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[quote]"What's Wrong w/Female Genital Mutilation?"
By Debbie Schlussel

Last week, I told you about how the American Anthropological Association defamed and condemned America's troops and told anthropologists who help our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan avoid harm that they are "unethical."

Now, there's more pan-Islamist absurdity courtesy of the national trade group of this overrated group of people who dedicate their careers to studying how many times someone in ancient Rome went to the bathroom and whether Saladin's fighters wore boxers or briefs.

Reader Ari alerts us that the AAA (as I wrote before, the automotive AAA should sue for defamation) now claims that those who condemn female genital mutilation--practiced mostly by Muslims--are "guilty of ignorance and cultural imperialism."

Yes, we all misunderstand this barbaric practice against women because we--not they--are backwards and intolerant. The New York Times resident libertarian, John Tierney writes that, Saturday, the AAA hosted two African Muslim women who underwent and support female genital mutilation and will "debate" the matter:

Should African women be allowed to engage in the practice sometimes called female circumcision? Are critics of this practice, who call it female genital mutilation, justified in trying to outlaw it, or are they guilty of ignorance and cultural imperialism?
Those questions will be debated Saturday morning in Washington at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting. Representatives of international groups opposed to this procedure will be debating anthropologists with somewhat different views, including African anthropologists who have undergone the procedure themselves. As the organizers of the AAA panel note:

The panel includes for the first time, the critical "third wave" or multicultural feminist perspectives of circumcised African women scholars Wairimu Njambi, a Kenyan, and Fuambai Ahmadu, a Sierra Leonean. Both women hail from cultures where female and male initiation rituals are the norm and have written about their largely positive and contextualized experiences, creating an emergent discursive space for a hitherto "muted group" in global debates about FGC [female genital cutting].
Surprise!--and not noted by the NYTimes' Tierney or the AAA--both Njambi and Ahmadu are Muslim.

Dr. Ahmadu, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, was raised in America and then went back to Sierra Leone as an adult to undergo the procedure along with fellow members of the Kono ethnic group. She has argued that the critics of the procedure exaggerate the medical dangers, misunderstand the effect on sexual pleasure, and mistakenly view the removal of parts of the clitoris as a practice that oppresses women. She has lamented that her Westernized “feminist sisters insist on denying us this critical aspect of becoming a woman in accordance with our unique and powerful cultural heritage.â€Â