What a curious mindset. What on earth is “european totalitarian one-way thinking”?
And where in the modern world is a religious minority safer than in those countries with a western European outlook?
I think that what they are saying in a somewhat pedantic way is that Western morality is largely Christian morality that is given a secular veneer. Their first claim seems to be that Muslims and Jews should join together to fight against Western i.e. Christian morality.
It’s not an uncommon complaint in the third world. Western powers feel that their moral system is superior and then force it on third world countries. Of course, our response is that human rights and democracy and freedom and all of the trappings of secular Christendom ARE superior, so deal with it. Not really a great counter-argument I suppose, but we have the bombs so what you gonna do? And as you pointed out, things really are pretty good among cultures that have embraced that ethos so… you know, maybe it is Christian and maybe it is forcing our morality on others, but it’s better than dictatorship and genocide. Come up with your own non-Christian, non-Western morality that doesn’t oppress others and maybe we can have a discussion.
While I’m not trying to claim that majority-Christian societies haven’t often tried to oppress Jews and Muslims into conforming to Christian mores, I think (as other posters have said) that there’s a significant difference between suppressing Jewish and/or Muslim customs in general and trying to suppress the particular customs that involve performing medically unnecessary surgical procedures on minor children.
When Western majority-Christian societies attempt to ban, say, the wearing of hijabs or “burqinis” at the beach etc., I’m right up there with the rest of the ACLU members denouncing it as an unconscionable attack on freedom of religion. And I would also be right there protesting if there were any effort to forbid Jewish or Muslim adults from voluntarily undergoing circumcision or FGC. Such efforts would indeed be fundamentally anti-semitic/Islamophobic in societies that permit consenting adults to undergo all sorts of other medically unnecessary surgical procedures.
But when it comes to imposing such procedures on minor children who cannot give consent, I think the claim that opposition must be due to bigotry against Jews/Muslims is very substantially weakened.
Sure, I think it’s very likely that a lot of criticism of infant circumcision/FGC is tainted with anti-semitism/Islamophobia, simply because a lot of everything in this world is tainted with anti-semitism/Islamophobia. Similarly, I think it’s very likely that a lot of criticism of, say, gang activities in US inner cities is tainted with anti-black racism. But just because some of the criticism is fueled by bigotry doesn’t mean that there are no valid grounds for criticism.
I would assume that there is some medical procedure that is equivalent to female circumcision, e.g. to remove cancerous or otherwise unhealthy tissue. We can, presumably, see what the effects of that are.
And, of course, there are women to whom FGM has been applied - legally or not - who you can question.
It is “totalitarian” to let the child choose for himself when he turns 18 and can make a fully informed choice. But it’s not totalitarian to perform an irreversible amputation on part of a child’s genitals?
Those who were wrongfully left intact have a remedy: they can choose to get circumcised. Those who are unhappy with their circumcision have no remedy available to them.
A friend who grew up in Spain, where circumcision was rare, said that it was very common for boys to need to be cut in high school, due to phimosis. They didn’t need full circumcision, just having the foreskin cut to loosen it. But he claimed something like 10% of his classmates needed it done. (He wasn’t cut.)
I’ve read that it’s a more common problem in dusty places, and that the custom of infant circumcision may have arisen as a way to avoid more dangerous and painful emergency adult circumcisions.
It’s much more costly to be cut as an adult. Infants heal very quickly, and don’t get large erections. I gather the procedure is somewhat crippling for an adult. And a friend of a friend who did it couldn’t go near his fiance for a month (per my friend, who told me about it.) I dunno, maybe it’s crippling for infants, too, but infants don’t do anything. They don’t miss work, or have to avoid socializing. Infants can eat, sleep, and poop just fine immediately after circumcision. (and a dollop of petroleum jelly is all they need to pee without difficulty.)
In India among the Hindus there used to be a practice called Suttee, where a widow was expected to immolate herself on her husbands funeral pyre. Needless to say, this practice wasn’t always done voluntarily. When the British occupied India, they banned this practice. When the priests complained to General Charles James Napier that Suttee was their custom, and that their customs should respected, he had this to say:
If we had a ban on circumcision, I would respond similarly to religious fundamentalists. Oh, it’s your custom to cut children’s genitals? It’s our custom to throw genital cutters in prison. Let us all act according to our own customs.
I think we can agree that suttee is more damaging to the person involved than the typical male circumcision is.
Do you also think it is horrible for parents to have their children’s ears pierced, or get tattoos?
yes
That is true for adults as well, according to these doctors:
The difference is that infants weren’t going to go to work, or have sex, during those 4-6 weeks, which is actually only 1-2 weeks for an infant, because infants heal faster than adults.
I haven’t seen any indications that adult circumcision subjects have to wait 4-6 weeks before going back to work, unless perhaps they happen to work in the sex industry or some other job that requires them to get erections.
I completely concur, though, that getting circumcised is much more disruptive in the short term to an adult’s sex life (if any) than to an infant’s.
Absolutely. I’m also staunchly opposed to corporal punishment. Children deserve the same protection as adults do from unnecessary violence. I’d be willing to make exceptions if the child is over the age of 16 and voluntarily chooses to get a piercing or a tattoo, but it absolutely should not be forced upon them.
