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Article: Egypt's religious leaders deny justification for female circumcision
- Article from:
- AP Worldstream
- Article date:
- June 21, 2003
- Author:
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Dateline: CAIRO, Egypt
Egypt's Christian and Muslim religious leaders on Saturday denied
that there is any religious justification for the practice of female
genital mutilation.
The opening session of an Afro-Arab conference on the legal tools
to prevent female circumcision featured speeches by Bishop Moussa,
assistant to Coptic Pope Shenouda III, and Mohammed Sayed Tantawi,
grand sheik of Al-Azhar, the most prestigious Sunni Islamic institution.
"No one single verse in both testaments (of the Bible) speaks about
female circumcision; it is rejected totally by Christianity," the
bishop said. He added that this is "a harmful habit that should be
attacked ...