Madam – It is appropriate that Bisi Adigun (Opinion, April 2nd) quotes Shakespeare to defend, by way of cultural relativism, the medieval practice of female genital circumcision. At the risk of sounding “Eurocentric” and “judgmental”, the practice is both archaic and barbaric.
Would Mr Adigun be as blithely philosophical about FGM were it his own daughter who was under threat of having her genitals mutilated, and perhaps dying as a result?
I appreciate that Pamela Izevbekhai’s case is a complex one, but as the father of a baby daughter, and given The Irish Times report (Home News, April 2nd) on the Nigerian government’s admission to a UN committee on the widespread prevalence of FGM, I would have no hesitation in telling any lie to anyone who would listen in order to keep her out of the hands of such butchers. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – It is with disgust that I read Bisi Adigun’s opinion piece on the case of Pamela Izevbekhai’s asylum application. Mr Bisi frequently refers to the practice of female genital mutilation as female circumcision. There is no female medical equivalent to the harmless procedure of male circumcision and it therefore merits the term “female genital mutilation”, since it leaves women mutilated, at risk of disease and without normal sexual function.
He opines that it is “Eurocentric and judgmental” to view the practice as barbaric and feels that Westerners should stop “behaving as if they were the superior race as regards the issue of female circumcision”(sic).
Surely any race that does not systematically enforce the mutilation of half of its people, is entitled to consider itself superior in that respect. I wonder would Mr Adigun take the issue of FGM more seriously if it were MGM. – Yours, etc,
