As a dirty old man...

[jimmyz]

I had to Google female genital mutilation, and you are right - it is a disgusting and primitive barbaric tradition - a bit like circumcision - and really deserves to be stamped out.

But I think we should remember that it is a mainly African tradition, not a specially Muslim one. It is illegal in most other Muslim countries (except Indonesia,) and even in Africa, 18 countries have criminalised the practice. There should be a worldwide campaign to stamp out all genital mutilation for religious reasons.

I have to differ with your "a mainly African" statement. It's also a Middle Eastern thing.

http://www.newsweek.com/fgm-rates-ha...us-2004-304773

"African and Middle Eastern countries—where the practice of FGM is a deeply entrenched cultural tradition"

In America too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female..._United_States

http://abcnews.go.com/US/fullpage/un...ndfgm-31808869

[OGIS]

I was denegrating the barbaric muslim tradition of female genital mutilation. Im sorry that you missed my point in my vulgarity. FGM.. now thats offensive to women. Not many leftist women even bringing up the terrible crime against girls and young women are there.

Rule 9 violation.

I'll let the mod handle it, though, rather than tPFing you.

You guys just don't get following the rules, do you?

[William]

I have to differ with your "a mainly African" statement. It's also a Middle Eastern thing.

http://www.newsweek.com/fgm-rates-ha...us-2004-304773

"African and Middle Eastern countries—where the practice of FGM is a deeply entrenched cultural tradition"

In America too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female..._United_States

http://abcnews.go.com/US/fullpage/un...ndfgm-31808869

Fair comment, but what I read said it was a cultural practice - not a religious one.

[Safety]

I was denegrating the barbaric muslim tradition of female genital mutilation. Im sorry that you missed my point in my vulgarity. FGM.. now thats offensive to women. Not many leftist women even bringing up the terrible crime against girls and young women are there.

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[jimmyz]

Fair comment, but what I read said it was a cultural practice - not a religious one.

Fair point as well.

[jimmyz]

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Sorry. I forgot how that works.

[Safety]

Sorry. I forgot how that works.

Dammit James, you did it again.

[jimmyz]

Dammit James, you did it again.

I couldn't resist

[waltky]

French burkini ban overturned...

France’s top administrative court overturns burkini ban
26 Aug.`16 — After a month of intense national scandal and heightened international outrage, France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État, on Friday overturned the burkini ban in a coastal area of the south of France.

Imposed in the name of secularism, perhaps France’s most sacred ideal, the highly controversial burkini bans — currently affecting 25 French towns and cities besides Villeneuve-Loubet, which the court primarily addressed — prohibit Muslim women from wearing full-bodied bathing suits designed to respect traditional codes of modesty on the beach. But in its Friday ruling, the administrative court concluded that the idea of a burkini ban insulted “fundamental freedoms” such as the “freedom to come and go, the freedom of conscience and personal liberty.”

In recent weeks, a network of local mayors and officials across France passed similar bans on the Australian-born bathing suit, casting the burkini as the latest iteration of the burqa, the full-face veil that, in 2010, France became the first European country to ban outright. This 2010 law followed an earlier 2004 law prohibiting religious wear such as headscarves in public schools. Their principal argument — similar to those employed by the authors and supporters of the previous laws — is that traditional Muslim dress somehow impedes the rights of women in the historic French Republic of liberty, equality and fraternity.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, for example, expressed his opposition to the burkini in nothing less than the language of human rights: the suit, he said, was a means of “enslavement.” By that logic, the French state is duty-bound to emancipate Muslim women not only from the clutches of their religion but also, by extension, from themselves. For Christian Estrosi, an outspoken supporter of the burkini ban who runs the Provence-Alpes Côte d'Azur regional council, where a significant number of the bans were passed, Friday's decision was a contradiction of precisely those Republican values.

"In that spirit, public space is a place where everyone, without discrimination, can be a free citizen," he said in a statement. "Wearing an outfit that fully covers the body to go to a beach does not correspond to our vision of living together, particularly with regard to the equality of men and women." Estrosi's office declined to provide additional comments Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, Muslim leaders and French human rights advocates celebrated the decision, claiming that the burkini bans represent little but thinly veiled institutionalized Islamophobia in a country that is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe, if not its largest.

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