Somalis in Nairobi and Johannesburg

Together with Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa are among the countries in Africa that attract the most Somali migrants (Figure 1). Kenya has a long history as a destination for Somali refugees, due to its geographical proximity to Somalia. There are currently approximately half a million Somali refugees in Kenya (United Nations 2017). These figures must be taken as very rough estimates, because the Somali diaspora in Kenya is comprised not only of refugees living in camps in the northeastern part of the country, which is where UNHCR mostly collects its data, but also of urban refugees in Nairobi and other Kenyan cities (Campbell Reference Campbell2006). Additionally, the Somali diaspora in Kenya is comprised of Somalis who have obtained legal status as Kenyan citizens. Somalis started arriving in South Africa after the outbreak of civil war in their home country and the droughts that devastated the country in the early nineties. The UNHCR estimated a count of 31,000 in January 2018 (UNHCR 2018); however, there is no exact data regarding the number of Somalis in South Africa.

Figure 1.

Somali Migration along East and Southern Africa

Even though South Africa and Kenya represent very different destinations for Somalis, both countries share some important characteristics. First, due to their geographical locations in the African continent, the countries are more accessible for Somali migrants than Western countries. And in many cases, both countries become the first stop on the journey to relocation later to a third country in the West, the UAE, or Australia (Figures 2 and 3). Both in Kenya and South Africa, Somalis frequently encounter hostility from members of the local population and government organizations (see Whitaker in this forum; Jinnah Reference Jinnah2010; Murunga Reference Murunga, Arrous and Ki-Zerbo2009; Sadouni Reference Sadouni2009). In Kenya, anti-Somali hostility is not a new phenomenon, as Somalis have been stigmatized both by the government and the police due to historical conflicts that originated in colonial times. The massive arrests carried out by the Kenyan police in April 2014 in the aftermath of the Westgate terrorist attack serve as one of the latest examples of such hostility (see Lochery Reference Lochery2012 and Weitzberg Reference Weitzberg2017 for a detailed description of the situation Somali citizens endure in Kenya). South Africa does not share the same conflict-ridden history with Somalia that Kenya has. Nevertheless, the great social and economic inequalities in that country make migrants from other African countries vulnerable to hostility and even xenophobic attacks. Probably the most significant attacks of this nature took place in May 2008, leaving 64 dead and thousands displaced (Hassim et al. Reference Hassim, Kupe and Worby2008) and again more recently in January 2015. During these xenophobic episodes, Somalis are often attacked due to their successful businesses in townships and their ownership of spaza shops; as a result, many Somalis have temporarily moved from townships and rural areas to Mayfair looking for protection and support among their compatriots, with plans to later relocate back to Somalia or to another country where they might feel safer.

Figure 2.

Family-Based and Aspirational Migration among Somali Migrants

Figure 3.

World Map of migration to South Africa made by one of the participants of the project #EverydayMayfair, in which several maps were created using participatory methods. In this one, participants colored the countries they passed by on their route to South Africa, giving a meaning to each color and showcasing also family destinations and aspirational countries.

However, despite such hostility, xenophobia, and marginalization, Somalis in Kenya and South Africa find Nairobi and Johannesburg to be cosmopolitan cities where an African modernity flourishes. Both cities have become transitional places for Somalis as many of them journey through or temporarily inhabit these two cities that are often used as waystations to somewhere else. The two cities are also deeply connected in the migration route followed by many Somalis, as Somalis living in Johannesburg have often journeyed through or resided previously in Nairobi, which gives rise to strong social networks linking these two cities (Figure 4). A reverse route is sometimes also taken, as was the case after the wave of xenophobic attacks that broke out in South Africa at the beginning of 2015, when many Somalis staying in South Africa returned to Nairobi after temporarily transiting through Mayfair.

Figure 4.

Migration map made by one of the participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

The Somali population in Nairobi, comprised of Somali refugees, ethnic Somalis with Kenyan nationality, and diaspora returnees, generates a greater network of support for Somalis living or transiting through the city.^{Footnote 6} Nairobi can be seen as a central port for the Somali diaspora; due to its proximity to Somalia, it is normally one of the first stops for refugees who leave the country and the main base for diaspora returnees to reenter Somalia. Eastleigh also functions as a cargo port, a major node of commerce for the Somali diaspora, providing goods not only for Kenya but for eastern and southern Africa, and even to other places around the globe where Somalis can be found (see Carrier Reference Carrier2016 for a detailed ethnography of Eastleigh).

