Genital Mutilation Defendants Plan Religious Freedom Defense: Patch PM

METRO DETROIT, MI — Lawyers for three people charged in a sweeping federal investigation into female genital mutilation plan to defend their clients under the religious freedom clause in the First Amendment, according to media reports. Federal law has made the practice illegal in the United States for more than two decades, but the landmark Detroit case is the first time the law has been challenged.

All three of those criminally charged — Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Northville, and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, of Farmington Hills — are members of Dawoodi Bohra, a small Indian Muslim sect with a mosque in Farmington Hills. They have said through their attorneys that two 7-year-old Minnesota girls at the center of the case were not cut but were merely scraped in the centuries-old ritual and that they are being persecuted by the U.S. government for being Muslim. Read the rest of the story here.

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