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Among social activists & feminists, combating female genital mutilation (FGM) is an important policy goal. Sometimes called female circumcision or female genital cutting, FGM is the cutting of the clitoris of girls in order to curb their sexual desire & preserve their sexual honor before marriage. The practice, prevalent in some majority Muslim countries, has a tremendous cost: many girls bleed to death or die of infection. Most are traumatized. Those who survive can suffer adverse health effects during marriage & pregnancy. New information from Iraqi Kurdistan raises the possibility that the problem is more prevalent in the Middle East than previously believed & that FGM is far more tied to religion than many Western academics & activists admit. Many Muslims & academics in the West take pains to insist that the practice is not rooted in religion but rather in culture. "When one considers that the practice does not prevail & is much condemned in countries like Saudi Arabia, the center of the Islamic world, it becomes clear that the notion that it is an Islamic practice is a false one," Haseena Lockhat, a child clinical psychologist at North Warwickshire Primary Care Trust, wrote. True, FGM occurs in non-Muslim societies in Africa. & in Arab states such as Egypt, where perhaps 97 percent of girls suffer genital mutilation, both Christian Copts & Muslims are complicit. But at the village level, those who commit the practice believe it to be religiously mandated. Religion is not only theology but also practice. & the practice is widespread throughout the Middle East. Many diplomats, international organization workers, & Arabists argue that the problem is localized to North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa, but they are wrong. The problem is pervasive throughout the Levant, the Fertile Crescent, & the Arabian Peninsula, & among many immigrants to the West from these countries. Silence on the issue is less reflective of the absence of the problem than insufficient freedom for feminists & independent civil society to raise the issue. Adapted from the source document.