INDIA ABROAD June 23, 2017 14 INDIAN-AMERICAN AFFAIRS
INDIAABROAD.COM
By Pam Belluck
s more details emerge
about the first-ever
charges of female geni-
tal mutilation in the
At a hearing in Michigan this
past week, a federal prosecutor
said the defendants — two doc-
tors and a clinic manager from a
small Shiite Muslim sect — were
believed to have arranged cutting
for up to 100 girls since 2005.
The prosecutor, Sara Woodward,
said investigators had so far
identified eight girls.
The unprecedented charges
provide an unusual case study of
a practice outlawed in the United
States two decades ago but still
seen in parts of Africa, the
Middle East and, less frequently,
South Asia. The focus on the
Dawoodi Bohra, a sect of about
1. 2 million based in western
India, with clusters in the United
States, Pakistan and elsewhere, is
spurring Bohra women to
describe their experiences publicly. Some are doing so for the
first time, defying the sect’s historic secrecy about cutting and
taking a risk that they or relatives
will be ostracized.
“This Michigan case made me
think I want to speak out,” said
Nazia Mirza, 34, who was cut at
age 6 in her hometown, Houston.
“To me it’s very much like a rape
survivor. If you don’t say any-
thing, then how are you going to
expose it and bring awareness?”
The case prompted Tasneem
Raja, 34, a journalist, to write
about being cut in New Jersey.
She said she had received “an
outpouring of emails from people
saying thank you.”
But Raja said the case was
exposing a spectrum of feelings.
Even among Bohra women who
oppose cutting, she said, views
range from “women who say this
has greatly impacted their sex
life and their ability to enjoy sex,
to people like me who walked
away with lifelong emotional
trauma, to people who say, ‘I
don’t see what the big deal is.’”
Some worry the case is stoking
anti-Muslim sentiment, though
cutting is not in the Quran or
practiced in many Muslim soci-
eties. And some Bohras who
oppose cutting nonetheless feel
the defendants are being unfairly
demonized for a practice
endorsed by their religion’s lead-
ership.
“I don’t want to be pro the
practice, but I don’t want it to be
exaggerated into something completely barbaric,” said Maryah
Haidery, 37, who comes from a
Bohra family in New Jersey and
had never spoken publicly about
her cutting before.
Haidery, who does medical
writing for pharmaceutical com-
panies, said she was “very con-
cerned about this violation” in
Michigan, but also
“taken aback by
how vilified that
Michigan doctor had
become.”
Prosecutors, cit-
ing phone records,
texts, interviews
and surveillance
video, accuse Dr.
Jumana Nagarwala,
an emergency medi-
cine physician, of
cutting the genitals
of two 7-year-old
girls from
Minnesota. Dr.
Fakhruddin Attar,
an internist, is
accused of letting
Dr. Nagarwala use
his Burhani Medical
Clinic in Livonia. His
wife, Farida Attar,
the clinic’s office
manager, is accused
of holding the girls’
hands during the
Feb. 3 procedures
and urging others to
deceive investigators.
According to a criminal com-
plaint, one of the Minnesota girls
told investigators that it was a
“special girls’ trip” for a proce-
dure “to get the germs out.” A
medical examination showed
that the girl’s labia minora had
been “altered or removed,” that
the clitoral hood was “abnormal
in appearance” and that she had
scar tissue and small lacerations.
The other girl said that she
“‘got a shot’ and it hurt really
badly and she screamed,” and
that “after the procedure, she
could barely walk, and she felt
pain all the way down to her
ankle,” the complaint said. An
examination found a small inci-
sion in her clitoral hood and a
small tear to her labia minora.
Dr. Attar said Dr. Nagarwala
occasionally used his clinic to see
6- to 9-year-old Bohra girls for
“problems with their genitals,
including treatment of genital
rashes,” the complaint said.
The Minnesota girls’ parents
have not been charged. At least
one girl was briefly removed
from her parents’ custody.
Michigan’s Child Protective
Services has initiated petitions to
terminate custodial rights of sev-
eral Bohra parents whose daugh-
ters are believed to have under-
gone cutting, including Dr.
Nagarwala’s 12-year-old daughter
and the Attars’ 8-year-old daugh-
ter. The Attars were released on
bond, confined to house arrest;
Dr. Nagarwala remained in
prison.
Michigan’s Dawoodi Bohra
mosque, Anjuman-e-Najmi,
where the defendants worship,
said in a statement after the
arrests that “any violation of U.S.
law is counter to instructions to
our community members” and
“does not reflect the everyday
lives of the Dawoodi Bohras in
America.”
Recently, the Dawat-e-
Hadiyah, an organization over-
seeing smaller Shiite Muslim
sects, hired two well-known
lawyers, Alan Dershowitz and
Mayer Morganroth, to help the
defense, The Associated Press
reported.
Dr. Nagarwala, 44, who was
born in America, received her
medical degree from Johns
Hopkins and worked at Henry
Ford Health System, which fired
her after the arrest and said no
cutting had occurred at its facilities.
Her lawyer, Shannon Smith,
said Dr. Nagarwala acknowl-
A
Nazia Mirza, a
member of the
Dawoodi Bohra
religious sect, which
has a long tradition of
cutting girls’ genitalia,
at her home in Sugar
Land, Texas, May 18.
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Cultural
Crossroads
Michigan case adds U.S. dimension
to debate on genital mutilation
“I don’t want
to be pro the
practice,
but I don’t
want it to be
exaggerated
into
something
completely
barbaric”
FBI agents
leaving the
office of Dr.
Fakhruddin
Attar in
Livonia, Mich.,
in April.
