It was only a matter of time. And the time is here.
I have been covering this case in The Point and in individual articles.
Operating out of a Livonia clinic, Jumana Fakhruddin Nagarwala abused unknown numbers of little girls. The end came when law enforcement traced calls to her from a Minnesota number. Then they followed the trail to a hotel in Farmington Hills; a Michigan city at the center of an Islamic Center controversy.
It was Friday evening; the holy day of the Islamic week when Muslims are told to “leave off business” and “hasten to the remembrance of Allah.” That is what the two women leading two little girls to be mutilated thought that they were doing. Muslims believe that on Friday, angels stand outside the doors of mosques to record who shows up for prayer. But it was the hotel surveillance cameras that watched and recorded as the two little girls arrived, unaware of the horror that was about to happen to them.
The 7-year-old girl had been told that she was going to Detroit for a “special” girls’ trip. Instead her special trip turned into a nightmare. After the Muslim doctor allegedly mutilated her, she warned the child not to talk about what was done to her.
The case came down to the Farmington Hills mosque.
Nagarwala’s husband, Moiz Nagarwala, is listed as a leader of the Farmington Hills mosque, according to the mosque’s password-protected website, and records list him as having served as joint treasurer.
Dr. Fakhruddin Attar is accused of letting Dr. Jumana Nagarwala perform mutilations at his Burhani Medical Clinic on Farmington Road. His wife, office manager Farida Attar, also was arrested and is accused of helping Nagarwala perform the mutilations, according to a 14-page complaint unsealed Friday in federal court. Attar has served as treasurer and a leader of the Farmington Hills mosque, according to the Anjuman-e-Najmi website.
After initial denials, the mosque mutilators are going with a religious freedom defense.
Defense lawyers plan to argue that religious freedom is at the core of the case in which two physicians and one of their wives are charged with subjecting young girls to genital cutting. All three are members of the Dawoodi Bohra, a small Indian-Muslim sect that has a mosque in Farmington Hills.
The defense maintains that the doctors weren't engaged in any actual cutting — just a scraping of the genitalia — and that the three defendants are being persecuted for practicing their religion by a culture and society that doesn't understand their beliefs and is misinterpreting what they did.
Defense lawyers have argued that the defendants are good, hardworking people with deeply held religious convictions who were involved in only mild procedures that are part of their faith.
But the government says the harm was much more severe than the defense is claiming and that there are multiple other victims. According to court documents, the two Minnesota girls had scarring and abnormalities on their clitorises and labia minora.
One girl said that she got a shot, screamed, and "could barely walk after the procedure, and that she felt pain all the way down to her ankle." The other said she was "laid on an examining table with her knees near her chest and legs spread apart," that she was "pinched" in the genital area, that it "hurted a lot" and that there was "pain and burning."
Both girls were told to keep the procedures a secret, court records show. One said "the doctor made her (friend) cry."
So this was always inevitable. Now there will be a religious freedom argument put forward for FGM. And eventually for beheading infidels. The latter is a more integral part of Islamic religious practice than the former. So is marrying off little girls just as Mohammed married Aisha.
Either we draw a red line or we lose everything.