By: Anonymous

Age: 33
Country: Pune, India

Even though I clearly remember when ‘khatna’ was performed on me, it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I first started to question this practice within the Dawoodi Bohra community. It always felt wrong, but if my mother, sister, and seemingly everyone else in the community embraced it, who was I to question?

I had been an obedient little Bohra girl – attending the mosque, fasting, and doing everything exactly as it was expected of me. As I reached my teens, however, the restrictions I had as a Bohra woman grew ever more oppressive. My curiosity led me to start looking for any information I could find about ‘khatna’ – but to be honest I didn’t even know what to type into Google! When I finally figured it out, gory pictures of female genital mutilation in Africa filled my computer screen, but there was little or no information about it being practiced within the Bohra community. Talking about it within the community was obviously taboo, but I did have a college friend, a Bohra girl my age, who I confided in. “I think we may have some problems when we grow up, and we may never be able to enjoy sex,” she said. That was the limit of her knowledge and she was as confused as I was. My anger continued to grow – many rules within the community, especially for women, were illogical, outdated and absolutely unnecessary. And ‘khatna’ was the cruelest of them all.

More than my own experience, the hardest time for me was when my older sister’s daughter turned seven (the age when ‘khatna’ is performed), and it was clear that my sister and mother were planning to continue the tradition. I felt helpless and hopeless seeing my little niece in fear. Seeing her in pain the night after she was cut saddened me to the core. This cruel ritual was so deeply rooted in religious and cultural beliefs that it would be very difficult to break. If any change had to happen, it had to happen from within the community – but how, when no one was even willing to talk about it?

As news about the three doctors getting arrested for performing ‘khatna’ on young girls in the US spreads far and wide, it becomes urgent and extremely important for us within the community to talk about it. I am sure that there isn’t a single woman in the community who hasn’t questioned this practice at one time or another. After all, how can a mother willingly subject her daughter to this torture? Instead of hiding our heads in the sand and pretending that what is happening in Michigan does not concern us, we need to use this opportunity to talk and question.

Having grown up in the community, I completely understand the nuances of this problem – no Bohra wants to talk about it because it involves a private part, a sexual organ of a woman, and talking about sex is taboo. But we can get together in small groups of family and friends to reexamine this outdated ritual. There are now non-profit organizations, like Sahiyo, committed to creating awareness and educating the community. There is enough scientific data to prove that there is nothing beneficial about this ritual. Those of us that feel strongly need to find avenues to share our experiences, whether it is through schools and colleges, other community organizations, or signing petitions. We need to voice our anger with a system that threatens its people and brainwashes them to believe that gruesome acts like ‘khatna’ are for their betterment.

I have so many Bohra friends across the world who have little girls and others who will have children in the near future. Of course, they love their daughters, and would rather not subject them to this cruelty, but the pressure to conform is stifling and very few have the power to stand up to it. Our right to think independently has been stripped away from us, and we don’t dare to question our religious leaders. Every single day, several girls suffer this torture all over the world – and it affects their lives forever. Time is passing quickly, and we need to rise up and demand that community leaders put an end to this practice NOW.

This article was translated in Gujarati on January 16, 2018. Read the translation here.

(Editor’s note – The courageous woman who shared this letter would like it to be known that sahiyo’s platform was the official outlet for her letter.)

By: Anonymous

Country of Residence: United States

To Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin,

We are the ones who showed up. We are the ones who wore the right thing, said the right thing, didn’t ask too many questions. When you became our 53rd leader, we changed our license plates and phone numbers to include the number 53 in your honor. We came to you in our moments of deep grief and our moments of sweet joy to ask for your permission to bury a loved one, get married, move to another country. We parted with our money in Dawoodi Bohra taxes to benefit you and our community. We put photos of you up on our walls. We traveled to Texas, Nairobi, Mumbai to hear your sermons. We prayed to you and for you. We did all of this in the name of the community, in the name of feeling supported by the ballast of history. We trusted your goodness, your wisdom. We believed that when we called to you for help, you would come.

