Attitudes Toward Female Circumcision in Dagestani Society: “Not to be Mentioned!”

Abstract

The article researches the issue of female circumcision in the North Caucasus. It presents an analysis of sociological research conducted in the republics of the North Caucasus, in particular Dagestan. The principal hypothesis for the research was the premise that the perpetuation of female circumcision among the indigenous population of Dagestan was driven by the concealed nature of the tradition and the closed nature of the society, as well as by the growing significance of religion.

Keywords:

• female circumcision
• women’s rights
• discrimination
• Islam
• Muslims
• traditional society
• cultural persistence
• Dagestan

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Attitudes Toward Female Circumcision in Dagestani Society: “Not to be Mentioned!”

Notes

1. What is understood here by “sunnah” is not the Sunnah of the Prophet, but the name of the operation.

2. Names cited based on WHO’s typology (WHO, 2011). [More specifically, table 2 of the report names 4 types: clitoridectomy, excision, infibulation, and the fourth is “everything else.” MMB]

a. Waris Dirie Foundation or Desert Flower Foundation website is https://www.desertflowerfoundation.org/en/home.html . For a 2018 update on the World Health Organization positions and explanations, see https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation .

b. Yuri Karpov’s extensive ethnographic research on Dagestan mountain villages has been featured in this journal. See for example the theme issue “North Caucasus” 2003, Vol. 41, no. 4; and “The Dagestani Mountain Village” 2010, Vol. 48, no. 4.

c. The quotes from H. Lightfoot-Klein and A. Shandall, experts on Africa, are back translations, since the author did not provide page numbers in her Russian text.