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The relatively recent adoption of female circumcision was due to complex cultural and socio-economic influences from the neighbouring ethnic group Mandinka,
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A Reflection on the Cultural Meanings of Female Circumcision
with whom the Jola have been in close social interaction (trade, slavery, intermarriage) for at least three centuries (Mark 1992). The Mandinka proselytised their style of Islam among the Jola, proclaiming female circumcision to be a Muslim custom. The Jola conversion in the middle of the 20th century and their acceptance of the custom of female circumcision was the result of several coinciding factors. The dramatic social and economic changes that took place after the turn of the century, involving French colonialism, taxation, military conscription, and the use of forced labour, coupled with a series of natural calamities that afflicted Jola society, influenced people heavily and made them more open to alternatives to their indigenous religious rituals (cf. Baum 1986). The French colonial administration promoted peanut cultivation and to meet the demands of colonial taxation, the Jola, who were mainly rice cultivators, introduced cash crops, which, in turn, put the Jola and the Muslim Mandinka into closer social contact. At first, Islam attracted mainly young Jola men who went to sell their labour on groundnut fields in the Gambia usually staying with a Muslim Mandinka family. Cash crop cultivation gave these young men a certain financial independence and put them in a position to free themselves from the authority of their elders, an authority that was based on control over the traditional rituals. To be awarded adult status and gain the right to marry and start a family, a man had to go through the male initiation rite, bukut, which was held every 25—30 years. In short, Islam “offered a more rapid means of attaining adulthood” (Mark 1978:11). Soon young women joined in the seasonal migration to the Gambia (Hamer 1983). Women, in the current debate and academic studies on belief and practice in Muslim societies, are seldom described as persons taking an active part in processes leading to Islami- sation (Ask and Tjomsland 1998; Ahmed 1992; Frisk 1998). However, both Hamer’s and my study of local oral history and interviews with old women who were young at the time of Islamisation, reveal that even though women initially were more reluctant towards conversion than men, young women, in particular, were active in introducing female circumcision and the ensuing initiation (naakay) into a ‘new’ form of female secret society associated with Islam and the Mandinka.