Those rotten Christians

Did you happen to catch last night’s news item, as reported by the ABC, making the case that restorative surgery be made available to women who have suffered female genital mutilation (FGM)? Not a pleasant subject, admittedly, but interesting in this instance for the one victim the national broadcaster thought worthy of quoting.

A Muslim woman?

No, none of that. Reporter Thuy Ong led her report thus:

“Jools was a baby when her adoptive mother saw her touching herself and decided to cut her.

Her adoptive parents were ‘conservative Christian fundamentalists’, she says, and regularly abused her.”

Despite FGM being mostly a Muslim thing, with survivors in Australia hailing overwhelmingly from Muslim nations, nowhere in the report do the words “Muslim” or “Islam” appear. Instead, down at the bottom of the report, we get this — and do notice the coy, bland reference to “certain communities” (as opposed to those quite specifically referenced  “Christian fundamentalists”):

“For Jools, one of the pressing problems is the preconceived notion that FGM only occurs in certain communities.

FGM, she said, was a form of child abuse and can occur across society.”

Worth noting, perhaps, is reporter Ong’s professional history. Before joining the ABC she “reported for Al Jazeera”.

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