Last year, on Syedna Taher Saifuddin’s death anniversary – a day when you knew that people around the world were watching – you spoke out about “keep[ing] our things strong, stay[ing[ firm. Even the big sovereign states [i.e. United States], whatever it is they say, if it makes any difference to our things, then we are not prepared to understand!…The act has to happen! If it is a man, then it is right, it can be openly done, but if it is a woman then it must be done discreetly, but then the act has to be done. Please understand what I am trying to talk about…”

We understood; we all knew what you were talking about. You were speaking about khatna, a globally reviled practice in which someone cuts part of a girl’s clitoris. You instructed us to carry out khatna on our young girls regardless of what the “big sovereign states” (read: US law) had to say. One month later, US-based jamaats published letters stating that community members should follow the law and not practice khatna in the US. These letters didn’t say that khatna was inherently wrong; they impliedly encouraged us to travel elsewhere for the procedure. We were confused – how could we not be? But we kept our heads down. We did not understand or agree with this practice, but we believed in you.

Khatna has gone global – The New York Times, the BBC, Al Jazeera, UK Parliament – are associating the Dawoodi Bohra community with this heinous act, accurately reporting on a procedure that has abused and denigrated our women. In encouraging this procedure, you sanctioned violence against young children.

And now here we are. April 2017. Dr. Jumana Nagarwala committed a crime in flagrant disobedience of her role as a healer and doctor. But we can’t place the blame entirely on Dr. Nagarwala. She didn’t come up with this idea. She did it for you, in your name, under your instruction. On April 26, 2017, a federal jury indicted Dr. Nagarwala, Fakhruddin Attar and Farida Attar. Your followers are in hot water now and what did you do? You washed your hands of them. Less than a year after your pronouncement that you were “not prepared to understand” what “big sovereign states” say, you swiftly worked to ally yourself with US law enforcement. You issued a statement saying it was “unfortunate” Dr. Nagarwala had not followed US law, that the Dawoodi Bohras do not support any violation of local, state or federal law.

So much for staying “staying firm.” You threw Dr. Nagarwala under the bus and bailed.

So now we know. We know that it doesn’t matter how much we gave and prayed and observed. We know that even if we show up and wear what you want, say what you want, do what you want, you won’t show up for us when it matters. You will not take responsibility for your actions. You will not stand by your followers.

I will continue to go to the jamaat and pray alongside my fellow Bohra women. I do this now only for the love of my family, for the peace that this brings them, for the Allah who sees everything we do – including you, Syedna. But I do not believe in your wisdom and power anymore. I have lost all faith in your goodness, your grace. I will not listen to your edicts about what I should wear, how I should educate my children, how I should live my life. You took no responsibility for your follower who carried out your instructions – a mother of four who is now facing jail time. You abandoned her when she needed you most. You would do the same to me and my family. I know that when the reckoning comes, you will not stand by me, and so I will not stand by you anymore. 

This blog was later published in Gujarati. Read the Gujarati version here. 

By: Anonymous 

Age: 33
Country of birth: India
Country of current residence: USA 

I am a male born into a Dawoodi Bohra family. My brother and I had remarkably normal upbringings in the United States. We were members of one of the more secular congregations in the in the US. My parents always pointed out to me how different we were from other Muslim sects. Our community stressed education for our sons and daughters. Many women in our community are business owners, doctors, and primary bread winners. Wahabi, we were not.   

I distinctly remember watching an episode of the news program “20/20” with my parents when I was a “tween”. One of the pieces was on female genital mutilation in Somalia. We watched the whole piece and a hush came over the room…the kind of awkwardness one experiences when a love scene comes on while you’re watching a movie with your parents. I didn’t know why my parents were squirming, but in a few days everyone forgot all about it.

