After two little girls bled to death following botched clitoridectomies in 1996, President Mubarak’s government banned it. But popular support for mutilating girls remains strong. ‘Am I supposed to stand around while my daughter chases men?’ Said Ibrahim, a farmer, was quoted as saying. ‘So what if some infidel doctor says it is unhealthy? Does that make it true? I would have circumcised my daughter even if they passed a death sentence against it. You know what honour is in Egypt. If a woman is more passive it is in her interest, it is in her father’s interest, and in her husband’s interest.’ A seventeen-year-old teenager agreed. ‘Banning it would make women wild like those in America,’ he was reported as saying. It is estimated that between 80 per cent and 97 per cent of girls have undergone some form of genital mutilation in Egypt. About 100,000,000 women worldwide have suffered the procedure, and 2,000,000 more undergo it each year, including 40,000 in immigrant communities in the United States, according to the Egyptian feminist Nawal Assaad.