MUMBAI – Efforts may be on to end the practice of female genital mutilation that young girls in the Dawoodi Bohra community are made to undergo in India but their spiritual leader may not be convinced yet as he went on to publicly encourage the act of female circumcision albeit indirectly, the Times of India reported. A four-minute audio clip from Syedna Muffadal Saifuddin’s speech has gone viral over a mobile messaging app and generated conversations within the community on how the religious cleric’s endorsement may urge close followers of the spiritual head to continue with the painful practice. The clip begins with a plea from the cleric speaking in a mix of Gujarati and Urdu. “The act has to happen! If it is a man, then it is right, it can be openly done, but if it is a woman then it must be done discreetly, but then the act has to be done. Please understand what I am trying to talk about,” the cleric said. A local young man present at the centre where the sermon was being beamed live on a giant screen, quoted as saying that the clip was what he had heard being broadcast. “The Syedna was reading from a script which is usually the routine on such an occasion but all of a sudden he went off and started talking in a cryptic fashion. We gradually realised that he was talking about female circumcision when he used words like act, states and that the act must be carried out discreetly for women and openly for men. It was very disturbing for me and my wife,” he told TOI. A close friend of the Syedna family dismissed such an interpretation of the Syedna’s speech when the paper called him. “It was a general comment and not specific. People are interpreting it differently,” he said, alleging that those close to the new claimant to the Syedna title are trying to target revered Syedna (Muffadal Saifuddin). A 36-year-old Bohra woman who has lived through the horrors of the painful practice and currently settled in the US expressed her anguish having heard the clip. “Just a month ago many of us in the US received a letter from the Jamaat (local community unit) that works under the Syedna’s guidelines. It said that we must follow the law of the land and not practice female circumcision. I was thrilled, at peace with my faith. What I just heard reflects hypocrisy. I’m disillusioned and worried.” Web Desk