The New York Times (Sunday Magazine 1/20), A Cutting Tradition, by Sara Corbett:
When a girl is taken — usually by her mother — to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia,she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet withapparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals. Sponsored bythe Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-servicesorganization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or anemptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed togetherand covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds. Theprocedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved.Afterward, the girl’s genital area is swabbed with the antisepticBetadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to awaiting area, where she’s given a small, celebratory gift — some fruitor a donated piece of clothing — and offered a cup of milk forrefreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where,according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an internationalresearch group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that theirdaughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time theyreached 14.
These photos were taken in April 2006, at the foundation’s annualmass circumcision, which is free and open to the public and held duringthe lunar month marking the birth of the prophet Muhammad. The AssalaamFoundation runs several schools and a mosque in Bandung, Indonesia’sthird-largest city and the capital of West Java. The photographerStephanie Sinclair was taken to the circumcision event by areproductive-health observer from Jakarta and allowed to spend severalhours there. Over the course of that Sunday morning, more than 200girls were circumcised, many of them appearing to be under the age of5. Meanwhile, in a nearby building, more than 100 boys underwent atraditional circumcision as well.
View the slide show. (The photographs are powerful but not graphic.)