WUNRN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Somalis_in_Minneapolis%E2%80%93Saint_Paul - The Somali people are a major ethnic group in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul (Twin Cities) urban area, State of Minnesota USA. As of 2013, there were around 25,000 Somalis in Minnesota.[1]
USA-STATE OF MINNESOTA – MINNESOTA SOMALIS FIGHT AGAINST
FGM-FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION, LOCAL TO GLOBAL
Somalis in Minnesota are leading
the fight here and abroad against a practice that is widely considered a human
rights violation.
By Mila Koumpilova Star Tribune - May 10, 2015
RENÉE JONES SCHNEIDER • reneejones@startribune.com At
right, Fartun Weli, of Isuroon, prepared for a U seminar on female genital
cutting. Hannah Aho, left, interned with the health nonprofit.
Minnesota Somalis are
setting out to end an ancient custom intended to keep girls virginal and
marriageable.
In Minneapolis, Fartun
Weli enlists a congressman to condemn female genital cutting in a YouTube
video. In St. Paul, Imam Hassan Mohamud advises families against flying
daughters to Africa for the ritual. And in Somalia’s Puntland region, Anisa
Hajimumin, a Hamline University graduate, rolls out a ban on genital cutting.
As the number of
African immigrants in the United States has swelled recently, the century-old
ritual has landed back in the national spotlight. A new federal law went into
effect banning “vacation cutting,” the practice of taking girls out of the
country to be circumcised; the Obama administration summoned a task force to
combat cutting here and overseas.
Amid this surge in
attention, some local Somalis see their community as a driving force in
stamping out the practice around the world.
Despite concerns that
talking openly about the custom makes the community an easy mark for those
looking to stigmatize it, a few have become outspoken activists in Minnesota or
Somalia. Others have taken on the role of low-key cultural ambassadors, making
their case privately with relatives or friends who might circumcise their
daughters.
“The issue needs to be
raised from the horse’s mouth,” said Weli, head of Isuroon, a statewide women’s
health nonprofit based in Minneapolis. “There’s a leadership role we as a
community have to take on.”
‘You can’t feel sorry
for me’
Imam
Hassan Mohamud has counseled members of his mosque against taking girls to
Africa for the procedure.
In one of her signature
smart jackets and long skirts, Weli stands before a large screen showing a
drawing of female genitals.
She is explaining
cutting to an auditorium full of University of Minnesota medical students. In
the practice’s more common forms, a portion or all of the clitoris and labia
are removed. In the more extensive version practiced widely in Somalia, the
labia are also stitched together to leave only a small opening. It’s a rite of
passage into womanhood, meant to ensure girls stay chaste and marry well.
“I myself went through
this, and I still can’t look at it,” Weli says with a glance over her shoulder.
“So scary looking!”
Weli is here to tell
the future physicians that patients like her need thoughtful care, not pity.
Yes, this ritual can complicate the milestones of a woman’s life: the first
period, the first sexual intercourse, the births of her children. Weli
sometimes refers to it as genital mutilation, the term favored by activists.
But cutting becomes a
part of women’s identities, and Weli tells the students, “You learn to live
with it. You can’t feel sorry for me.”
With a rate of female
genital cutting of more than 95 percent, by latest United Nations estimates,
Somalia has the highest rate of 28 African and Middle Eastern countries that
practice the ritual, in Muslim and Christian communities alike. But by all
accounts, in Minnesota — among the first states to ban the practice in 1994 —
the Somali community has largely broken with it.
Cawo Abdi, a
Somalia-born University of Minnesota sociology professor, says she occasionally
talks to women who still support cutting but fear breaking the law. Her
research suggests that circumcisions are on the to-do lists of some families
preparing to leave African refugee camps to resettle in the United States.
Many in the community,
though, have had a genuine change of heart, she says; if a Somali girl was born
here or came as an infant, it is “highly unlikely” she has been cut.
Fartun
Weli, left, came to the University of Minnesota to inform medical students
about female genital cutting. She says providers need to understand, not pity,
the women affected by a cultural practice that she sometimes refers to as
mutilation.
Metro-area OB/GYNs who
work with East African patients have also seen this shift. They are starting to
care for the uncircumcised daughters of Somali patients who themselves
experienced cutting before coming here.
“The vast majority of
the women I work with would never pursue [cutting] with their kids — never,”
says Deborah Thorp, whose patients at Park Nicollet are about 20 percent
Somali.
