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NOUAKCHOTT/NIAMEY (Reuters) - Efforts to eradicate female genital circumcision in West Africa have taken a step forward with a fatwa against the practice in Mauritania and sanctions in Niger against mothers who subject their daughters to it.

Known also as female genital mutilation (FGM), the tradition involves removing external parts of a girl's genitals and sometimes narrowing the vaginal opening. Bleeding, disease and problems in urinating and childbirth can result for millions of victims each year in Africa and the Middle East.

In many parts of West Africa, cutting has been presented as a religious obligation for Muslim women, leading many to believe that if they are not circumcised they are unclean and that their prayers will not be heard.

"Are there texts in the Koran that clearly require that thing? They do not exist," the secretary general of the Forum of Islamic Thought in Mauritania, Cheikh Ould Zein, told Reuters of the fatwa signed by 34 imams and scholars.

"On the contrary, Islam is clearly against any action that has negative effects on health. Now that doctors in Mauritania unanimously say this practice threatens health, it is therefore clear that Islam is against it," he added.

The fatwa, or religious ruling, was signed on January 12 but became widely known only this week in a country where some 72 percent of women are estimated to have undergone FGM and where practitioners charge an average 25 euros a time.

"The fact that the religious leaders in Mauritania are standing up and doing this is quite amazing," said Molly Melching, executive director of Tostan, a Senegal-based organisation working in Mauritania on FGM.