It sounded like a horrendous story, with a Muslim couple wrongly accused of practicing female genital mutilation. Which is why I wanted to read it, especially since it was in my state, albeit an isolated corner on one of the beautiful –- and remote -- islands in Puget Sound.
But the more I read this story, the more I wondered if the reporter was being manipulated into creating a national narrative where none exists.
Before we start, remember that the locale of this story, the bucolic San Juan Island, has all of 6,822 residents. It’s not a large place and you can only get there by plane or (during the Covid era) by increasingly erratic ferries.
This Washington Post story notes that there are no nearby mosques, as if to make out the various islands in the San Juan de Fuca Strait as bastions of white Christian supremacy. Well, there aren’t any nearby synagogues or Hindu temples, either. There are scattered churches, an Orthodox monastery, a Catholic convent and several Buddhist retreat houses.
SAN JUAN ISLAND, Wash. — On the afternoon of July 28, the Homeland Security Investigations tip line received a call about a sensitive matter on an island off the coast of Washington state: “the suspected female genital mutilation of an infant by her Turkish mother.”
A babysitter on San Juan Island had seen what she considered an “abnormality” while changing the girl’s diaper, according to law enforcement reports. The sitter enlisted a friend to also inspect the child’s vagina, without the parents’ knowledge or consent. That friend then called the tip line, allegedly telling authorities she was acting on the sitter’s behalf.
The women, according to reports from the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Homeland Security, worried that the girl had undergone female genital mutilation, or FGM, an ancient ritual defined by the United Nations as the removal of external female genitalia for nonmedical reasons. FGM is a federal crime, and women’s advocates across the globe are campaigning to end the practice, which causes trauma and health complications.
I think I would use other words to describe FGM other than “ancient ritual.”
When a detective asked the women in separate interviews why they suspected FGM rather than a natural or medical condition for any perceived difference, they each invoked the mother’s background as a Turkish American Muslim, according to the sheriff’s report.
As the story will later note, FGM really isn’t a thing in Turkey. The practice is common in countries such as Djibouti, Egypt, Guinea, Ethiopia and Mali along with many others.
That linking of Islam to FGM, a practice that spans faiths and continents, touched off an inquiry that made its way to the Homeland Security office for human rights violations and war crimes, home of an anti-FGM program called Operation Limelight USA. The call also upended the child’s family and is forcing a tough conversation on the island about the far-reaching harm of anti-Muslim stereotypes.
Anyway, Homeland Security, the local sheriff’s office and other law enforcement rated the babysitter’s report, judged it as misguided but wrong, then closed the case.
But the mother, Ferah Uri, and her husband, weren’t satisfied with that. They wanted someone to pay for what they’d gone through.
The family said their ordeal reflects what they see as the ground-level consequences of Islamophobia, a form of bias that Muslim rights groups say is often overlooked because of the widespread post-9/11 vilification of Islam. Reluctant at first, the Uris ultimately decided to share their story, which they said reveals how a single incident can leave a trail of devastation.
This is where this particular news story began to fail the smell test with me.
If someone provokes an incident involving your kid, not to mention something really intimate about your child’s body, what would you do? I can think of several things, but contacting a national newspaper isn’t one of them.
Does the Uri family think their daughter isn’t going to run across this story at some point when she starts using the internet? Or maybe her friends at school will confront her with it?
But no, the mother talks with the Post, which sends Hannah Allam, a national security reporter with specialties in race, national security and religion to fly 3,000 miles out to an island just so she can complain about the two worried women and make it into an uber-narrative about anti-Muslim bias. And the reporter definitely tries to do that, mentioning incidents of Islamophobia including insults directed at certain female Muslim members of Congress.
To the Uri family, the attacks on Muslim women in Congress come from the same ingrained stereotypes that led to an FGM accusation on their island. The couple said they didn’t want their daughter growing up in a community that would give bigotry a pass. One day, they said, they hope to tell her that they pushed beyond “case closed.”
“I want them to have consequences,” Ferah said of the women who brought the claims. “We’re the victims. They’re the ones being protected.”
But, wait. Is she a victim? Where are the interviews with other folks on the island? What are they saying? We know there’s local Facebook groups out there.
Here’s the crucial question: Are the people who live in a place best known for its great views of local orcas (often called killer whales) sincerely anti-Muslim or was it just this one babysitter?
Also, where’s the quote from the Council on American Islamic Relations on this? Better known as CAIR, it’s an organization that’s very quick to let people know when any anti-Muslim incident has occurred. But the story doesn’t mention CAIR at all and I can’t find any statement by CAIR about the Uri girl anywhere. Surely CAIR knew. Why did they take a pass?
Near the end of the story there is this:
The parties are now in a hostile stalemate. The Uris have demanded an apology, the women haven’t issued one, and local authorities have closed the case. The Uris said they decided to go public in part because the controversy is already spilling into local Facebook groups, and they wanted to explain in detail why they can’t just “get over it.”
Think about this for a moment. If the family wanted to keep this local, they could have gone to the Seattle Times. But they went to the Washington Post. The story has more than 3,000 comments and at least one Turkish website has picked it up, so maybe they feel they’ve gotten their side of the story out.
Do we really think the actions of the babysitter and her friend say something about Islamophobia in a remote, isolated, sparsely populated chain of islands? I don’t.
People make mistakes. When I was living in another state, someone reported me to local authorities for allegedly giving my daughter wine (I wasn’t). Turns out the kiddo thought the Nyquil I was giving her was “wine.” Or maybe it was the sip she was allowed to have during Communion at our local church. Did I turn around and sue the state for infringing on my Anglican beliefs or that of my church?
Look, I know that this isn’t the same as being accused of performing FGM on your kid. But with more than a half million girls in the United States being subjected to this, you can see why the Homeland Security folks gave the report a read.
After all, it is a federal crime. And then they dismissed it.
It takes some savvy to recognize what is true religious discrimination and what isn’t, and the reporter doesn’t make a convincing case that it is, in this case. All I see is one angry couple bent on punishing this babysitter, even if the story comes back to haunt their daughter some day.
There are times when true injustice is being done and there are times when it’s not. Reporters need to know the difference and if it means passing up a chance to to turn a local story into a national debate, then so be it.
FIRST IMAGE: A screen shot of UNICEF brochure about female genital mutilation.