ISIS leader orders Female Genital Mutilation of Iraqi girls to distance them from ‘immorality’

Mosul (Northern Iraq) : The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham asked all families around Iraq's northern city of Mosul to circumcise their daughters or face severe punishment according to the information provided by a UN spokeperson.

The United Nations second-in-command in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock, speaking from the Kurdish provincial capital of Irbil, told reporters during a videoconference organized in Geneva that Islamists in control of the Iraqi city of Mosul had issued a fatwa or edict asking all families around Iraq’s northern city of Mosul to circumcise daughters within the specified ages or face severe punishment.

According to International Business Times, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-declared Islamic State, ordered the female genital mutilation of 2 million Iraqi girls seeking to justify the fatwa as being in order to “distance them from debauchery and immorality.”

Though in 2012 UN General Assembly passed a resolution to ban FGM , women in a number of countries have continued to suffer this barbaric practice despite severe condemnation.

Earlier this week, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released new data which, said UNICEF, confirmed the need for urgent action to end female genital mutilation and child marriage two practices that affect millions of girls across the globe, said UNICEF.

While the news is spreading all over the world it has also been alleged to be fake by many of the reporters and news organizations in an around Iraq. Jenan Moussa, a correspondent for Arabic Al Aan TV from Dubai, tweeted Thursday that her contacts in the region had not heard of any such demand. And Shaista Aziz, a blogger for the Guardian, said his contacts in Iraq hadn't heard of the edict either , as per the report published by washingtonexaminer.