According to a 2008 survey, over 90% of women in Egypt have undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) - the highest rate anywhere in the world. The practice was outlawed five years ago, but this Newsnight report shows how little effect the ban is actually having in the face of religious and cultural opposition:
In the rural areas of Egypt, in Upper Egypt...there is scant respect for the law. You hear the words "tradition", "custom", "honour" uttered like a mantra when people justify their decision to circumcise their daughters.
The belief there is that it is the female who is sexually rampant and that her sexual desire must be arrested at a young age, before she can disgrace the family.
"It is important that she loses that part of her body that awakes sexual desire. If not, she may play with herself or ask a boy to touch this part for her, not specifically a stranger, but one of her cousins for instance, and she might enjoy it," Olla told me. "When she feels the pain of it she will be more careful about this part.
"I know the doctor might be punished for this, but still there are doctors who are practising it," she said. "And if the doctors won't do it then we will get the daya."
The daya is a local midwife. In Olla's village she is a large, shambling woman in flowing robes who passes through the streets with impunity.
Om Mohammed was totally uninhibited as she extolled to me the benefits of her work: "I love it like my own eyes because I need the money. Take me to prison if you want to, take me anywhere, but I will keep circumcising girls. I want the money.
"Circumcision is healthy for girls. I know this - purified girls grow taller and get marriage proposals, but unpurified girls stay short and stubby.
"Some women say they won't have their daughters purified when the social worker is around. They humour her until she leaves and once she is gone they come and ask me to circumcise their girls. I have her mother, her aunt or neighbour hold her while I cut her," she explained.
Or, in the words of Sheikh Ashraf, "The Prophet has ruled that this thing must be done".
The report starts at 20 minutes in on last night's programme.
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