Despite claims by Muslim Brotherhood sloganeers and their Western allies that Mohammed was the original feminist, life for women in the Muslim world can be quite depressing.
Egyptian prosecutors are investigating the death of a teenage girl during a female genital mutilation operation at a private hospital.
Mayar Mohamed Mousa, 17, died in a hospital in the province of Suez on Sunday while under full anesthesia, said Lotfi Abdel-Samee, the local health ministry undersecretary.
The girls’ mother is a nurse, while their late father was a surgeon. The operation was being carried out by a registered female doctor, according to Abdel-Samee.
A few things to note, at that age this operation was very obviously about marrying off their daughters. Usually the procedure is performed at a much earlier age. In this case it's likely that the parents, who were medical professionals, wanted their daughters mutilated in a safe medical environment.
We are also not dealing with poor, backward families, as the popular image has it. These were professionals with money to spare.
Victims of the procedure are left to cope with a range of consequences from bleeding and pain while urinating, extreme discomfort during sex, fatal complications in childbirth and deep psychological trauma.
The vast majority of married Egyptian women have undergone FGM. If they don't undergo it as young girls, they are likely to undergo it before they begin dating.
"“Many Egyptians believe that for a girl or woman to be ‘clean,’ ‘pure’ and ‘feminine,’ she must have her genitals cut at a young age,” it states. ” Many parents will have their daughters cut as a proactive measure so that they will be ‘marriageable’… In some communities, men refuse to marry any woman who has not been cut"
And that ultimately is why she died.