Meanwhile in Johannesburg, a much smaller Somali community can be found, mostly formed of refugees and asylum seekers, and isolation seems to be the main feeling among Somalis living in Mayfair. Nevertheless, this isolation that Somalis feel also offers a kind of protection. Some Somali businessmen in Mayfair are aware that they could be making much more money opening shops in townships, but they choose to stay in the quarter as they feel more secure inside this island (see Ripero-Muñiz Reference Ripero-Muñiz2019 for a deeper analysis of the relationship between identity and place with regard to Somalis in Mayfair and Eastleigh). Despite the difficulties they endure in Kenya and South Africa, Somalis have transformed the two neighborhoods of Eastleigh and Mayfair into two “little Mogadishus.” Distinctive Somali businesses, restaurants, and products, together with the reproduction of cultural and religious practices, recreate on a small scale the social, economic, and cultural everyday life of a once-peaceful Mogadishu that no longer exists (Figures 5 to 10). As Abdi notes, “Somali refugees around the globe strive to re-create the meaning of home in their new countries of settlement” (2015:13). The “meaning of home” is not only expressed through material recreations of the lost city, such as shops, restaurants, and coffee shops, but also by the everyday practices taking place in those spaces such as gender relations and religious practices (see Ripero-Muñiz Reference Ripero-Muñiz2017 for a visual documentation of everyday life practices in Mayfair).

Figure 5.

Photo of Mayfair taken by participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

Figure 6.

Photo of Mayfair taken by participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

Figure 7.

Photo of Mayfair taken by participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

Figure 8.

Photo of Mayfair taken by participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

Figure 9.

Photo of Mayfair taken by participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

Figure 10.

Photo of Mayfair taken by participants of the project #EverydayMayfair

The reproduction of cultural and religious practices in a particular locale connects the two neighborhoods to each other, and also to Somalia and to other places where the Somali diaspora has settled. Thus, even if Somalis are nowadays spread around the world, the repetition, contestation, and transformation of certain practices connects Somalis across borders, creating a translocal community. The concept of translocality (Appadurai Reference Appadurai and Fardon1995) emphasizes the agency of migrants in the migration process; it “describe[s] socio-spatial dynamics and processes of simultaneity and identity formation that transcend boundaries” (Greiner & Sakdapolrak Reference Greiner and Sakdapolrak2013:373). Such is the case of the Somalis living in Eastleigh and Mayfair, where the translocal reproduction of cultural and religious practices—including repetition or contestation—creates a sense of belonging to a collective that spans borders, independent of the territorial boundaries of the nation state.

Empowerment of Somali women

Non-western women tend to be perceived as incapable of autonomy (Philips Reference Philips2007), dominated by strong patriarchal, cultural, and religious power structures. Somali women in particular are viewed as the epitome of the “Third World Woman”: black, Muslim, and uneducated (Mohanty Reference Mohanty1988), oppressed by a strong patriarchal society that relegates them to an inferior place without voice or choice. This is a monolithic perception that doesn’t take into account that women migrate independently, start businesses on their own, and take ownership of many of their cultural and religious practices as a way to exercise their agency.

Falis’s case, like others presented here, challenges this widespread stereotypical representation. Falis is one of many Somali women residing in Nairobi since the conflict broke out in Somalia. Divorced several times and a single mother to an extended family, she makes a living as a businesswoman, often traveling to the UAE, where she buys goods such as perfumes, textiles, or gold to resell later in Nairobi. As she explains, the war created a situation of power circulation in which women became economically empowered, gaining more control over their lives and those of their families and creating in this way new forms of power and social organization that benefitted the whole community (Allen Reference Allen1999). Moreover, the situation of war and conflict also turned gender into a “core organizing principle” (Boyd & Grieco Reference Boyd and Grieco2003) in the migration process of Somalis, because women are normally given preference when migrating. There are two main reasons for this gendered approach to migration: first, it has been suggested that it is a way to avoid gender-based violence, and second, there is the widespread belief that women tend to be more responsible and will always send some money back home in order to support other family members (Al-Sharmani Reference Al-Sharmani2010). As Fatma, a teacher in her early forties and a mother of two children who lives between Nairobi and Europe, where her husband resides, stated:

The economic empowerment some women experienced as a result of the war was then bolstered by transnational migration, with women becoming the “survival kit of Somali society.” Nuruddin Farah (Reference Farah2000) illustrated this point in relation to Somalis living in Italy, where Somali women have become the breadwinners, supporting men completely. Abdi (Reference Abdi2015) also emphasized the importance for Somali women to work in the South African context in order to maintain their independence and support their families. Most of the youngest and unmarried women I interviewed in Johannesburg declared that, for them, the main difference between living in Somalia and South Africa was that in South Africa, they have to work; they have had to learn to survive on their own. Married women sometimes also found that the money their husbands brought home was not enough, so they also tried to work and, in this way, were also able to help their family members back in Somalia. Divorced women were the ones who struggled the most, as they did not normally get support from their ex-husbands, and if they worked, they could not take care of their children, resulting in many having to send their children back to Somalia to be looked after by parents or other relatives, as Saynab was forced to do. Somali women have then become an economic engine both inside and outside of Somalia and in many cases, such as Falis’s, they serve as the main providers for their families, transforming in this way gender roles and practices both inside and outside the country (Al-Sharmani Reference Al-Sharmani2010; Bryden & Steiner Reference Bryden and Steiner1998; Farah Reference Farah2000; Gardner & El Bushra Reference Gardner and El Bushra2004; Hopkins Reference Hopkins2010; Jinnah Reference Jinnah2010; Langellier Reference Langellier2010). However, even if the war and transnational migration have contributed to the transformation of gender roles and practices, gender relations among Somalis living in Nairobi and Johannesburg are strongly regulated by Islamic percepts and beliefs, as Kadijah, a well-educated Somali-Kenyan woman who works as a consultant for the UN and NGOs based in Nairobi stated during an interview: “You cannot talk about women’s roles in the Somali culture without Islam. If you are going to talk about gender relations, religion is always going to emerge” (Interview with Kadijah, Nairobi, December 15, 2013).

Somaliness and Islam

Fadumo is a very devout woman who used to run a wholesale shop in the upper floor of Amal, before she was resettled by the UNHCR in the United States. She was married but never had children; even though she would have liked to have become a mother, she stated that she had come to accept Allah’s will. Moreover, being childless had left her with plenty of time for reading and learning, and she taught herself several languages, including Arabic, which made it possible for her to have direct access to Qur’anic writings. Her words describe her experience of the way Islam regulates gender relations among Somalis. All of the women I talked to in Nairobi and Johannesburg followed Islamic precepts. They identified themselves both as Muslims and as Somalis. Their sense of Somaliness emerged as an identification with certain discourses, narratives, and practices based on shared structures, together with the implementation of cultural and religious practices in everyday life, as explored above. One of the most frequently repeated statements during the interviews in both cities was: “One language, one culture, one religion,” which emphasizes an apparent sense of unity among Somalis. Islam is an important identifier among Somalis, and it has become deeply interlinked with Somaliness, as Afyare Elmi (2010:50) described:

Muslim identity is so prevalent among Somalis that some of the women interviewed saw no difference between being Somali and being Muslim. Amina was a young Somali woman who had been living in Eastleigh for a year at the time of her interview. She was waiting to travel to Ethiopia to marry her husband-to-be before relocating with him to the UK. Amina stated, “I see no difference between Somali culture and Islam; whatever we do is Islamic. Being a Somali woman means being a Muslim woman” (Interview with Amina, December 20, 2013, Nairobi). Amina equates being Somali with being Muslim; however, many other women insisted on making a clear distinction between what they considered culture and what they considered religion. Samia, a Somali-Canadian woman in her mid-forties, left Somalia with a scholarship to study in Canada just before the conflict began in the nineties. After more than twenty years in Canada, she decided to return to East Africa in order to “give back.” Although she has her residency in Nairobi, she runs an NGO in Somalia that seeks to empower women, and she travels often to Mogadishu. Her years living abroad have made her question certain aspects of her “Somali” culture and reject those ones that relegate women to second place:

Samia’s words distinguish very clearly what constitutes culture for her—something “man-made”—versus religion, which is something she perceives to come directly from God and which therefore cannot be challenged. In the case of Samia, her feminist background makes her very critical of some aspects of Somali culture, but she does not question her faith. The distinction Samia makes also carries with it the implicit connotation of the sacred versus the cultural practices of the everyday life (Yuval Davis Reference Weitzberg2014). Coming from a very different background is Halima, a very devout older Somali woman, mother of four grown children, who owns a business in Mayfair, where she has lived for more than twenty years, even as she longs to move to Australia. Halima is a very religious and strict Muslim woman, and even if her age, background, and life story are very different from Samia’s, she expressed similar views in regard to culture and religion:

