In April 2017, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, at that time an emergency medicine physician at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI, was arrested and jailed. Together with seven others, she will be among the f...

Recent events in the United States and beyond have brought debates over the practice of female genital cutting back into public, academic, and policy discourses.1 In April 2017, Jumana Nagarwala, a Michigan-based emergency medicine physician from a small Shia sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra, was charged with performing female genital mutilation. The procedure is prohibited by federal law and defined as the circumcision, excision, or infibulation of the whole or any part of the female genitalia under the age (...) of 18. Nagarwala argues that she did not mutilate, but rather performed a variation of a religious ritual, termed Khatna, which involves the nicking... (shrink)