Sorry, I’ve no sympathy for religion. I don’t give a religious pass to anything. I think the world would be better off without all this crap, even when it’s not objectively harmful like circumcision or deliberately not providing medical care to children (or killing the unfaithful, etc…).
You still didn’t state how you view circumcision of babies that wouldn’t make it the imposition of a religious ritual on an individual who didn’t consent to it, hence the exact contrary of freedom of religion.
For my part, I don’t, at least for ears. Tatoos and scarifications are different because they aren’t easy or are impossible to remove later. One should think a lot before tatooing oneself, and so should definitely not tatoo a child.
Besides, neither has the damaging effect that circumcision has. I know that plenty of people believe or at least argue that it has no harmful effect, but I consider the (not minor) damaging effect of circumcision on men sexuality proved to my satisfaction, if not to yours.
The problem, from the Jewish viewpoint, is your stance ends Judaism. There is no work-around for the problem posed. What you are saying, with your statement, whether you intend it or not, is that Judaism is an inherently unethical religion that should be abolished.
Now, you are entirely within your rights to hold that opinion, but don’t be shocked when Jews don’t take it well and disagree strongly with you.
Don’t know specifically about Spain, but full circumcision used to be the norm in case of phimosis (which isn’t directly a serious problem, but can result in conditions that are). It’s not the case anymore, because, well, it’s not necessary, so why cut off tissue that doesn’t need to be removed. As you mentioned it’s normally nowadays treated by stretching the foreskin.
In any case, even if 10% of people actually needed a full circumcision, that still wouldn’t be a reason to maim the 90% who don’t.
First, what are the evidences that circumcision is less dangerous or painful for adults? Circumcision is obviously painful for children, during the procedure if done without anesthesia, but also after it. Botched procedures, infections, etc…obviously can happen to children too. The difference is likely that an adult will get to bitch about it hurting and not being able to have sex for some time, while the complaints of the child will be dismissed or, if it’s a baby he won’t be able to express them.
Second, the most commonly given reason for why circumcision began to be practiced outside of the Jewish faith in Europe/USA is the prevention of the evil of masturbation. There’s no doubt it was recommended for this purpose. It might have been for prophylaxis too, and I would even be willing to accept mainly for prophylaxis if you can provide cites/evidences that it was the case (unjustly depicting our forefathers as ignorant/morons is commonplace, so it could be the case here too).
Evidences that children recover more quickly than adults from a circumcision?
And of course, children have erections, in case you wouldn’t know (if female) or have forgotten (if male). And stretching a tissue in the process of healing is obviously unpleasant. They also masturbate, since you seem to think that not having sex for one month is an unacceptable burden to impose on an adult.
They can eat, sleep, poop and of course also feel pain just fine.
And peeing after circumcision is painful.
I think that religions like Judaism unquestionably adapt or modify their practices over millennia or even centuries – eg is animal sacrifice part of mainstream Judaism today? But if I were a law-abiding Jewish parent in a European country where ritual circumcision was declared illegal today, not a far-fetched scenario, I imagine I would be facing a difficult dilemma (though I don’t foresee an “end to Judaism”).
Can we compare to Islam, a much more popular religion? Muslims revere much of the same Biblical scripture as Jews (and Christians), yet infant circumcision is not universal AFAIK. This suggests that, at least theoretically, there is room for interpretation as to the timing of the ritual.
My stance doesn’t end Judaism. You can do everything Jewish except circumcision (and stoning adulterous women even if the temple is rebuild, etc…). I’m pretty sure that if every single Jew was forced as gunpoint not to circumcise, they would still practice the other parts of their religion, and would still consider themselves Jews. Saying that’s it the equivalent of abolishing the whole religion is frankly a ludicrous claim. And in fact, the fact that some Jews don’t practice circumcision has been pointed (and I even think pointed specifically to you), so apparently they can manage. And remember that adult could get themselves circumcised, so it’s not even like circumcision would disappear for people who actually want it.
I’ve no doubt that part of the Jewish community thinks that circumcision of infants is of crucial importance, and like to drape their opposition to ban it in the cloths of antisemitism, or forbidding their religion or abolishing their faith, but it’s obviously a ludicrous claim. Judaism won’t disappear just because you’ll need to wait until you’re 18 or whatever to get circumcised. They’ll just be super pissed that they can’t follow their commandment of hurting babies in the name of the tetragrammaton (and not even all of them, not every single Jew is so attached to circumcision, or even to religion in general, there are definitely anti-religious Jews who would be elated to see circumcision banned if only because it will piss off the religious, and pissing off the religious is one of the greatest pleasure in their life. I think there’s a strong tendency, at least in the USA, to equate “Jews” with “religious Jews”, and to forget that many Jews dislike religion exactly as much as I do).
If society impose it (and I think it eventually will in our societies because it goes so obviously against our current values, and it won’t be ignored forever), they’ll adapt, and after a couple generations, they’ll just do what a fraction of them already do, and feel like it was ludicrous and shocking for their grandparents to insist on keeping circumcision of infants. Some super orthodox will keep doing it nevertheless and will end up in jail for it, and rightly so.
I’m not surprised that religious people disagree with me, in any case. I’m quite accustomed to this fact. But again, please, don’t assume that “Jews”, without qualifier, would necessarily all disagree with me.