Seven-year-old Mariam was happy. Her mother had dressed her in her powder pink dress, with her hair in two pigtails with butterfly clips, and had told her that she was going to her cousin's surprise birthday party.
Instead, her aunt took Mariam, hand in hand, to a dilapidated building with peeling walls and a cold metal table waiting inside.
There, an old woman with gray hair mumbled a little that Mariam didn't understand, and grabbed her and held her to the table. Then the pain began – it was sharp, burning, unforgettable. The next 20 minutes would divide his life into “before” and “after” – and destroy his trust in the person he believed in the most: his mother.
Two decades later, the 27-year-old survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) is still scarred from that day. “I feel like something is missing inside of me. It's like something has been taken out, and that has become a negative part of my body.”
“It's a lack of emotion. You can't explain your feelings when you talk about sexual needs,” he said. “When you are looking for a spouse,” he adds, “you are lacking.” [your] emotional and sexual response”.
Mariam belongs to the Pakistani Dawoodi Bohras, a sect of Shia Muslims mostly from the state of Gujarat, which is a common practice among them. Estimates suggest that between 75 percent and 85 percent of Dawoodi Bohra women in Pakistan undergo FGM either in private homes of older women – without anesthesia and with unsanitary tools – or by medical professionals in urban areas such as Karachi. Pakistan has a Dawoodi Bohra population of approximately 100,000 people.
However, many Pakistanis remain unaware that this practice is common in their country. Even though FGM in parts of Africa receives international headlines, the culture of silence in Pakistan means that the practice has gone on largely, without public scrutiny or legal intervention.
A shroud of secrecy protects the culture, and Pakistan does not have nationwide data on how widespread FGM is. Girls experience FGM when it is difficult for them to process it themselves. And the Dawoodi Bohra community does not refer to the removal of the clitoral hood as mutilation – they call it circumcision, a ritual to be performed – which should not be questioned.
Women who choose to speak out against this practice are sometimes threatened with ostracism. “If you ask the officer, you will be shown the way out,” said Mariam.
“Where are you going? He was born here.”
Resistance to ongoing practice
“Your parents want the best for you.” It is a belief that children hold on tight – until they break. As it happened to Aaliya.
The 26-year-old remembers pieces of a painful process that for many years, felt like a nightmare, too cruel to be true.
But the truth has always shone through: the cold, unchanging table, the whispered promises that this was “necessary,” the sharp sting, physical and emotional. “It felt like a nightmare, like it was never going to happen,” he said, his voice breaking from the shock of the trauma he didn't understand at the time.
Fear was the feeling he felt lying on the metal table. Betrayal is what he felt after that, and so much pain. “What saddens me is that there is a generation of people who are willing to do this to a child without knowing why,” said Aaliya.
Globally, the drive to end FGM has gained momentum in recent years. Earlier this year, Gambia's parliament rejected a controversial bill to end the 2015 ban on FGM.
But the Dawoodi Bohra community till date still adheres to this practice. In April 2016, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the current global leader of the Bohras affirmed the need for female circumcision, or khatna, in his sermon at Mumbai's Saifee Masjid, despite growing opposition from the public and the world.
“It has to be done … if it's a woman, it has to be smart,” Saifuddin said, stressing that it's beneficial for the whole body and soul.
However, doctors say that FGM can lead to reproductive problems for women.
“Young girls can have boils, urinary complaints; they can face a lot of problems in their married life as sexual health is affected a lot, they can also have dyspareunia,” said Asifa Malhan, gynecologist and assistant professor at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center in Karachi. Dyspareunia is persistent or recurring pain that occurs just before, during or after sex.
“As a health expert and gynecologist, I do not recommend this to anyone. It is very dangerous.”
The real reason girls are circumcised is not health, say critics of the practice.
The clitoris, the region where a woman gets the most sexual pleasure, is called Haram ki boti (sinful piece of flesh) by many in the community. “When our clitoris is called haram ki boti, it becomes clear that this practice is not for purity or cleanliness,” said Aaliya. “This is done to suppress the woman's sexuality.”
The clitoris has more nerve endings than any part of the human body and is the most sensitive part of the female body. When it is mutilated, the nerve endings are severed, resulting in hearing loss.
“Those girls who have had their clitoris removed are unable to experience some sexual pleasure,” says Sana Yasir, a Karachi-based health coach with a background in clinical psychology.
Even medically, FGM is dangerous. Without the clitoris, injuries during sex are more likely, says Yasir.
Breaking cultural barriers
According to the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18, 28 percent of the country's women aged 15-49 have experienced physical abuse, while six percent have experienced sexual violence. In addition, 34 percent of married women have endured physical, sexual, or emotional abuse by a spouse.
In a country where gender-based violence is so widespread, the practice of FGM embodies the struggle of female victims.
“It is the worst form of gender violence, the effects of which may not be visible immediately, but they are there for a long time,” said Aaliya.
Pakistan has no specific law that criminalizes this practice. Although under the Pakistan Penal Code, extensive provisions such as Sections 328A (cruelty to children), 333 (mutilation or mutilation) and 337F (bodily injury) can be applied, in theory, no such prosecution has been recorded so far.
Domestic violence and state child protection laws generally cover physical harm but do not address FGM. In the 2006 National Plan of Action, the government acknowledged this issue, but no action has been taken to end it.
According to a 2017 study by Sahiyo, a non-profit organization based in Mumbai, India, working to end FGM in South Asian communities, 80 percent of respondents had undergone FGM. The study focused on women from the Dawoodi Bohra community. Sahiyo is an international organization with activities and campaigns that reach countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and other regions where FGM is practiced.
Health experts say they are facing major challenges in trying to end this practice. They can advise the patient, but that's not all. What is needed, they say, is a public dialogue to explain, medically, the many evils of this practice – and the fact that there are no scientifically proven benefits.
“The government should cooperate with doctors and visit the community where this practice is carried out,” said Malhan. “Without it there will be no solution to this problem, and we will face similar challenges in the future.”
This communication, Yasir points out, needs to be done sensitively, respecting the customs of the community.
Huda Syyed, who published a study in the Journal of International Women's Studies conducted by Bridgewater State University on the lack of data and dialogue about FGM in Pakistan in 2022, said that the practice sometimes coincides with the girl's identity in society. Among Dawoodi Bohras, there seems to be religious and spiritual importance. It is often passed down as a tradition from generation to generation.
“When I was doing research, my way of doing things was compassionate, relevant and focused on the community because many times communities are marginalized, persecuted and punished in different ways because of social customs and practices, sometimes they are smeared and painted in an inappropriate way. ,” said Syed.
“Change does not happen by attacking communities and avoiding them because we are putting at risk the ritual or ritual of circumcision that is done secretly; what we need to focus on is involving the community, working with them and bringing change from within.”
Syyed says that solutions must come from a dialogue with the community, and that inputting ideas from the outside will not work.
“There are two groups when it comes to this practice: there are people who are open to discussion and discussion about it but in a safe way where their community is not attacked because no community wants to suffer, and then there are others who want to preserve it. society and their culture,” said Syyed.
Al Jazeera reached out to community leaders for their views but did not receive a response.
For Aaliya, the way society itself responds to the concerns of women like her is important: “It is important to promote the idea that I can be part of this society and continue to say no to female genital mutilation,” she says.
But even if the community responds, for survivors like Mariam, the time for peace is over.
He says: “This practice took something from me, and this ended up giving me back.”
*Survivors' names have been changed to protect their identities.
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