Female circumcision still exists in Singapore. Saza Faradilla wants to put an end to it

"Some have told me to stop my research because they feel there’s going to be Islamophobia; people might say that Islam is a primitive religion. But I think it’s not true. I think it’s an unnuanced way of looking at a minority community."

Saza Faradilla had always been against the act of sunat perempuan — female circumcision. After learning that her young cousin had undergone the procedure, she argued against it with her relatives: That’s when they told Saza that she had been cut as an infant, too.

The procedure is a surprisingly common one in Singapore. A study of some 360 Muslim women found that up to three quarters of them had undergone genital cutting; like Saza, many of these women only find out about it when they grow older.

In November 2020, Saza set up End FGC, a community-led initiative that campaigns against the practice. Their main aim is to lobby ministers and raise awareness about the practice within the Malay Muslim community; Saza and her team planned to hand out informational booklets outside mosques after Hari Raya Haji prayers.

“We are in this for the long run,” says Saza. “Our vision is to end it within the next generation.”

Saza says that running End FGC can be exhausting; as a community-led movement, and with members juggling full-time jobs and other responsibilities, burnout is a common ailment. She talks to us about what more needs to be done, and the challenges that End FGC faces.

Support End FGC by donating to their campaign here.

Since you started End FGC, have you gotten pushback?

I have been told to stop my research by various institutions. Some have told me to stop my research [on female genital cutting] because they feel there’s going to be Islamophobia; people might say that say that Islam is a primitive religion. But I think it’s not true. I think it’s an unnuanced way of looking at a minority community.

We’ve gotten pushback from the Malay Muslim community as well. Some people say that it is unnecessary conversation to have, that this is just a small practice, that it doesn’t really matter.

We get a lot of hate comments on our Instagram, an equal share from men and women. One thing I noticed was that the men tend to devalue — or invalidate — the lived experiences of women. So men would say: “Oh, this cut doesn’t even happen. We shouldn’t even call it cutting.”

Why isn’t there more discussion or mainstream awareness about female genital cutting in Singapore?

Female sexuality is something that’s not often talked about. Secondly, people see this as a very small cut. People don’t view this as significant. There is also a fear of saying the wrong thing [regarding the Malay Muslim community], which I don’t agree with at all. I don’t think they are sensitive or controversial issues — I just think there are issues that we have been told as sensitive or controversial by an authority.

Especially with Muslim issues, people somehow think that it’s very sensitive or that a lot of Muslims are more religious or more closed off than other people — so they don’t want to enter that conversation.

I think what I’ve realised is that a lot of people know that Muslims cannot do certain things, but beyond that, they don’t know very much else about Muslims, which is a problem, right? They don’t even know why Muslims cannot eat pork and so on. There’s no understanding behind it.

So I think firstly we need to demystify these issues. There’s a lot of people still don’t know very much about Sharia law. They don’t know that Muslim women aren’t under the Women’s Charter. I think the first step is to solve that ignorance.

What sorts of solutions do you propose?

We don’t believe in making it illegal, or banning it, or putting the doctors who do this in jail. We don’t believe in using the criminal justice system on an already minority practice, because that will just discriminate against that minority group even more.

What we are pushing for is for our leaders to come out and make a public stand on this issue — for our religious leaders to say that this is unnecessary within the religion. For healthcare leaders to come out and say that this is a cut that is not taught in medical school — one that isn’t taught in any medical textbook in the world. And then for our community leaders to stand up and say: “This may have been done in the past, this may have been our tradition, but traditions change. And so we can change, it if it’s for the better.”

Photography GAN KAH YING

Styling GREGORY WOO Styling

Assistant ADELYNN WONG