Mutilating Little Girls

    In studying Islam to argue against joining ISIS and other Islamic terrorists groups, I read this: "In Somalia, like many countries across Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made 'pure' by having their genitals cut out.There is no other way to describe this procedure, which typically occurs around the age of five. After the child's clitoris and labia are carved out, scraped off, or in more compassionate areas, merely cut or pricked, the whole area is often sewn up, so that a thick band of tissue forms a chastity belt made up of the girl's own scarred flesh. A small hole is carefully situated to permit a thin flow of pee. Only great force can tear the scar tissue wider, for sex." This comes from Infidel by Ayaan Hirst, page 31. She goes on: "Many girls die during or after their excision, from infection. Other complications cause enormous, more or less lifelong pain."
Then Hirst writes, "But in Somalia, where virtually every girls is excised, the practice is always justified in the name of Islam."
    If that is Islam, then Islam needs a reformation. What kind of man would do this to his daughter? Why is it so important for his daughter to be a virgin, when he believes his gift for dieing in warfare (blowing up innocents is warfare? I'd call it pussyfare!) is to deflower some thirty virgins? Isn't that the hypocrisy of the double standard? Does he think he owns his daughter? It is his daughter's decision, at say 16, if she wants to have sex. It's not his body or his dominion. If he or Islam has good reasons for a girl keeping her virginity, tell the girl the reasons and see if they are intellectually compelling enough not to have sex until marriage. You don't destroy her genitals, making sex probably painful the rest of her life! You're going to deprive her of orgasms the rest of her life so you can rule her like an object? Do you see her as a person, as an individual, who has a right to enjoy life with her own meaning of enjoyment. Not yours, not a desert religion from the seventh century. Not your undifferentiated ego mass where you think your identity is her identity and what she does is what you do. That's craziness.You and your daughter are two separate people, and each of you has a right to your own individuality. Surely you see this is a better way than acting like a crazy, cruel person who doesn't dare to exercise his free will. Free will, by the way, is, I understand, Islamic. Reconcile that with complete submission. You can't. You must get out of the box. Grow up. It's not a world for this kind of craziness.
Peter Nickerson, Philosophy Major, Class of '68, College of William and Mary.