So Jews can do whatever they like in the name of religion in Germany because, oooh, history.
Riiiight.
You do realise that refusing to accept ever any change in German culture/practice/society due to events before most of the population was born is itself a teensy weensy bit racist?
Thanks for the re-formulation. I’d have thought my original formulation would be incendiary enough.
To that statement: Please provide some reason that any German pronouncement on Jewish religious practice should be taken seriously.
Germany has proven a propensity to make ill-considered “Jewish Laws.” Their errors were of a magnitude to disqualify that nation from ruling on Jewish religious practice.
Or, as you put it, “oooh history.”
To me, “oooh history” is personal. To others it isn’t. One can’t expect one’s personal interaction with “oooh history” to carry the day, but one can expect others one is debating to grok that “oooh history” is composed of billions of personal stories. In this case, millions or tens of millions will have been touched by the specific event in question. So the “oooh history” formulation is something less than civil from the point of view of those millions or tens of millions.
This would be a “change” in German culture/practice/society that “changes” said society to make illegal the practice of non-Christian religions - per said past events.
Such a measure is repugnant on the face of it, and there is a high bar of proof (that Germany and San Francisco both failed to meet) that there is widespread lasting harm from male circumcision.
However, in the German case, I do not think it is racist to posit that since Germany has proven herself very bad at making such decisions, it is valid to demand a higher bar from Germany when the subject is proving that a specific Jewish religious practice is so bad it – and indeed, the practice of Judaism in general – must be outlawed.
Despite your light tone, the subject of Germany outlawing Jewish (and Muslim) religious observance strikes me as self-evidently evocative of German history.
In its actions, Germany is again attacking minority religious and ethnic groups. Were Australia to make such a law, I’d think “Meh. They’re wrong,” although yes, the question of anti-semitism would come up in my mind. In the German case I do not think it racist to think, rather, “These guys just don’t quit.”
The Civil War was well over in the 1950s and 1960s in America. While there was (and is) racism both in the American South and the American North, the lynchings were overwhelmingly more common, and Jim Crow laws were more virulently applied and clung to, in the South.
So no, I do not think it racist to demand an extra-high bar for Germans when the subject is outlawing Judaism.
For. Freaking. Ever.
He who remembers history is condemned to recite it, my friend. I have no compunction about playing that role here for your amusement.
If Germany was trying to outlaw Judaism you might have a point, as they are not, you don’t. In the case of a Muslim child, a German court has interpreted **European **human rights law as giving precedence to the right of the child to physical integrity over the parents’ right to freedom of religion.
Sorry is you don’t like it but making this into an anti-German issue is ridiculous. No rights are absolute, my rights may well conflict with your rights, and don’t think anyone on this board would claim that all practices done in the name of a religion are acceptable or should be legal. The court had to make a ruling based on the Charter and case law from the European Court of Human Rights and they have done so in a way that is consistent with the trend of European thought which gives maximum weight to the rights of the child and lesser weight to the rights of the parent.
See my post #4 for the text of the relevent bits of the Charter of Fundemental Rights.
I may pay a bit more attention to your posts if you stop posting inflammatory bullshit like this.
Germany is not outlawing Judaism. This has nothing to do with Judaism. Every time you claim it is you look even more like a fool. Every time you go on about Germans and history you look even more like a racist.
My parents are Holocaust survivors. Many of their relatives were killed. It’s not just history to me, it’s part of my very soul.
My dad is an atheist and yet every day he is glad he lives in a country where he has the freedom to observe Judaism exactly as much as he wants. That’s why he fled Europe after the war.
I have no issue with someone being wary due to something that happened is living memory (even though that generation is slowly dying out). It is the no, never attitude. You are judging an entire culture on the past and saying they can never change and/or they should never be allowed an opinion. You may not like it, but that is racist. If those are genuinely your views then you are in fact a racist.
How far should we take this back? Should the US be allowed to have a say in matters regarding race, for example? Should I, as a Brit, be wary of Scandinavians, Germans, French, Dutch and Italians (whilst also keeping an eye on the Spanish)? What’s the statute of limitations on being shit in the past? You seem to think there isn’t one.
I also don’t think religions have freedom to do whatever they want (see my comment earlier about stoning and Sharia law). Circumcision may well be in violation of a European directive and so one small part of Germany (not the whole of Germany, even though you seem to want to tar all Germans with the same brush, which is a typical attitude of racists) and so a judgement has been made.
So what are your views on the behaviour of religious groups from, say 4000 years ago onwards?
By your logic anyone can look back at the bad things done by such groups and use them as a stick to beat them with now. Happy with that? You certainly seem to be.
Your comments are ridiculous, inflammatory and prejudicial if not downright racist.