Fast forward over a decade and I’m in a serious relationship with my now wife.
A Dawoodi Bohra woman. The first time we were intimate she began crying uncontrollably. She told me what had been done to her. She herself didn’t know what had been done to her until she learned about it in college. She felt an electric shock like pain down to her toes when it was done, but I was the first to be rocked by the waves of that ripple effect. She felt scarred and damaged. She wanted so bad to connect with me intimately, but it could never happen. That had been stripped away from her along with her ability to be a complete woman, against her will, as a minor. We worked through it together. I went to her counseling appointments. I reassured her that our love would only grow stronger, but she and I both knew no one could ever give back to her what was lost in that moment.

The “20/20” moment finally made sense.  With two sons, my parents never had to make the gut-wrenching decision to physically alter their children, but to be perfectly clear, had either of us been a girl, there would have been overwhelming pressure to do it. The community would feed their boilerplate lies: “it is to ensure a good marriage”, “it is to make you a better wife”. I later found out from my parents that all the girls in my family had it done to them. I couldn’t stomach the thought. Why put up the front of modernity when 50% of your offspring are subjected to a medieval practice? Stop flaunting your women’s independence when your prerequisite for them to be complete spiritually is for them to be incomplete physically.

My amazing wife has taught me so much. She has taught me forgiveness, and strength. I would certainly have been much more vindictive had I been put in her shoes. It is time for all Dawoodi Bohras to come to grips with this issue. It is a stain on the faith. It has no precedence in Islam, it irreversibly damages our women, and it runs counter to what we claim to be: modern, moderate Muslims. It’s time to bring this issue out of the shadows and into the light.  

This article was later republished in Gujarati. Read the Gujarati version here. 

Picture an innocent, 7-year-old girl being led to an unfamiliar room.  She is made to lie down, her underpants are removed, and a piece of her is cut away; familiar hands around her upholding an age-old tradition.

Perhaps she is in pain. Perhaps she is not. She might feel betrayed, scared, angry, or upset. She might want to run away from the people who are albeit familiar to her, but who have put her in an extremely traumatic situation.

Now picture this same girl once again, made to lie in a an equally unfamiliar room, her underpants removed, her private parts probed by a doctor, who is looking for the scar from the piece that was cut away from her; these concerned hands are trying to build a case to condemn the ones who caused her the original pain.

The girl is once again in pain, but this time it may not be just a physical pain. She is again angry, scared, and confused. And this time, she probably wants to run back to those who are familiar to her, to save her from the trauma of reliving that memory.

The above two scenarios sadly highlight the unfortunate situation that innocent Bohra girls in the US are reportedly in. The girls are possibly feeling trapped, fearful, and vulnerable, because once again they are being forced to relive their trauma of undergoing Khatna.

Recently, Female Genital Cutting or Khatna prevalent in the Dawoodi Bohra community came onto the federal radar in the US because of the arrest of a doctor associated with the practice in Detroit, Michigan. This arrest was followed by a few more arrests leading to subsequent intervention by Michigan’s Child Protection Services who reportedly picked up children for further questioning.

While we need law to make clear that FGC is a human rights violation, and we need legal aid to further efforts towards preventing FGC from occurring in the first place, subjecting a child to a double scrutiny of sorts may not be the best practice if we keep the interests of the child in mind.

For instance, one has to understand that Bohra-style Khatna can be difficult to establish in a medical examination, because Type 1 or Type 4 (which Bohras typically perform) do not necessarily leave physical scars. The girl may have lost a thin layer of her prepuce, or she may have been pricked, slit or rubbed, in which case subjecting them to medical check-ups is not going to prove anything, and may, in fact, cause them trauma when previously they may not have been particularly traumatized.

Additionally, carrying out a witch hunt on all the mothers, possibly separating the girls from their parents, and asking for a ‘permanent termination’ of rights to parenting, are all methods that might force the Dawoodi Bohra community into believing that they are being targeted unfairly, and these actions might make them distrustful of law enforcement officials.

