Muslim academics and scholars at a conference last month in Cairo, Egypt, said female genital cutting -- a practice sometimes referred to as female circumcision or female genital mutilation in which there is a partial or full removal of the labia, clitoris or both -- is incompatible with Islam and called for the governments of countries where the practice is common to make it a crime, the New York Times reports. According to the Times, about 6,000 girls undergo genital mutilation daily, and the World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 140 million women worldwide have undergone the practice. At least 90% of women who undergo genital cutting live in developing countries -- such as Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan -- while almost no women undergo the practice in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to UNICEF. The two-day conference at Al-Azhar University -- titled "The Prohibition of Violation of the Female Body Through Circumcision" -- was organized by Rudiger Nehberg, who in 2000 founded Target, a human rights organization aimed at ending female genital cutting. Many Muslim scholars and theologians at the conference said the practice had no religious justification, and every doctor in attendance said it had no medical justification. Heribert Kentenich, physician in chief of the women's clinic at DRK Hospital in Berlin, said it is "horrifying" that 75% of female circumcisions in Egypt are preformed by doctors, adding that the "medicalization of female genital mutilation makes it seem more acceptable." According to the Times, some men at the conference defended the practice as a custom. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian religious scholar and journalist, said, "We are on the side of those who ban this practice" but added that physicians should have the final say (El Ahl, New York Times, 12/6).