I’m not sure I understand your last sentence. It seems to have some words jumbled.
However, I take it your point is that some individual circumstances clearly justify not breastfeeding.
Seems to me that fits the analogy pretty well, as the German Court has clearly stated that some individual circumstances clearly justify circumcision.
My point is the larger one: that using the courts to pressure parents into making certain child-rearing decisions (even with allowance for individual exceptions) should only be done where the scientific evidence of harm from parental practice is clear and significant.
Male circumcision certainly does not rise to that level - the evidence is less persuasive for circumcision than it is for breastfeeding. Given that we as a culture would not be comfortable legally requiring parents to breastfeed, it follows that we should not legally require parents to not circumcise.
To address the “antisemitism” point: I think the case has nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. However, I do think the case has to do with using allegedly neutral laws to enforce the majority culture on minorities. You can see much the same thing in this thread - as in “… cutting off a part of your kid’s dick to satisfy a primitive iron age myth about sky wizards is acceptable in modern Europe”. The battle-lines are clear: primitive superstition and tribalism on the one hand, and European enlightenment and individualism on the other. This is what is going on, not some sort of neo-Nuremberg laws.
The whole notion of not judging other people’s cultures, of not interfering with other people’s practices, which is also a step-child of the European enlightenment, is being discarded.
Now, before you all start to mention Aztec human sacrifice in this regard, I also agree that any respect for other people’s cultures has to have reasonable limits. In the context of child-rearing, those limits, to my mind, are: where the scientific medical literature discloses that the practice in question, when weighed against alleged benefits, produces significant harms. Also, that this standard be even-handedly applied to both majority and minority child-rearing practices.
Yes, sometimes. It’s an objective fact.
That doesn’t imply that women aren’t persecuted more. It’s not an either-or.
Circumcision is a fundamental tenet of Judaism. The motivation may have nothing to do with Judaism (or Islam). In Germany, that’s obviously suspect, but whatever. It still affects Judaism deeply. You can’t just dismiss it.
Ironically, “anti-semitism” technically refers to Muslims as well as Jews.
This does get to the heart of the case. It is a judgement call as to whether male, infant circumcision cause “significant harm”. This court in Germany has come to the conclusion that it does cause harm because it infringes the child’s rights as defined in the Charter of Fundemental Rights. The court is not saying circumcision necessarily causes physical harm. They are also saying it is a balance as they recognise that there are medical conditions where it is the appropriate course of treatment and the parents CAN make the call that infringes the child’s right to “physical integrity”.
Note that the court is balancing the conflicting rights of the child and the parent. This German court has come down one way but it is quiet possible a different set of judges, either in a different part of Europe or the superior judges in the ECHR, would come to a different conclusion.
And if in Germany, or in Europe, there is a higher court, I certainly hope the decision is appealed yet again. And I hope for the sake of Germany and of Europe that the State does not seize for itself the right to overturn the longstanding practice of Muslims for over a thousand years, and of Jews for three thousand, with no actual evidence of compelling interest on the part of the State.
In the U.S. we are at least supposed to insist on said compelling interest; I don’t know the comparative European and German attitudes, other than in the historical sense. However, I certainly feel that the correct attitude is that you must have some compelling interest to destroy the right to practice selected religions, and circumcision is basic to both Judaism and Islam.
And yes, of all courts, a German court should be the last choice for outlawing Judaism. Granted, since earlier decrees to that effect made the Jewish population a comparatively moot point, the order came at the expense of Muslims, in the midst of European tensions with Muslim neighbors.
Germany – and Europe – has made similar pronouncements before. In the cold light of day, they have never appeared particularly enlightened.
The first pass was: Jews seize Christian babies to make matzot with their blood.
How superstitious! The Nazis updated it to: Jews are pseudo-racially driven to be forever at war with the Aryan race, keeping said master race from its pseudo-scientifically determined rightful estate.
How 20th century!
Now, Jews are driven by backward doctrine to mutilate their own babies, which we have just decided is harmful to them but not in any way we can actually prove – we just feel that way.
Yes, now it’s enlightened and scientific.
No sale.
I did not. I merely observed the historical baggage Germany does carry, and can never be forgiven for. Upon challenge on the subject, I made some specifics of that history clear.
I’m more than glad to stick to the particulars of a case from a people with a less pronounced history of anti-semitism. I cannot take Germany seriously when it makes – or as you split the hair, interprets – a law into a de-legitimizing of the practice of Judaism.
I made one very clear and actually very narrow statement. I believe it does apply more broadly, but we’ll stick with the statement that so offends you:
Germany cannot be taken seriously when it makes – or interprets into being – a law that bans the practice of Judaism. It has been disqualified, forever, from doing so.