Both Halima and Samia placed religion ahead of culture; even though their arguments might be different, their religious identities seem to play a more relevant role in their lives than their cultural backgrounds. During interviews and interaction with women in the two cities, whenever a distinction was made between culture and religion, the latter was always favored and considered more important. Even my research assistant in Johannesburg assured me that no Somali was going to answer differently; “Religion will always, always come first for Somalis.” Islam offers for Somalis a unifying identification above the categories of clan, gender, class, or even nationality. Islam also cuts across time and space, creating a coherent continuity in the context of displacement.

These views on culture vis-à-vis religion reflect, among other things, the strong Islamic revival that Somalia has undergone since the 1960s (Elmi Reference Elmi2010) and that intensified during the war in the 1990s. Works by Adeline Masquelier (Reference Masquelier2009) and Saba Mahmood (Reference Mahmood2005) have documented this process of Islamic revival also taking place among Muslim women in other regions of Africa, such as Niger and Egypt respectively. But in the case of Somalia, the Islamic revival was slightly different. During the 1960s, Somali scholars who had been granted scholarships to study in the Arab countries of the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, began to return to Somalia, bringing with them a stronger view of Islam and particularly Wahabism. So even though Somalia was already a Muslim country, various Islamic interpretations and practices were more relaxed than they are today, when Islam has permeated all aspects of Somali society. There is, however, a tendency to believe that religious people have no agency at all (Mack Reference Mack2003), as their lives are dictated by religious mandates; this attitude ignores the fact that the individual is still able to exercise his own agency by choosing how to implement those religious mandates or precepts. Both Samia and Halima considered Islam to be a higher category than “culture,” but the way they interpret and implement it is different. For instance, it means wearing a niqab for Halima, but Samia is content to cover her hair with a turban and wear jeans. Here, agency is not only exercised in relation to one’s free will, but also in relation to something that is right, adding a moral, ethical, or religious component to individual agency (Mack Reference Mack2003). As Marja Tiilikainen observed among Somali women living in Finland: “Islam may work as a moral and also practical compass in everyday life for Somali refugee women” (2007:224). Moreover, as Laura Leming indicates, “Religious agency is enacted in emotional, intellectual, and behavioral strategies, thereby enabling individuals to negotiate overlapping and valued identities” (Leming Reference Leming2007:73). Samia and Halima both value their Somali and Muslim traditions, but their religious agency make them consider Islam a more significant identification. This negotiation between different identifications becomes in some cases strategical, as may be observed in the case of Saynab’s choosing to marry a Lebanese man on the grounds that he was a Muslim, and as the other cases presented in the next section also aim to demonstrate. There is also an important temporal dimension to religious agency, as it is “fueled by memory and a vision for the future” (Emirbayer & Mische Reference Emirbayer and Mische1998:77). Religious agency looks to the past, in the sense that is based on and inherits a “tradition,” but it also looks to the future, as it can transform the way tradition is implemented. A tradition is not something static, but rather fluid and open to change through the implementation of practices adapting to new contexts (Macintyre Reference MacIntyre1981; Asad Reference Asad2009). In this context, the agency of Somali women relies on how they relate to and implement the precepts of Islam. Reflexivity becomes the key to acting in one way or another (Archer Reference Archer2003), before making an important decision, such as whom to marry or whether to circumcise their daughters. Women consider and evaluate their cultural and religious values before acting in one way or another, choosing what they consider is right. This reflexivity is always dialogical (Bakhtin Reference Bakhtin1981), as it refers to the everyday dialogues between individuals and the social structures they are embedded in, as well as the internal dialogue we enact with ourselves before actions are taken.

Therefore, by negotiating their religious and cultural identities within a context of displacement, Somali women become agents in the production of practices, choosing consciously which ones to implement and which ones to discontinue. They make use of their religious agency to challenge cultural practices they disagree with; they enhance their agency by supporting it with Islamic arguments in order to make it stronger and to some point incontestable. Moreover, the sense of Islam as a “moral and practical compass” empowers some Somali women, as they use arguments based on Islamic teachings to question and, in some cases, discontinue practices of their Somali culture that they no longer wish to perform. When a tension arises between cultural and Islamic beliefs, the Islamic one is normally favored. This was the case in both contexts studied, emphasizing the translocal connection mentioned before and further analyzed in the next section in relation to the politics surrounding marriage and female circumcision.

