Muslim Brides Becoming Virgins Again with Hymen Replacement Operations on the NHS
MAIL ONLINE: Increasing numbers of Muslim brides are having taxpayer-funded ‘virginity repair’ operations before marriage.

There were 116 hymen replacement operations carried out on the NHS between 2005 and 2009. The total for 2009 was 30, up 25 per cent from 24 in 2005.

The health service figures echo a trend reported by private clinics, which are seeing a huge surge in demand for the procedure from Muslim women paying up to £4,000.

One Harley Street clinic said that demand for its half-hour procedure had tripled in recent months.

Doctors say patients are under pressure from future husbands or relatives who insist that they should be virgins on their wedding night.

Critics, including moderate Muslim groups, have condemned the trend as a sign of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the West.

During the hymenoplasty procedure – viewed by some as invasive and degrading – the hymen is stitched or reconstructed so that it will tear again and bleed on the woman’s wedding night.

In some cases, the vaginal lining can be used to create a false hymen. A blood capsule can then be inserted into the lining to ensure realistic blood flow when the membrane is broken. >>> Claire Ellicott | Thursday, July 29, 2010

Hymenoplasty: The New and Growing Trend Among Muslim Women in Europe to 'Restore' Their Virginity
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE: PARIS - The surgery in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 self-dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.

But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

Like an increasing number of other Muslim women in Europe, she had a "hymenoplasty," a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse.

"In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt," said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery Thursday. "Right now, virginity is more important to me than life."

As Europe's Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women find themselves caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the deep-rooted traditions of their parents' and grandparents' generations.

Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity before marriage.

That trend in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; there are medical tourism packages to countries like Tunisia where the procedure is less expensive.

"If you're a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage," said Hicham Mouallem, a doctor in London who performs the surgery. "So if you're looking to marry a Muslim and don't want to have problems, you'll try to recapture your virginity." For Muslim Women in Europe, a Medical Road Back to Virginity >>> By Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet | June 10, 2008

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Giving “Virginity Fixes” on the NHS Is Totally Indefensible
Photo of Muslimatoon courtesy of the Daily Mail
DAILY MAIL: Even by the standards of medical horror stories that have filled our papers of late, it's a tale that beggars belief. According to the latest figures, some 24 women have recently had their virginities "restored", not by some divine miracle or act of magic, but by a surgical procedure paid for by our already hard-pressed National Health Service.

How ridiculous, how dangerous and how indefensible. At a time when cancer and Alzheimer's patients are routinely deprived of drugs, the idea that a single penny of NHS funding is spent on repairing something as fragile, ephemeral and medically useless as a woman's hymen is absurd.

Only where a young woman has been raped or violently sexually assaulted can there even be the slightest justification for the NHS to pay for such a procedure. And yet in 2005-2006, the NHS clearly decided otherwise time and time again.

So who are these women who are seeking to have their virginities restored? According to the figures, they are "immigrants and British women of ethnic origin".

Well, speaking as a British woman of ethnic origin, let me make it clear. The British NHS should simply not be paying for a cosmetic procedure that is unnecessary, demeaning to women and totally at odds with modern British culture.

The report accompanying the figures is too politically correct to identify the religion of the women who have had the operation, but it's my informed guess that most of them - all of them, perhaps - will turn out to be Muslim.

As the daughter of parents who arrived in Britain from Pakistan in the mid-Sixties, I'm a Muslim myself but I'm appalled by the sort of cultural pressures these women must be under to seek such a procedure.

But I'm also angry that the NHS has agreed to carry them out. By paying for and performing such operations, the NHS isn't furthering the integration of the Muslim community into the British way of life; in fact, it's doing quite the opposite.

It's effectively condoning an increasingly fundamentalist Islamic culture that is patriarchal, regressive and increasingly demeaning to women. Surely that has no place in the Britain of today? As a British Muslim I find 'virginity repairs' on the NHS dangerous, demeaning ... and utterly indefensible (more) By Saira Khan

Mark Alexander