Christian missionaries in Africa were among the first to object to FGM, but Christian communities in Africa do practise it. In 2013 UNICEF identified 19 African countries in which at least 10 percent of Christian women and girls aged 15 to 49 had undergone FGM; in Niger, 55 percent of Christian women and girls had experienced it, compared with two percent of their Muslim counterparts. The only Jewish group known to have practised it is the Beta Israel of Ethiopia. Judaism requires male circumcision but does not allow FGM. FGM is also practised by animist groups, particularly in Guinea and Mali. History
Antiquity
The practices origins are unknown. Gerry Mackie has suggested that, because FGMs east–west, north–south distribution in Africa meets in Sudan, infibulation may have begun there with the Meroite civilization (c. 800 BCE – c. 350 CE), before the rise of Islam, to increase confidence in paternity. According to historian Mary Knight, Spell 1117 (c. 1991–1786 BCE) of the Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts may refer in hieroglyphs to an uncircumcised girl (mt):

The spell was found on the sarcophagus of Sit-hedjhotep, now in the Egyptian Museum, and dates to Egypts Middle Kingdom. (Paul F. ORourke argues that mt probably refers instead to a menstruating woman.) The proposed circumcision of an Egyptian girl, Tathemis, is also mentioned on a Greek papyrus, from 163 BCE, in the British Museum: "Sometime after this, Nephoris [Tathemiss mother] defrauded me, being anxious that it was time for Tathemis to be circumcised, as is the custom among the Egyptians.
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include:

Business and management
Business process, activities that produce a specific service or product for customers
Business process modeling, activity of representing processes of an enterprise in order to deliver improvements
Manufacturing process management, a collection of technologies and methods used to define how products are to be manufactured.