Even as the custom
loses ground, many Somalis remain loath to discuss it. They feel public talk of
highly private matters goes against the culture and gives fodder to Westerners
eager to see East African women as passive victims of a barbaric custom. But
people like Weli believe that by speaking out, the community can own the issue
and advocate for better medical care for those who have experienced it.
Isuroon, Weli’s
organization, has hosted conference calls on the subject — the nonprofit’s
answer to Western support groups. As many as 200 women have called in
anonymously. A fall conference will address the issue. Meanwhile, Weli got Rep.
Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to record a YouTube message, in which he calls for rejecting
the practice and offers a Department of Justice hot line for people who feel
pressured to do it.
“A lot of people are
abandoning this practice, but it’s not fully abandoned,” said Dr. Fozia Abrar,
who believes Minnesota Somalis can influence relatives in African refugee camps
to skip the ritual. “I think it’s time for the community to talk openly about
this.”
What the Qur’an says
In hospitals or in his
storefront mosque on St. Paul’s University Avenue, Mohamud gives newborns a
traditional Islamic blessing. He takes a bite out of a date and touches it to
the baby’s tongue, to impart wisdom.
Afterward, some parents
linger to ask him anxious questions: Do they flout their faith if they never
have their daughter cut? Would the girl have sex out of wedlock or commit
adultery? Should they find a way of traveling to Africa to have her
circumcised?
Mohamud offers a dual
perspective, as the Minnesota Da’wah Institute’s imam and an attorney with a
degree from William Mitchell. He tells parents the Qur’an prohibits cutting
away any part of the human body. He also tells them some Islamic scholars do
recommend a “lighter version” of the ritual, in which the genitals are only
pricked.
But the practice is not
mandatory in Islam and is illegal in the United States, Mohamud tells them, “So
you don’t have that dilemma here.”
“I tell them not to
travel, not to do it,” Mohamud says.
Amid a groundswell of
attention to the custom, the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau released a
study this year estimating more than half a million women and girls in the
United States have undergone cutting or are at risk — the first such estimate
in more than a decade. Minnesota came in third among states, with an estimated
44,000 women and girls who have been cut or are at risk. Critics of the study
argue that, because of legal and other hurdles, the risk is small in the United
States.
Nationally and in
Minnesota, evidence of “vacation cutting” is anecdotal.
“Aisha,” a woman in her
20s who did not want to be named, said a relative recently confided that she
wanted to arrange for her daughter to be circumcised on a trip to Somalia.
Aisha flashed back to her own cutting in Africa, at age 7: Several women held
her down during the anesthesia-free procedure. She recalls the searing pain the
first time she urinated afterward and years later, on her wedding night.
So she pleaded with her
relative not to have the girl cut and threatened to call 911 if she found out
the woman went through with it.
Cracking down on
genital cutting was on Anisa Hajimumin’s short list when she took over as
minister of women, development and family affairs in Somalia’s Puntland region
last spring. Hajimumin, who grew up in Minnesota, was not circumcised.
In her new job,
Hajimumin lobbied for a first-of-its-kind policy banning the practice in
Puntland. The provincial president signed it in March 2014. The policy
triggered negative responses, and Hajimumin heard a familiar refrain: How will
daughters find a husband? Will uncut girls be unclean?
Now, she is pushing for
criminal penalties for those who continue the custom. She envisions an
anti-cutting curriculum taught in schools and an end to the practice by 2025.
She says: “I understand it’s quite a struggle to get there, but I am
determined.”
Other Minnesota Somalis
are joining the campaign. Halima Ibrahim, whose husband was shot by militants
in Mogadishu last winter, leads a women’s rights organization that tries to
counter the custom by talking with mothers. Weli’s nonprofit is gearing up to
retrain the women who perform the ritual to work as doulas or midwives instead.
Even as the rate of cutting in Somalia has started to slip, these returnees are
sometimes accused of becoming too beholden to Western ideas.
Waris Mohamud will go
back to Somalia this summer with her daughters, 10 and 15. But she has no plans
to have them cut. She will visit a rural town where her husband’s relatives
live, and where families still pay hefty fees to hire cutters.
“I will tell everybody
there, ‘Don’t do it,’ ” she said. “This cutting is not related to our religion.
It’s not good for our girls.”
Mohamud thinks the
ritual has already lost ground in large cities in Somalia. Recently, her mother
told her she didn’t want to see a young granddaughter cut; there was really no
benefit.
“Why did you do it to
me?” Mohamud asked.
“Everybody was doing it
at the time,” her mother replied, “so we had to do it, too.”