This is particularly narrow as I expounded it. I’m glad to argue broader points, but I seem to have riled up many of the savants among us who believe it’s best to bury the hatchet. Trouble is, that’s a very large hatchet to bury, and you can’t very well dig a grave that big in Europe without disturbing the very bones that condemn the exercise.
Once again, I do hope Germany, and more generally Europe, overturn this ruling at the level of a higher court. You may smugly declare Europe, or Germany if you like, to be far more enlightened than the benighted savages in the States.
Such smugness will apply, of course, solely to the Christian (and atheist and agnostic, and likely Hindu, Buddhist, etc.,) populations.
It will not apply to Muslims and Jews, who have newly been stripped of the right to practice their religion.
Conveniently Christianity gets off scot-free.
Were I to put forth an argument that the doctrine of Heaven and Hell as a celestial reward and punishment scheme harms children – for which I think there’s a far more compelling case – I think I’d have a much harder time convincing the courts of Europe of the state’s right to impose said ideology on its citizens.
But hey, the Soviets did. I suppose that worked out well…
Ah, I am in the presence of a rabbinic scholar.
I am aware that you can appear before the court and wheedle and plead that you believe there’s a medical reason you think your child should be exempt.
You have no freedom, however, to simply practice Judaism – or for that matter, Islam – under this law.
Nut-uh! Every time you disagree with me, you look like a fool!
:smack:
Try it without the personal invective, Einstein.
Tell me, do you propose to also ban films and books about the shoah itself, because of their universally racist content?
Germany cannot be taken seriously when it makes – or interprets into being – laws banning the practice of Judaism.
For. Freaking. Ever.
I would be interested in reading the actual text of the German Court ruling. From the secondary sources, it would appear that their ruling was three-fold:
Circumcision was in and of itself grievous bodily harm;
Circumcision was an inteference in a child’s bodily integrity; and
Circumcision interfered with a child’s right to change religions. The quote from the news: "“The body of the child is irreparably and permanently changed by a circumcision,” the court said. “This change contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs.”
The last two are rights guaranteed by human rights legislation.
To my mind, none of these hold water on the facts (again, I don’t have the benefit of actually reading the decision).
The test for grievous bodily harm I have already discussed.
It is granted that circumcision intefers with bodily integrity. So do pretty well every decision involving an infant’s body. This test should be combined with the test for grievous bodily harm, to determine which interferences are unjustified. De minimus interferences with infant integrity should not engage a rights analysis.
It is not a principle of any existing religion I know of that a person not be circumcised. Being circumcised has no effect whatsoever on a child’s ability to later change his religion. This reason is simply a non-starter. A person can convert from Judaism or Islam even though they are circumcised - no priest or other religious figure, as far as I know, would stop them.
This is before any interest-balancing takes place.
Anyone who thinks MGM should be legal ought to explain why FGM shouldn’t be.
Yes, you do. What you don’t have is the right to decide what religion another person is, or the right to mutilate a child’s genitals.
If your religion requires you to do that, it is fundamentally evil.
The German court have got this exactly right, and I’m glad to see they are living in the present, not too scared of the past, and responses like yours, to do the right thing.
It’s been addressed comprehensively upthread.
In summary, “MGM” has a long list of alleged health benefits, and a small risk of medical complications; the adverse impact of the procedure is, generally, small if at all.
“FGM” has no known health benefits, and while the procedure varies widely in severity, the general or usual methods have serious adverse health effects and the adverse impact of the procedure is, generally, great.
Therefore, on a cost/benefit analysis, the former is more readily justified than the latter - it doesn’t (or should not) rise to the level of legal concern, because it cannot be demonstrated that it is actually harmful, let alone (in the words of the German case) “grievously” harmful. “FGM” on the other hand does rise to the level of legal concern. It is more readily classified as “harmful” or “grievously harmful”.
Of course parents have a right to decide what culture, tribe or religion their kids are as infants. Even the German court did not argue otherwise. Children do not grow in a vaccum, and they grow within the cultural, tribal or religious setting provided by their parents by default. This is hardly “evil”, given that every culture in the world does it.
What parents do not have, is the right to insist that their children remain within their tribe or religion when they grow old enough to have opinions on the matter. Children cannot be prevented in our society from converting to another religion, or becomming atheists. They have that fundamental right.
Where the German court got it badly wrong, is in apparently insisting that circumcision somehow prevents children from changing religion if they so choose. This defies the facts. A Jew or Muslim is in no way prevented from becomming a Christian or an atheist by the fact of circumcision, as circumcision is no barrier to becomming a Christian or athiest.
By the way, Malthus, your conclusions on the merits of the case are correct. In fact, they’re so correct as to seem virtually self-evident. Well stated.