Author: Julian Isherwood in Copenhagen
Publication: The Telegraph, UK
Date: November 14, 2002
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/14/wdane14.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/11/14/ixworld.html
Denmark's secular mainstream was
on collision course yesterday with members of the Muslim community after
political leaders demanded action to halt the Islamic practice of female
circumcision.
Amid an increasingly angry debate
on the issue, the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, called the mutilation
of small girls among many Muslims of African origin a "barbaric tradition".
He said: "It is the duty of health
personnel to report any indications that a girl has been mutilated, or
that there is a danger that she will be."
Earlier, the chairmen of Denmark's
biggest government and opposition parties issued a call for Muslim girls
to be inspected by school doctors.
Some, including the justice minister,
said it would be appropriate to apply the criminal law against parents
whose daughters had been operated on.
The comments came after days of
furious criticism from press and politicians of demands by imams representing
the Somali immigrant community for girls to be circumcised.
The practice is widespread in Islamic
and some Christian communities in East Africa and Egypt. All forms of female
genital mutilation are outlawed in Denmark, but the Danish authorities
have been unable to prevent parents sending their daughters "on holiday"
for the procedure.
The row erupted when Imam Mustafa
Abdullahi Aden was widely quoted as saying that female circumcision was
a religious duty. He said: "It is good for girls to be circumcised. It
is a sign that they are true Muslims."
He recommended a method which involves
the removal of both the clitoris and labia. The imams said Islamic tradition
should take precedence over Danish law.
That helped to provoke a furious
response from the Right-wing nationalist Danish People's Party, which keeps
the current government in power. It formally proposed that girls who are
found to have been genitally mutilated should be placed in foster homes,
and their parents expelled from the country.
But the call for action may meet
resistance from school doctors. Per Stein, chairman of their medical association,
said: "The risk is that girls will stay away from medical examinations,
and we then risk not detecting other problems."
The Liberal party also rejected
calls for tough action. "I don't think the threat of forcibly removing
children from their parents will have the necessary preventive effect,"
said Eva Kjaer Hansen, the party's health spokesman.
"I would rather have a concentrated
campaign aimed at parents who perhaps would have their daughters circumcised."
Information programmes in Denmark
in the past decade seem to have had little effect on the number of girls
subjected to the procedure. Danish health authorities estimate that about
3,000 girls up to the age of ten are at risk.
The issue has underlined tensions
between Denmark's secular, socially liberal outlook and the traditionalism
of the country's Muslim communities.
The heavyweight newspaper Politiken
went so far as to describe the argument as a defence of Danish culture,
saying: "Circumcision is a tradition that must be broken. [It] is forbidden.
Violent bodily harm is not acceptable in Danish culture."
The Jyllands Posten newspaper compared
the practice to disfigurement. "Imagine if somewhere in Denmark some parents
got the crazy idea of cutting their daughter's toes off because it would
give them a better and more feminine walk as adults," it said.
"They would be arrested by the police
and given long prison terms."
It added: "Imams who urge parents
to abuse their children are criminal and should be treated as such."
