Female Circumcision

Andrea Bruce

The Washington Post

Sheelan Anwar Omer, 7, is carried home by her mother after her female circumcision. “This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town 150 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

Andrea Bruce, "Female Circumcision," in POYi Archive, Item #42963, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/42963 (accessed April 21, 2025).