Cultural and Islamic Practices in Dialogue

Even if transnational migration has in many ways transformed gender roles and empowered women, female circumcision and marriage remained two pivotal events—almost rites of passage—in the lives of the Somali women who were interviewed for this project.^{Footnote 7} The majority of them were young women in their early or mid-twenties who started questioning marriage and female circumcision once they left Somalia. A context of displacement in which women were exposed to other realities made them realize that circumcision among women is not the norm globally. Many came to learn this during their pregnancy or when they gave birth, through their contact with hospitals, medical practitioners, or other African women who were experiencing motherhood at the same time. The politics and dynamics surrounding these practices, marriage, and women’s ideas about what makes a good husband are quite revealing in terms of understanding how Somali women express and navigate their agency.

Hodan, a young Somali-Kenyan, the daughter of a businesswoman in Nairobi, was a student of International Relations when I first met her. After graduating in Nairobi, she decided to go to Khartoum to learn Arabic, where she now resides. Her parents wanted her to marry a Somali man when she finished her studies in Khartoum, but she didn’t want to do so. Instead, she wanted to work at the Qatar Foundation so that she could practice her Arabic and live in Qatar. She noted that if she ended up marrying an Arab, her parents would think she was crazy, but she wasn’t too worried about such a perception, because she knew that as long as her prospective husband was a Muslim she would not be doing anything wrong. Hodan is one of many young Somali women in Nairobi accessing the Qur’an herself thanks to her knowledge of Arabic. Among other things, this gives her some power, a certain measure of control, and the confidence to rebel against certain aspects of her “Somali culture,” such as the marriage convention which prefers a Somali husband. She uses her firsthand knowledge of the Qur’an to contest a customary practice she doesn’t want to follow. This same situation occurred with Saynab in Johannesburg, who decided to marry a Lebanese man, arguing that he was also a Muslim, so she was not doing anything wrong, despite the criticism she received from most members of the community in Mayfair. Both cases showcase how a distinction between Islam and Somaliness is clearly made to contest the politics surrounding marriage.

Marriage brings with it many expectations, and the Somali women I spoke to expressed ambivalent feelings toward these expectations. Several of these women were marrying for the first time, and they expressed romantic ideals both about the wedding ceremony itself and about the lives that awaited them. Others viewed marriage as simply an arranged transaction in order for them to survive, and for their families to benefit from the bridewealth. Finally, a few women viewed marriage as an act of liberation and emancipation. As such, marriage was also described as elevating the status of Somali women in society. Arranged marriage is quite common among Somalis, and young women, in some cases—especially for economic reasons—find it difficult to refuse the family decision for her to marry a man who has been chosen for her. This was the case for Saynab, whose first marriage was arranged and formalized between her family in Somalia and her husband-to-be in Johannesburg, a man whom she had never met. In some situations, young women are married against their will, the imposition of an unwanted marriage coming from the woman’s family. However, according to respondents in both cities, more women are starting to rebel against unwanted marriages. As Hibo, a young Somali who has been living in Nairobi for several years, stated, “Most of the girls who live in Nairobi are more exposed, they see the cosmopolitan life” (Interview with Hibo, Nairobi, December 18, 2013). According to Hibo, women exposed to a more “cosmopolitan life” become more aware of the freedoms that they could enjoy. Her position on how migration opens a space for more cosmopolitan expression to take place echoes the views of many other Somali women interviewed for this study. These women state that they were only exposed to certain ways of doing things in Somalia, and that the experience of living in a foreign country had opened their eyes to other possibilities. This does not imply that expressions of cosmopolitanism do not take place in Somalia itself; historically, Mogadishu was one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the Indian Ocean, a commercial node for centuries. The city also become a cultural hub for the arts, with its golden age occurring in the sixties and seventies. Instagram accounts such as Best of Somalia post images from this period in which cosmopolitanism flourished. Instagram is also used as a platform to share current cosmopolitan expressions in Somalia. Ugaaso Abukar Boocow, a diaspora returnee known as Ugaasada, who has a following of thousands of people, regularly posts images of her cosmopolitan life in Mogadishu.

