I have this memory of being in India when I was 15 years old, my hair dyed in auburn highlights, because as someone who had finished her freshman year in high school, I wanted to look cool, older, more adult-like. And I did appear more sophisticated to most of my younger India-born cousins. But for Insiya (not her real name), my highlights didn’t matter.
As a 7-year-old, Insiya just wanted to play with me. She’d wrestle me to the ground, tie my hands together with a soft nylon dupatta, and laugh, proud of herself for beating her older cousin. She had no older sisters and I enjoyed being a temporary one, letting her get into mischief during those childhood summers we spent together.
Insiya is now a married woman and those summers are but a distant memory. As an adult, Insiya is also a person who supports khatna, known to the rest of the world as female genital cutting or mutilation (FGC/FGM). It’s a common practice among the religious sect we belong to — the Dawoodi Bohra community, a branch of Ismaili Shia Muslims. Khatna was also done to me when I was 7 years old. Since then, I have dedicated myself to advocating against it.
I only learned of my cousin Insiya’s views on khatna when the organization I co-founded, Sahiyo, came under cyberbullying for encouraging Bohra community members to end the harmful practice. Cartoon memes of a Dawoodi Bohra woman wearing a traditional ridah with the hashtag #Sahiyoisnotmyvoice started popping up all over our social media feeds. At one point, because so many individuals had reported Sahiyo for misconduct, our Instagram account was shut down and it took days to find someone at Instagram who could reinstate it.
My cousin, her younger sister, and other women were angry at Sahiyo—and at me—for daring to speak up against a practice that involves taking 7-year-old girls to private apartments or medical clinics and cutting a piece of their clitoris off in the name of religion. Women like Insiya were upset because in their eyes, we had tainted our community’s image as progressive and well-educated simply by sharing with the world this form of gender-based violence, and naming it as such. To them, the public shaming of our community was far more severe than the private harm that “just a few of us”—as they claimed we were small in numbers—had endured.
AAt the age of 7, I underwent khatna because my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother believed our religion prescribed it. My cousin Insiya was cut too, perhaps during that same year I visited her.
But we’re not the only ones. According to the World Health Organization, more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGC, and an estimated 3 million girls are at risk of being cut each year. However, this global statistic only reflects data from 30 countries, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. Meaning that I, an American-born woman who underwent FGC in India, am not included in this statistic. Millions of other girls who live in countries without national-level data are also not counted.
The harm caused by khatna is real. For some women, the cutting has brought them emotional and psychological trauma, physical pain, and damaged sex lives. Hundreds of Dawoodi Bohra women from around the globe have shared these truths with me and with Sahiyo–through our storytelling programs and via our website, e-mails, texting apps, phone calls, and in-person conversations.
But for centuries, khatna in the Dawoodi Bohra community had been shrouded in silence and kept a secret from the outside world. This secrecy had left me wondering: is my community’s silence a partial acquiescence of khatna, and of how harmful it can be? Is that why many people in my community don’t want to talk about it? If so, speaking out against FGC may then be the answer to ending it. And so I speak up. Other women do too.
Yet, because we protest that the genitals of a 7-year-old should not be cut, women like my once adoring cousin, Insiya, have labeled us troublemakers and accused us of bringing shame on our community.
In May 2017, a robust plan of attack began against me and other women who dared to share our khatna stories online. It was led by the Dawoodi Bohra Women for Religious Freedom (DBWRF), a group that formed to silence and invalidate the claims of women who dared to say that FGC hurt them. Many of their hurtful memes spread widely on social media. My cousin shared DBWRF’s posts on her Instagram. Hundreds of people “double-tapped” the images, showing their support for the message, displaying that they too were outraged by what anti-khatna advocates like me said.
Their attacks felt reminiscent of the verbal and emotional assault many women experience when they share stories of sexual harassment or rape but aren’t believed, only blamed. Instead of receiving empathy and support for speaking up and, trying to prevent future harm, we were punished. Constant denial of your harm can cause you to doubt yourself. At times, I wondered whether the emotional toll was worth my advocating to prevent others from being harmed.
But then I would ask myself: Are my detractors really so upset that I am taking away their “right” to cut the genitalia of little girls? Could they really deny the physical, emotional, and sexual pain caused by khatna? What is the price of preserving a cultural tradition?
I wonder if they realize the irony of their claims. How can we be held responsible for ruining an entire community’s reputation when as little girls we had no choice in undergoing khatna? If we had a choice about being cut, there would have been no need to speak up. We have shared our stories in order to prevent harm from happening to future generations of girls.
Perhaps women like Insiya were experiencing what I had back when I was a teenager with auburn highlights. Was Insiya simply caught up in being considered “cool” in her social circle? Did she actually believe FGC should continue, or did she want to be accepted, be part of the in-crowd? After all, if you are an adherent Dawoodi Bohra woman, you support khatna. You dare not question it. Those who question it are deemed outsiders.
Insiya unfriended me on Facebook. I haven’t seen her in years, and I don’t know if our paths will ever cross again. But if we do meet, I wonder if she will treat me with the same quiet contempt I’ve experienced from some other relatives. Or perhaps she won’t even acknowledge me; according to some extended family members, their association with me could cause social ostracism. The weight of knowing I am a burden for relatives is heavy, and I again have stopped to wonder if I’m doing more harm than good.
DBWRF’s attacks are only one form of backlash I’ve encountered. In 2016, soon after I shared my personal FGC story with ABC News, I began to see conservative media sources using it to spread anti-Muslim sentiment.
The activist in me grew angry, unable to comprehend how my personal story could be exploited as a political tool. The Muslim community is far from the only one that practices FGC. This form of gender-based violence has no boundaries. FGC has been inflicted on women from all over the world, from various religions and cultures, including some Christians. In fact, until the 1950s, clitoridectomy, a form of FGC, was considered acceptable by health professionals to treat a wide range of conditions including “hysteria” and mental illness. Yet, those conservative news articles promoted the idea that FGC is endemic to Islam, and soon, the conversations morphed into how Muslims should be denied entry into the United States because we brought FGC with us.
Yet again, I wondered if I was doing more harm than good. Was my advocacy to end one form of oppression unintentionally fueling oppression against the entire global Muslim community? In trying to advocate against the cutting of girls’ genitals, I had never anticipated that I could end up here.
I would be reminded of this form of backlash a year later, in April 2017, when a U.S. doctor from the Dawoodi Bohra community was charged with performing FGC on two 7-year-old girls in Michigan. In connection to that arrest, that same year, Michigan State Representative Michele Hoitenga (R), used Michigan’s FGM/C case to introduce an anti-sharia bill, and in the process, promoted Islamophobia at the highest level.
LLooking back, these experiences have offered lessons in resistance, perseverance, and agility. Different forms of backlash have emerged, and I’ve had to think through how to handle each of them.
But I can’t let my detractors defeat me. I cannot let their narratives outweigh those of the countless girls and women who continue to reach out to me. I must return the focus to them. Amidst the memes and conservative takedowns, we must not forget that little girls continue to have their right to bodily integrity taken away.
I do what I do because I believe that one day, Dawoodi Bohra women like Insiya, as well as the politicians and media outlets who try to usurp our stories, will understand we speak because someone must. The cycle of violence we suffered in the name of religion or tradition cannot be broken if we remain silent.
