Making women religious persons
According to the Muslim Jola, circumcision is a religious recommendation for women and an obligation for men. Both male and female circumcision is referred to as sunnaye,[65] and in practice it is an obligation for women as well. The prayers of a woman who is not circumcised will not ‘take’ as well, they will not give her as many ’points’ as had she been excised. Far from being just a physical alteration, the genital cutting essentially transforms a girl in the deepest sense of the word. A circumciser told me that it is sufficient for a circumcised girl to put her front to the ground for God to take it as a prayer. A circumcised woman is considered a better Muslim. A Jola religious leader told me that circumcision, male and female, is not only the mark of belonging to Islam, but of having a religion itself. All followers of the religion of Abraham—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—should be circumcised. In discussions with Senegalese friends, colleagues, and informants on the secularisation of Europe, I have understood that not having a religion is, in a sense, considered tantamount to not being human and fits a common assumption of ‘white people’ as anti-social individualists. The religious leader’s statement can, in this context, be understood as implying that to be circumcised is to have a religion, and by extension, to be human.