Both in Somalia and in the diasporic communities of Nairobi and Johannesburg, the involvement of the whole family is a norm when choosing whom the woman should marry. Such an arrangement can give rise to a situation in which the woman, wanting to marry a man whom her family doesn’t approve of, decides on an agreed elopement with the man she has chosen. This is one way in which women express their agency fully, even if that means a complete rejection from their families. At the same time, access to the Qur’anic teachings gives women arguments for contesting a practice they don’t always agree with. As Fauzia states:

All the women interviewed in both cities described an ideal husband as someone who is respectful, educated, and who can provide them with a “better life.” Many women also strongly argued that they could marry anyone as long he was Muslim, and some of them, such as Saynab, do so even if that means facing criticism from the entire community. The social pressure of the community plays an important part. As Deqah, one of the respondents in Nairobi, asserted:

Deqah’s words highlight the enormous pressure from the community to marry a Somali. This reveals the importance of backing up a personal decision by using arguments from Islamic teachings. As these cases demonstrate, one of the central ways by which Somali women in Nairobi and Johannesburg exercise their will and engage with the politics surrounding marriage is to use economic and personal reasons that are supported by arguments from the Qur’an, rather than capitulating to the expectations placed on them by the local and the translocal Somali communities in which they are immersed.

Female circumcision is another case in which women use such arguments to contest a cultural practice they want to discontinue. In Somalia, female circumcision is practiced in its most drastic form; infibulation or pharaonic circumcision has been practiced for centuries.^{Footnote 8} The practice of infibulation is linked to marriage, as one of its main objectives is to ensure the virginity of the woman and the bridewealth the family will receive when she gets married. Also, as two young women explained in Nairobi, men prefer that their wives should be circumcised in order to control their libido:

Although different organizations such Equality Now or the Somali Women Studies Centre are involved in efforts to eradicate female circumcision, it is not easy to discontinue a practice that has been performed for centuries. Women explained that female circumcision was based on Somali nomadic traditions, and they pointed to older women as the ones responsible for the continuation of this practice. As Luul put it:

However, grandmothers and older women are not solely responsible for the perpetuation of this practice, as they are governed by the rules of a society that supports certain interpretations of the Qur’an in their favor, which Faiza, an activist working for a women’s rights organization in Nairobi, pointed out. She stated that to eradicate the practice in Somalia completely, religious leaders would have to come together and deem female circumcision un-Islamic.

All women interviewed in Nairobi and Johannesburg during my research referred to their circumcision as a traumatic event with painful physical and psychological side effects, and all of them expressed their desire to not put their daughters through it. The way they challenge a traumatic cultural practice is by exercising their religious agency on the basis that it is a practice not supported by the Qur’an. They blame people in Somalia for being uneducated, and the fact of being away from family members, especially grandmothers, has led them to question and repudiate a practice they consider un-Islamic. They also realized that circumcision is not the norm for women around the world. As Kadijah in Nairobi explained:

Many women became aware that circumcision is not a widespread practice when they gave birth, as Sagal, a young woman who has been living in Mayfair for a couple of years realized when she had her daughter in a neighborhood hospital:

Sagal distinguished again between culture and religion, giving priority to the latter. All the women interviewed considered circumcision a cultural practice, and not something that was prescribed by the Qur’an. As Amina stated: “Circumcision for women is not emphasized in Islam. At least the way Somalis do it. That is Somali culture from the African side” (Interview with Amina, Nairobi, December 20, 2013). This was a view that was also held by less-educated women, who don’t access the Qur’an themselves but who are aware of the discourses and narratives currently circulating inside and outside the Somali diaspora in this regard. Most of the women in both cities declared that having left Somalia had opened their eyes in this regard, as they have since realized that circumcision is not the norm everywhere, and that it can be contested. It belongs to the cultural realm and “culture is man-made…that’s why it can be challenged,” as Samia stated previously. Sagal’s words show once again the importance of religion above culture among Somalis; this, together with the effect of migration on her life, became an argument to discontinue a practice with which she doesn’t agree. Some of the women in Nairobi and Johannesburg emphasized how the practice is decreasing in both places, that they are not doing it to their daughters. In short, having access to the Qur’an and interpreting it themselves appeared to have given women arguments with which they could challenge the practice of female circumcision. As Samia declared: