The Jola, a small ethnic group of about 500,000 individuals who subsist mainly on rice paddy farming in Lower Casamance, pose an intriguing challenge to the common Western understanding of female circumcision as an un-changing, deeply rooted custom introduced by men in order to control women’s sexuality. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the practice of clitoridectomy has been spreading among the Muslim Jola, allegedly as part of Islam.[59] My study shows that women not only defend the practice but, more importantly, that they have played an active role in the processes leading to the recent introduction of female circumcision[60] and that female circumcision is now an important aspect of women’s initiation rituals and their secret society. Jola women, of course, form a heterogeneous category, but regardless of the differences within this category, excision is crucial to Muslim Jola women’s religious identity, initiation, and a female collective identity.
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Excision is regarded as “the most important ritual activity” (Bledsoe 1984:457) of many West African female secret societies, which is why anti-excision activities meet with strong resistance. In the middle of the 1990s, for example, members of the influential women’s society, Sande, in Sierra Leone started a fierce