Re: Reza Aslan was wrong on many fronts as well…interesting read
The Shafi School of thought considers it as mandatory, AFAIK…so we’re talking Malaysia and Inodnesia. They practice a mild form, not the…well… I won’t go into the gory details, but it’s akin to male circumcision in terms of the severity of the cut. In Malaysia, I understand they also have a ritualized “symbolic” circumcision that does not involve cutting.
In any case, I think it is fair to say that at some point it got absorbed into Muslim cultures, and that it did spread along those cultural lines. The practice survives in some Muslim countries, but I think that’s totally tangential to the conservative nature of the countries. It’s not strictly an African phenomena.