Word: egyptians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...words spoken during the U.N. population conference that ended last week in Cairo. Female circumcision was part of an official agenda that included the subject of women's control over their sexual destinies, and CNN's shocking footage briefly dominated the dialogue among conference participants. It also left their Egyptian hosts angrily on the defensive...
Western delegates generally hailed the CNN footage as much needed publicity for a long-overlooked custom that is common in Egypt and other parts of Africa, though it has no roots in the Koran. But the Egyptian press denounced the tape as a betrayal of Cairo's gracious hospitality and tried to discredit the piece by charging that CNN had "staged" the circumcision and paid the participants. Actually, CNN paid $300 to a free-lance producer to find and make arrangements with the Hamza family, who in turn paid $44 to one of her aunts for serving...
...fact, the Egyptian weekly Al-Wafd claims that several thousand Egyptian girls are circumcised daily at the hands of "hygenic barbers." In all, some 80% of Egyptian women have undergone circumcision, which serves no purpose beyond depriving females of sexual pleasure; Egyptian men believe this condition ensures their fidelity. While Egyptian law does not ban clitoridectomies, a ministerial decree issued in 1959 bans the procedure in facilities affiliated with the Health Ministry and permits only physicians to perform the surgery. Last week Egyptian authorities arrested Nagla's father, the free-lance producer and the two men who performed the procedure...
Such notions stirred not only predictable opposition from the Vatican but also an uproar in the Islamic world, where abortion is generally forbidden. Belatedly, conference supporters tried to fend off a Muslim boycott. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called his old friend King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who was meeting with the Council of Ulama, his nation's highest body of religious authorities. But Mubarak's effort was futile. On the following day, the council condemned the Cairo conference as a "ferocious assault on Islamic society" and forbade Muslims from attending. Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq then joined Saudi Arabia in announcing...
Sadik, meanwhile, counterattacked. "There is so much misinformation going around that it generates its own momentum," she said. "I don't think the conference opponents have even read the draft document." Egyptian Population Minister Dr. Maher Mahran was more emphatic. "We all live in one boat," he told a gathering of Arab organizations just prior to the conference. "No country can withdraw, set itself aside, and those who do this are defeatists." At least one prominent conservative Egyptian religious leader defended the meeting, assuring Muslims that Mubarak had promised the U.N. document would not impose rules contravening Islamic teaching...