities who are pro-FGM/C to defend the more physically benign types of FGM/C. Take this letter written by women from the Dawoodi Bohra community in Michigan who defend their practice of khatna in Detroit News (Burhani et al., 2018).

We are writing today as business owners, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and educated women from a range of professions. We are mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and aunts. Most importantly, we are women of the Dawoodi Bohra faith who have lived and worked for decades in the wonderful city of Detroit.

To be clear, we members of the Bohra faith are proud and patriotic American citizens who obey every law of the land—even those with which we disagree. We firmly believe that a practice that is harmless, far less invasive than male circumcision, and much more akin to a body piercing should in no way be put in the same category as some more barbaric practices from around the world that we wholeheartedly condemn.

The emphasis on stating they are “patriotic Americans” and that they are averse to the “barbaric” form of FGM/C can be viewed as an attempt to separate themselves from what is being done “over there” in places like Africa. While maintaining they are “good American” by virtue of their education level and that they abide by the law of the land. Again and again, in different ways, I have heard this repeated by pro-FGM/C groups, particularly those who come to practice the least physically severe forms of FGM/C. In fact, specific to the Dawoodi Bohra community, this community has been connected to court cases involving FGM/C not only in the United States, but in Australia (Safi, 2016) ⁵ (High Court of Australia, 2019). and India as well. As these legal proceedings have unfolded over the years, we have seen an increase in activity from pro-FGM/C groups to defend FGM/C, and discredit survivor voices. ⁶ All these barriers to ending FGM/C are another reason why hundreds of survivors and advocates have worked with policymakers of all political backgrounds over the years to recognize the need for a law that clearly states what FGM/C is and that it needs to be made illegal in this country or in a specific state.

Conclusion

In having written this response to Bader's article, I hope to shed further light on the inner workings of the movement in the United States to end FGM/C here domestically, which has been ongoing for years by survivors and advocates. We have worked across party lines to help bring this issue to the forefront, and done so even in the recognition of how FGM/C can intersect with Islamophobia and xenophobia. I do not claim any of this knowledge or information I have shared in this article was in the know for all Republican legislators who have worked to pass state laws, but many legislators who have worked with advocates/survivors are made aware of many of these circumstances and have heard survivor and advocate stories. And I recognize that there is much work to be done to truly educate individuals of all political affiliations on the realities of FGM/C and this includes education around the global extent of the practice and the need to untie this practice from specific cultures/religions, as well as to unlearn the many stereotypes surrounding FGM/C that exist.