No tolerance for a brutal custom

America absorbs many peoples and gains much from them. But immigrants, too, have to adapt.

Immigrants enrich American culture, bringing threads from many countries and traditions and weaving them into a vibrant, living tapestry of colors and textures that changes over time.

Genital mutilation -- or, more delicately, "female circumcision" -- may be one such thread, but it has no place in the cultural landscape of a free people, whatever the traditions of newcomers.

Anyone who condones this cruel practice should take a lesson from the case of Ethiopian immigrant Khalid Adem, sentenced in a Georgia court last week to 10 years in prison for cutting off his 2-year-old daughter's clitoris with a pair of scissors.

The custom is outlawed in his native Ethiopia, but still common in many of Africa's traditional societies. Adem did not try to justify the practice to a U.S. court. Rather, he claimed he was not the person who mutilated the girl five years ago, a defense the court rejected.

Some Africans, though, did urge cultural tolerance in the aftermath of the case, thought to be the first of its kind in the United States. "This man was doing it because he thought it would be a bad omen on his child if he did not," a Maasai elder in Kenya told the Reuters news agency. "Maybe he should have been reprimanded not jailed, but we should try to understand his culture."

Understanding cultural differences is essential in a diverse society, but Americans must never stretch tolerance to the point of complicity in crimes against others. In U.S. society, genital mutilation is a crime and should be punished as such.

Many Africans, too, are horrified by the custom, and want to see it end. Those who want to cling to it, yet seek a new life in America, should be prepared to adapt or face prison.

That all people, male and female, are equal before the law is a principle underlying the American tapestry that helps to hold the threads together. The country is constantly being changed by and changing newcomers, creating a dynamism that makes it strong. Respect for the rights of all, though, is and must remain non-negotiable.

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-90075