Moreover, the child might view the authorities trying to protect her as her worst enemy, because they separated her from her parents and everything that is comfortable and familiar to her. She might also feel pangs of guilt if her testimony leads to her mother’s arrest. After all, no child wants to be the reason for a family’s disruption.

There is no doubt that the US government is doing exceptionally well in investigating the case, and ensuring that the laws of their land are rightfully upheld. Nevertheless, Sahiyo does feel that there are certain realities, which if understood and implemented correctly, could make the process of serving justice less painful for the child. For instance, what could be explored is how to gain insight around culturally appropriate and sensitive forms of outreach from the people and agencies who are knowledgeable in working with the community.

Since its inception, Sahiyo’s philosophy has been to engage the members of the community and seek their help to end this harmful practice. So we ask now, could an alternate approach be found that acknowledges Khatna as a harmful tradition that must be discontinued, but simultaneously recognizes that parents’ intentions for continuing it are not necessarily malicious? Or, could there be a more educative, community-involved approach to tackling FGC which recognizes it as a social norm that unfortunately has been passed down through generations of a community? Could state-organized counseling sessions for the parents and children be an alternative to punitive punishments?

We ask these questions because we acknowledge that to truly end FGC in the Dawoodi Bohra community, we must find methods that will not cause further trauma for the child, but at the same time, continue to move the community forward towards abandoning this undesirable and harmful practice.

By: Anonymous

Country: United States

Age: 34

Around the age of seven, unbeknownst to me at the time, extended family members asked my parents when they would be taking me to have khatna done. In the country we lived in at the time, it was the norm for girls in our community to get it done when they hit that age. My dad opposed this practice vehemently and refused to let it happen to his three girls. In the 1980s, opposing khatna was completely shocking and unconventional, let alone having a father speak his mind. Close family members were told to lie and hide our “secret”.

I myself didn’t uncover this secret until much later as a teenager, when I heard women discussing this thing called ‘khatna’ within family walls. These talks occurred within women-only audiences, where they spoke in code if their 7-8 year-old daughters were in the room with us. Later, I asked mum what this hush hush topic was about and that is when she revealed the secret to me. She also informed me that I should not let anyone know that my sister and I hadn’t been ‘cut’. In those days, my parents would have been social pariah if the truth came out.

Fast forward a few decades later and it hit me that my sisters and I were the only ones, in our entire Bohri side of the family (that I am aware of), who were spared the horror of undergoing what I now know as FGM. Thankfulness and gratefulness isn’t enough for what my father did for us back in the day when he stood up for our rights when no one else would have. I have cousins who regret that it happened to them and a few aunts who regret doing it to their daughters. I now live in the United States and see that this practice still lives on, whether it’s against the law or not, and it hurts me knowing that it is still easy to find a cutter, that mothers of my generation will still ‘cut’ their precious girls because the highest religious office in the community still preaches that it’s the right thing to do.

The Detroit case gives me a glimmer of hope that maybe people within our communities living in the United States will think twice about performing FGM on minors, and that parents will think hard and long before subjecting their girls to this practice. I’m hoping it creates a ripple-effect throughout communities that live here. On the other hand, I know that as long as this practice is encouraged by the leadership, it will continue. Parents will take their children out of this country in an effort to ensure this practice lives because they still think it’s the right thing to do as it is prescribed by our religion and by the leadership of this community. Most seem blinded by the clergy and won’t go against what they prescribe no matter the risk, as this case highlights.

As we speak of religion, this case also gives me shudders because if the legal defense of the doctor who was charged is using religion as a justification to continue and allow FGM, then to the wider world, Islam is to blame. I cringe at the thought of FGM being tied to Islam because there is nothing Islamic about circumcising young girls to curb their sexual desires. If there was anything in Islam about khatna, it would be stated in our Holy Qur’an, which is every Muslim’s ultimate guide to the way we live our lives. If khatna was prescribed by God and mentioned in His book, billions of Muslims around the world would be doing it. There are only a fraction of Muslims around the world that practice FGM, and it stems from a cultural and ritualistic base. I hope that the magnitude of khatna, what it does to a young girl’s psyche and the fact that there is no basis in Islam for khatna, does not pass the ‘religious freedom’ excuse in our court system.

