Excerpt:
When Alifya (Ally) Sulemanji first disclosed on Facebook that she opposed female genital cutting, she got unfriended by a handful of women in her religious community.
But the backlash got worse.
Now, says the New York activist, some women at her mosque won't talk to her or look at her. And even those who support her views, she says, ignore her at religious gatherings out of fear of being shunned themselves.
Sulemanji is not alone.
In the wake of the federal government's historic female genital mutilation investigation in metro Detroit involving the Dawoodi Bohra, a small Indian Muslim sect, advocates seeking to end genital cutting say they are getting backlash like never before from fellow members of their sect for speaking out against the practice.