Wednesday night activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali made an appearance on Fox News to discuss the horrific case of a Detroit doctor performing illegal female genital mutilation (FGM) on girls as young as six-years-old. Ali was a victim of the practice as a girl in Somalia and has dedicated her life to reforming Islam, specifically in the area of women’s rights.
When asked about why the media and left tend to ignore cases of FGM in the United States, Ali argued they are ideologically blinded by the realities of the practice and quite frankly, put their heads in the sand because talking about the private parts of little girls being destroyed is uncomfortable.
“It [FGM] happens and it happens a lot,” Ali said. “People don’t really like talking about the genitals of little girls.”
“This is crazy identity politics in the United States of America now and when girls who are at risk of these horrible and horrifying practices, FGM is just one but there are others, what we see is that people are willing to sacrifice the rights of these little girls at the altar of identity politics. It’s very difficult for people to talk about the cultures and the religions and the harmful practices that are done by minorities and this is happening to minority little girls,” she continued. “There are 500,000 little girls today in the United States who have either undergone or who are at risk of being subjected to this.”
Ali runs a non-profit, The AHA Foundation, dedicated to stopping FGM and other human rights abuses. You can learn more about her efforts by visiting here.