It Happens Here

I underwent genital mutilation as a child in the United States. Will exposure stop the practice—or drive it further underground?

- Tasneem Raja

IN MID-APRIL, an Indian American doctor in Michigan was arrested and charged with performing female genital cutting on two seven-year-old girls. As the story hit the national media, my phone kept blowing up with urgent messages and texts from childhood friends across the country.

“This story isn’t going away,” said one. “This time, the community can’t just pretend it’s not happening.” We both grew up in the same controversial, secretive South Asian Muslim sect as the doctor, a 44-year-old emergency room physician named Jumana Nagarwala. Known as the Dawoodi Bohras, our sect is a Shiite branch of Islam based in Gujarat, India, with an estimated 1.2 million followers around the world and thriving communities across America. It’s been criticized for straying from Islamic principles, and its well-heeled clergy, who have unusually far-reaching control over their followers, have been slammed for acting like “totalitarian kings.” (The Bohra clergy did not respond to a request for comment.)

The FBI believes Nagarwala may have been clandestinely cutting girls since at least 2005. She’s been indicted along with two Bohras who own the medical clinic where she allegedly operated. It’s the first case of its kind in the United States, where female genital cutting has been illegal since 1996 under federal law.

The practice is widely seen as an attempt to curb women’s sexuality by making sex less enjoyable, even painful. Nagarwala admits she performed a procedure on the two girls but says she didn’t cut them—she merely wiped away a mucous membrane and gave the gauze to the parents, who would bury it in keeping with Bohra tradition. She told investigators she’s not aware of anyone in her community who practices cutting.