At a ceremony in Kenya, a little girl, Tenowan was brought out and made to lie down. Cold water mixed with fresh milk was poured on her naked body. The female exciser knelt and began to cut. The razor blade flashed .
Between the girl's legs, paring away clitoris and labia. The girl bled a stream of blood onto the hide and dirt, but she did not cry or move. Some of the younger women in the crowd turned away in revulsion. The older women scolded the exciser, who was not experienced and took more than five minutes to do her job. When it was over, the women smeared butter and herbs on the wound and carried the bleeding teen-ager back into the hut, where she was laid on a leafy bed of freshly cut branches amid the gloom of charcoal smoke (McKinley 1). This ritual is a harmful and unnecessary procedure. Whether it is a tradition, female circumcisions should be illegal all over the world. .
Tradition and religion is a very important part of many cultures. Part of the tradition is to circumcise women between the ages of birth to before marriage (Gregory 1). The practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) has existed for years. Some scholars believe it to have originated in the Nile Valley during the Pharaonic era when young slave girls were circumcised, as a form of permanent chastity, to limit there sexual freedom and reduce the amounts of pregnancies (Gilbert 3). Mothers, grandmother and other female relatives are drawn into perpetuating the practice in societies where marriage is the only alternative for women to survive. It's a tradition passed down generation to generation.
Even though religion is used as a primary reason to justify the practice, we should reevaluate, because some religions and traditions have been proven unethical. The Catholic Church just a few months ago announced that they were wrong for their involvement in the holocaust. Islamic scholars disprove the claim that the practice is written in the Koran and they quote the Prophet Mohammed advising against people from the practice (Gilbert 2).
