PBS, Recruiting for Islam

Submitted by Yale Richmond (United States), Dec 22, 2002 at 17:05

Female genital mutilation is practiced in many Black African countries and in a few Middle East places but it has nothing to do with Islam and is not practiced in many other Muslim countries. Its origins, as with male circumcision, lie somewhere in the distant, obscure past.

And may I remind Mr. Pipes that his ancestors and mine in Poland practiced forced marriage and kept many of their women illiterate, and that our ancestors, the ancient Hebrews, also practiced polygamy.

The problem with Islam today is its failure to modernize. But one might also say that about Jewish Orthodoxy. Some people like to preserve the practices and beliefs of their ancestors, strange as they may seem to us "moderns."

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