SAVING GIRLS FROM CIRCUMCISION; GRASS-ROOTS EFFORT IN EGYPT GROWING

SULTAN ZAWYIT, Egypt -- In this small Nile River farming village, Maha Mohammed has started to doubt whether she should circumcise her two daughters.

A year ago, she had few qualms about female genital mutilation, the practice of cutting a girl's clitoris and sometimes other genitalia. She herself was cut two decades ago, and she fears her daughters will not find husbands otherwise.

But Mohammed also has heard that circumcision can be medically risky and emotionally painful. And a strong-willed neighbor has been dropping by her house regularly to persuade her to say no.

"I am afraid. I don't want my daughters to have uncontrollable demands for sex," the 31-year-old Mohammed said.

Such doubts are significant. With vigorous grass-roots campaigns and the passage of tough laws against circumcision, Egypt seems to be making a dent in this deeply ingrained practice, thousands of years old. The number of young girls circumcised is steadily declining in a country where an estimated 96 percent of married Egyptian women have had their genitals cut.

The most-recent comprehensive study predicts about 63 percent of Egyptian girls 9 years old and younger will be circumcised during the next decade, according to the government's 2005 demographic and health survey.

In the villages along the Nile, where the rate is highest, a grass-roots effort is under way to bring information straight to people's homes.

The door-to-door campaign to end female genital mutilation is slow and time-consuming. It publicly plays down any outside help or connections to Western aid groups.

Instead, local activists focus on convincing Egyptians, one woman at a time. Often they reach out to women who have turned against the practice on their own, appealing to them to approach neighbors with daughters.

Fatma Mohammed Ali is one. The 35-year-old woman suffered intense complications after being circumcised at age 13, including severe pain during childbirth. Now, she regularly visits her neighbor -- Mohammed -- gently discouraging her from the practice and using her own family as an example.

Neither of Ali's daughters was circumcised. Both are physically "normal" and one attends university -- a high achievement for a woman from this village, Ali said.

"I don't care what everyone thinks. I was really harmed, and I didn't want this for my daughters," Ali said. "When I talk about my experience, many become convinced. They also see how my daughters are good and religious."

When village women go public, the results are astonishing, said Nevine Saad Fouad, with a group called the Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development in the nearby city of Minya.

Of some 3,000 families targeted over the past few years in several nearby villages, more than half say they have abandoned the practice, nearly 800 are undecided and fewer than 500 say they will continue to circumcise their daughters.

The key is convincing villages that stopping circumcision is an Egyptian idea -- not one imported by international aid groups or Western governments, Fouad said.

Along with local groups taking action, Egypt's government has also been discouraging the practice in recent years. New programs are helping villages declare themselves against the cutting, and an influential campaign of TV commercials and billboards featuring a young Egyptian girl was launched.

Last year, the Ministry of Health prohibited licensed medical professionals from performing the procedure, and Egypt's parliament voted in June to ban it. But activists stress that laws alone aren't enough.

"There is a wave of change right now," said Mona Amin of the childhood and motherhood council. "But we must keep this momentum, this intensity."

The pressure to uphold the tradition in this conservative, socially close-knit nation of 80 million people remains strong. Many women fear potential husbands will reject daughters as impure or immoral. Medical rumors -- including that circumcision is the only way to control a girl's sexual desires -- are rampant.