Self-Determination and Women’s Rights in Muslim Societies

7. Negotiating Female Genital Cutting ("Sunat") in Southern Thailand

169 c l a u D i a M e r l i Negotiating Female Genital Cutting (Sunat) in Southern Thailand This chapter examines the performance of a mild form of female genital cutting (fgc) in southern Thailand (locally called sunat) and its embeddedness in situational social and family dynamics where religious education, seniority, and gender play a pivotal role in making decisions. The goal of this chapter is to call the reader’s attention to the relevance of ethnographic investigation and microanalysis in detecting the existence of plural regional trends that need to be taken into account in planning public health policies. Analyzing selected case studies, this chapter will argue that in this region people following modernist, literalist interpretations of Islam usually reject the practice of fgc. Literalists pursue a direct reading and understanding of the scriptures rather than relying on the traditional interpretations of the Quran and hadiths offered by the major schools (madhhab) of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). These individuals can resort to different strategies to resist the requirement to circumcise girls maintained by the local traditionalist Shafii Muslims (the Shafii madhhab is the 7 l aw a n D c u lt u r e 170 Sunni school of fiqh followed by the majority of Muslims in Southeast Asia). The antagonism between different understandings of the practice manifests itself at times within a single family. Specifically, I will examine some of the dynamics I witnessed in Satun, a province of southern Thailand. Here, family dynamics are not isolated from the wider field of political and religious diversification, which has become almost palpable in the region in the last ten years, and should therefore be contextualized keeping in mind the increasing fragmentation of the Thai social and political cosmos. I will address issues that can provide valuable insights for government officials, health agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (ngos) when designing policies for gathering information about the actual practice of fgc and eradicating it. Female Genital Cutting in Southeast Asia The practice of milder forms of fgc in Southeast Asia was traditionally underreported in comparison to the wealth of scholarly works on more invasive forms of cutting practiced in African regions. This trend has changed during the last ten years with works on Indonesia and Thailand (for Indonesia, see Budiharsana , Amaliah, Utomo, and Erwinia 2003; Feillard and Marcoes 1998; Newland 2006; Putranti, Faturochman, Muhadjir, and Purwatiningsih 2003; Putranti 2008; for Thailand, see Merli 2008a, 2008b, 2010a). The practice was previously mentioned in anthropological works on Malaysia (Strange 1981; Laderman 1983; Peletz 1996), Indonesia (Snouck Hurgronje 1923–24), and Thailand (Hanks 1963; Lamom 1994), but usually in the context of broader studies on traditional birthing practices or local customs, and not on its own. In Southeast Asia, the cutting is generally limited to an incision in or scratching of either the clitoris or the clitoral hood, what usually is described in the World Health Organization’s classification of female genital mutilations as Type IV (any removal of tissue would fall into Type I). The contentious issue of the possible pre-Islamic origin of fgc in Indonesia (Putranti, Faturochman, Muhadjir, and Purwatiningsih 2003; Putranti 2008) remains unsettled. On the other hand, historical sources as well as contemporary research in Southeast Asia provide evidence for the strong connection between the practice, the spreading of Islam in thirteenth century, and the prevalence of the Shafii madhhab (the only Sunni school of law to consider f e M a l e g e n i ta l c u t t i n g i n t h a i l a n D 171 the cutting of the female genitalia obligatory) (Ali 2006; Clarence-Smith 2008 and chapter 5, this volume; Feillard and Marcoes 1998; Merli 2008a). Thailand’s Southern Region The southern region of Thailand—consisting of the four majority-Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun—has been characterized by constant political instability. Muslims constitute the largest minority group in Thailand, although there is much debate on their exact numbers. In 1988 Omar Farouk Bajunid (2005, 4) calculated the Muslim national population as between five and seven million, out of Thailand’s total population of sixty-five million. Most estimates of the Muslim proportion are between 5 and 8 percent of the national population, although according to other estimates it would be 10 percent (Omar 2005, 4; Imtiyaz 2007, 323). In the...