Traditions----In some societies, female genital cutting is performed, it is not a religious requirement. Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised. There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, and then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned. As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride. “This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said the mother. The tradition of female genital mutilation, or FGM, has survived for centuries in this deeply traditional region of northern Iraq. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), FGM is the “partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons.
Control----FGM is done because it is a way for the men to control the female population. It stops them from having a sexual drive so they won’t run off and cheat on their husbands. This is the only way a man will accept a bride, if they are either cut or cut and sewed. Without this a girl of marrying
