Female genital mutilation is both barbaric and savage — not to mention medical unnecessary, and instead, damaging to the health of the little girls forced to undergo the procedure.

But an imam in Virginia — in the United States! — has come out in its defense.

What’s he say?

Imam Shaker Elsayed of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church says FGM is helpful to curbing young girls’ sexual drive.

Hard Core USA News has more:

Virginia imam is advocating for female genital mutilation, or FGM, despite the fact that the practice is illegal in the United States. Imam Shaker Elsayed of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, appears to believe that abusing women under the guise of religious purity codes is morally virtuous. Mutilating a little girl’s genitals today can prevent “hypersexuality” in the future, says Imam Elsayed in a sermon to parishioners. After suggesting that the more extreme forms of mutilation may need to be avoided, the imam lectures his parishioners about seeking guidance from Muslim gynecologists familiar with the illegal procedure.

FGM is “the honorable thing to do if needed,” he preaches, detailing the supposed virtues of the horrifying practice. Imam Elsayed explains: [Cut] the tip of the sexually sensitive part of the girl so that she is not hypersexually active…in societies where circumcision of girls is completely prohibited, hypersexuality takes over the entire society and a woman is not satisfied with one person or two or three. The depraved talk was posted on YouTube and caught the attention of MEMRI, a watchdog group that monitors Islamist rhetoric around the world.

“Elsayed’s comments during a lecture on child rearing and family life last month sparked a brief controversy last Friday after a right-wing watchdog group circulated a video clip of his speech online,” reports The Washington Post.

The Board of Directors at the imam’s mosque only condemned their religious leader’s comments Monday after the public began voicing outrage over the leaked video. Representatives of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center added that the brutal practice of FGM violates both U.S. and Islamic law. However, the mosque failed to acknowledge that FGM is not all that uncommon in the Islamic world. “FGM is practiced throughout the world, with an estimated 200 million women and girls having undergone genital cutting as a coming-of-age ritual, typically under age 15,” notes NPR.

Shockingly, FGM is practiced with increasing frequency in the United States. The high-profile arrests of three FGM-practicing Muslim doctors in Michigan recently introduced the topic back into the national conversation after complacency and naiveté fooled Americans into believing that such a horrific practice can only occur in third-world countries. Cases of FGM in America have been skyrocketing, largely as a result immigration from FGM-practicing Muslim-majority countries like Somalia. The Daily Wire reported on the disturbing phenomenon in May: The CDC states that the massive increase in the monstrous practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is “wholly a result of rapid growth in the number of immigrants from FGM/C-practicing countries living in the United States.” Virtually all of the countries listed by the CDC were dominated by Muslims.

And that’s not even including Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation. The author of the 2016 study asserted that if Indonesia were included, the number of victims would increase by “several tens of thousands.” Recently-retired CDC researcher Howard Goldberg told The New York Post, “Indonesian figures became available after we wrote our paper, but it turns out that FGM was much more common in Indonesia than had been thought.”

As Paula Kweskin, a human rights lawyer and producer of the film Honor Diaries points out, “In the United States, 507,000 women are at risk or have undergone the procedure.” In an op-ed for USA Today, Kweskin argues that the country shouldn’t turn a blind-eye to FGM or worse, defend and excuse it, due to fears stemming from political correctness or so-called “Islamophobia.” “Culture is no excuse for abuse. No religion or culture should be the impetus for hurting, mutilating or abusing anyone, and our children should be protected. For too long, FGM has been practiced under the radar in the United States. … My hope for all women and girls is that we will stand for equality,” writes Kweskin.