By Ali Asghar Akhtar

Country: Canada

Age: 33

I recently came to know about something very prehistoric (I am not being overdramatic, it was truly shocking for me).

We are living in a digital, global, mobilized world where everyday living dynamics are being challenged and improved. Changes in technology, social norms, cultures, historic traditions and even daily mundane rituals have been drastic and entire paradigms have shifted. We term these changes as “progress”.

However, when I recently learned that FGM/C (Female Genital Mutilation or Cutting) is still prevalent in today’s “modern era”, I was very surprised and shocked. I learned that FGC was still happening from one of my cousins living in the United States of America, who is a subject matter expert in this area. She told me that FGM is still practiced and in fact, in our community, many are very proud to keep our “traditions alive”. When I delved further on this subject, allowing for a benefit of doubt that it might be beneficial medically for women (as certain learning through religious teachings/beliefs have proved to be beneficial for mankind over the course of history), I learned that this practice has NO significant relevance medically or in terms of religion. This is simply a non-relevant practice which has traditionally been followed over the decades without any benefits.

I was again very surprised to learn that no support group had ever challenged this unrealistic tradition until recently when a small group named SAHIYO was formed. I support this group to work towards ending this irrational and illogical tradition which should be banned. Continuous progress only happens when certain traditions are constantly reviewed, challenged, and improved. Progress is not limited to tangible outcomes. Social change and progress happen when attitudes change to help end harmful practices.

I humbly request everyone who reads this snippet of information on FGM/C to become part of this organization and help Sahiyo stop this non-beneficial tradition. The existence of such bygone social norms is very perplexing to understand and relate to in today’s 21st century. Let’s together work to STOP FGM/C before it becomes a part of the next generation’s DNA.

In February, Sahiyo held an event titled Thaal Pe Charcha (loosely translated as ‘discussions over food’), in which 16 Bohra women from Mumbai came together to discuss – for the first time – the challenges of living as young girls and women in the tightly knit Dawoodi Bohra community.

Invitations were sent out through word of mouth, and 16 women in their 20s and 30s signed up for the unique event. A few came with their friends, two with young children, one with their family member, while others ventured alone, but all of them attended Thaal Pe Charcha with a desire to bond with other women from the community and discuss a variety of issues affecting their lives.

Over a traditional Bohra lunch (one mithaas, one kharaas) the women opened up with their opinions on topics such as the pressure to marry early, the extreme control exercised by religious authorities on family life, the fear of social boycott and the consequent lack of freedom to speak out against social norms.

What was evident during the three hours of food and bonding was shared sense of pride the women felt about being able to stand up for themselves within their families – to stand up for their right to an education of their choice, to choose a certain career or spouse, or to have their own set of individual beliefs.

Sahiyo will be organizing more Thaal Pe Charcha events in Mumbai during the course of the year, for Bohra women of different age groups. If you are interested in attending a Thaal Pe Charcha event and would like to be kept informed, mail us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

After all, why should all charcha happen over chai?

Four American survivors of Female Genital Cutting have broken the culture of silence around the issue through a new video. These women, from diverse backgrounds, illustrate that FGC is not restricted to any one geography, religion, or socioeconomic class.

The four women featured in the video produced by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs include Renee Bergstrom, F.A. Cole, Aissata Camara, and Sahiyo co-founder Mariya Taher.

In order to realize the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ending FGC by 2030, we need not only more courageous survivors need to speak out, but we also need religious leaders, men and boys, health practitioners, and young people to join the global campaign. To watch the video, click here.