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“Circumcision initiates women into womanhood and makes them eligible for
marriage … the only positive position available for Islamic women,” writes
Esther Hicks in her analysis of female circumcision Infibulation: Female
Mutilation in Islamic North-eastern Africa (Transaction Publishers,
£30.95/$34.95 hbk, £13.95/$21.95 pbk, ISBN 1 56000 841
5). She sees infibulation as a cultural trait that cannot easily be banished by
worthy Westerners in a single social issue swoop. A historical rationalist
perspective admirably applied to, but barely covering the legs of, an emotive
and horrifying debate.