The Immorality of Circumcision

In 2012 Angela Merkel - Federal Republic of Germany's Chancellor - has stated that 'circumcision is a religious right' which contradicts the decision of a German regional court that the practice amounts to bodily harm. Regardless of my own personal dislike of jews and Muslims I think the regional court in Cologne was on intellectually and legally consistent grounds when it ruled that circumcision amounted to the bodily harm of a child.

The reasoning for that is very simple: if a child is born and is then physically mutilated by its parents as a religious ritual - which is in incapable of making its own decision about - then the parents are abusing their child as they are forcing it to be initiated by a physically painful operation into a community. This - the regional court rightly held - trumps the idea of religious freedom as understood by proponents of democracy and liberal ideas in so far as it breaches the boundary of inflicting harm to another that then impinges upon their right of freedom of choice upon which - in their understanding - freedoms break.

If we then consider this then we can see that the regional court is being quite logical in outlawing the practice of forced circumcision. Merkel's argument - following jewish and Islamic arguments - is that the practice of forced circumcision is a necessary element of religious plurality and freedom.

The problem with this claim is that the jewish and Islamic groups are deliberately conflating two separate issues:

A) Forced circumcision of extremely young children on traditional grounds as an induction into a religious group.

B) Voluntary circumcision of older children or adults as an rite of passage into a religious group.

What these groups are doing then is to suggest that voluntary circumcision - as a religious right in a democratic and/or liberal world view - is the same as forced circumcision, but one does not have to be a genius to spot that the two are very different issues. Voluntary circumcision is not what was dealt with by the German regional court and indeed the debate has not touched on this: what it has focused on is the issue of forced circumcision.

Or put another way mutilating another person who cannot make an informed choice about the act and then claiming that it is quite alright because some people like to mutilate themselves. This is essentially what the jews are doing, because the subject of these forced mutilations for religious reasons are themselves incapable of making an informed choice and quite frequently of making a choice at all.

Once we understand this attempt at conflation of two different positions in order to strengthen an obviously very weak one then we can see that this isn't actually about religious freedom, but rather about the imposition of religious bodily mutilation at a very early age. Viewed from a democratic and/or liberal viewpoint it is obvious that the mutilation of young children is an immoral and indeed outright cruel and unnecessary act, which impinges on the rights granted to the individual person in the name of religious freedom.

It is worth explaining that in both Islam and Judaism: there is not an absolute need to circumcise an Israelite or Muslim in the first years of their life and indeed it is not unheard of for jews or Muslims to be circumcised later in life when they are old enough to decide that is what they want. The only reason for this practice is that it is traditional and as such it is not something that is compatible with the rights of the child as understood from a democratic and/or liberal perspective.

Advocates for circumcision frequently try to minimize this issue by claiming that the child somehow feels 'less pain' than an adult during the rite of circumcision, which is manifestly untrue and is akin to claiming that animals feel no pain when they are killed for good just because they aren't humanoids.

Indeed one can point out that this idea of religious freedom trumping bodily integrity has dangerous  implications for jews in so far as for example it means that if somebody claims that slicing off and eating a stranger's finger is a religious practice and that religious practice is recognised by a court as a valid religion then the ruling that religious freedom trumps bodily integrity means that no crime has been committed in spite of attack on another person's bodily integrity.

Or put another way: if male circumcision is allowed for religious reasons then why isn't female circumcision allowed for religious reasons on exactly the same principle?

Do the jews and Muslims endorse female circumcision on the same principles that they espouse?

I rather doubt it, but that is what they necessarily must do if they do wish to be hypocritical.

Obviously then we can see that circumcision is completely immoral from a democratic and/or liberal perspective precisely because it violates the right of bodily integrity and religious freedom for the child in the name of protecting the religious freedom of the adults concerned. Therefore it has to be immoral and the arguments for it rejected.

I would also add that jews have been very quick - as per usual 0 to claim that prohibiting them from practising the rite is 'anti-Semitic' and by implication means that modern Germany is worse than the Third Reich, because 'even the Third Reich allowed it to continue'. (2) This is the typical tactic of the jews in so far as everything that does something that they don't or criticises them in any way is 'anti-Semitic' that Norman Finkelstein and Alan Hart have - among others - pointed out is making many people distrust, dislike and ultimately come to oppose the jews. Yet the jews continue to make their shrill cries and as more people come to dislike them: the more shrill their cries get.

One is forced to wonder: where do the self-chosen of Yahweh get off?

References

(1)  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18833145

(2) http://forward.com/articles/159202/german-circumcision-ruling-raises-outcry/