A recent report alleged that Isis in Mosul, Iraq, intends to force four million girls and women to undergo genital mutilation.
This report may be a hoax, but has to be taken seriously until discredited because these fundamentalist Islamists have apparently told Christians there to convert to Islam or get out, or they will be killed. Isis Muslims really are extremists.
It is well known that many African women are mutilated as a traditional practice, but some may also be cut as a religious rite.
The practice is barbaric and its outlawing long overdue. It is to be hoped that all Commonwealth countries that may have permitted this practice in the past have banned it these days. It should feature alongside the demonising of homosexuality as incompatible with democratic standards.
It has been said that female genital mutilation is carried out in the UK largely undetected, so the authorities are lagging in combating the abuse: the Games could be a catalytic point for campaigning.
Joe Darby
Dingwall
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