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Various sites report that a gynecologist named Sitt al-Banaat Khaalid wrote about the benefits of female genital mutilation (FGM) in an article - sometimes also called a study, dated to 2003 - titled "Khitaan al-Banaat Ru’yah Sihhiyyah".

Example:

The female gynaecologist Sitt al-Banaat Khaalid says in an article entitled Khitaan al-Banaat Ru’yah Sihhiyyah (Female circumcision from a health point of view): For us in the Muslim world female circumcision is, above all else, obedience to Islam, which means acting in accordance with the fitrah and following the Sunnah which encourages it.

However, all mentions of the article and the person seem to originate from the same one or two sources, and the article is never properly cited or linked, and there doesn't seem to be any further information about the person available (at least not in the English-speaking web).

Do either the person or the article actually exist?

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  • It might be useful to clarify what "FGM" stands for.
    – Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard
    May 8, 2017 at 15:21
  • @iamnotmaynard I added an explanation (it stands for female genital mutilation).
    – tim ♦
    May 8, 2017 at 15:32
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    This site says you can download the book "Safe Female circumcision" by "Dr. Sit Elbanat Khalid Mohamed Ali, Obstetrician Gynecologist, Khartoum University - Sudan" umatia.org/2011/safecircumcision.html which seems to be by the same author. The book has a chapter "Medical Studies ". I haven't tried downloading it yet.
    – DavePhD
    May 11, 2017 at 19:23
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    @tim you must be looking at something different. I downloaded the "book" umatia.org/2011/Safe%20Female%20circumcision.doc (explicit photo warning) and it is in English. It is about female circumcision. Much of it is written by others. It's more like a disorganized assembly of information, unprofessional.
    – DavePhD
    Oct 9, 2017 at 13:02
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    The magazine that it is supposedly published in, Liwa’ al-Islam magazine, appears to be a real magazine (e.g. cited here). You just need to find the 2003 editions, not that this is going to be easy.
    – Laurel
    Jan 3, 2018 at 9:26

1 Answer 1

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The answer to this question was hiding all along on the linked website, since Islamqa offers its articles in multiple languges.

If you switch languages from English to Arabic, Sitt al-Banaat Khaalid plainly appears as "ست البنات خالد", which may also be transliterated Sit āl-Banāt H̱ālid. This gets many Google results in Arabic.

This Facebook post gives a full biography for her. She was born in 1954 in Omdurman, Sudan, received an OB/GYN PhD from University of Khartoum in Sudan, died in February 2017, and defended FGM her entire adult life. She also apparently publicly criticized international NGOs which do OB/GYN work, although on what grounds I do not know.

One of her books can be downloaded here; it is mostly in Arabic but contains notes from English speakers in the back. She also gets one WorldCat hit for an article she wrote about general OB/GYN work for this British Muslim magazine.

Sociological reasons have been given why some women defend FGM. In fact, the Wikipedia article has a whole section about this, which mentions that women might actually be stronger defenders of FGM than men.

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