3 10 240 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> The following article on the current status of traditional "bush" circumcision among the Xhosa people of South Africa was published in the South African Medical Journal in August 2003. <h3>EDITORIAL: Astonishing indifference to deaths due to botched ritual circumcision</h3> "Circumcision leaves 24 dead, 10 in hospital", read the headline in The Star of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 16 July 2002. The report continued: "South Africa's initiation season ended this weekend with a gruesome toll of 24 deaths reported to police and more than 100 teenagers hospitalised with gangrene and septicaemia after botched circumcisions and severe beatings. One boy's penis dropped off as a result of gangrene, at least one other had to have his penis amputated, and another will have to have both legs amputated, authorities said". Similar horrifying circumcision outcomes have been <a href="http://www.cirp.org/news/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">observed again this year</a>, with reports of the deaths and mutilations being beamed across the world by all the major news services. No one understands why we as a country â€“ or as communities â€“ have seemingly stood by and done little or nothing as these deaths rock the country year after year. Anywhere else in the enlightened world, this kind of mayhem would have evoked community outrage and led to urgent and drastic action to prevent it. Why are we not sufficiently agitated by the slaughter to find ways to stop it? Perhaps in today's South Africa, where violence constitutes one of the leading causes of death (including 23,000 officially acknowledged murders per annum), we have become hardened against the horror of needless death. In any event, deaths due to ritual circumcision largely occur in the impoverished and faceless rural and peri-urban communities, and those of us north of he railroad are in denial about this, just as we are about much of the other misery in that quarter. The communities themselves have perhaps come to accept these occurrences as part of their fate, along with unsafe minibus taxis and random street shootings. Middle class families from circumcising backgrounds ensure that their sons are circumcised in safe and nurturing environments. Unless this elite is moved and inspire to do something about the circumcision deaths among the less privileged, nothing will change. A further reason for playing down the deaths may be a deep-sated fear among the affected communities (largely in the eastern Cape and the Limpopo provinces) that this hallowed ancient tradition is under threat of extinction, and that any move to modernise it may push it over the edge. Certainly, some voices coming through on radio talk shows seem much more concerned with the survival of the ritual itself (often rather broadly if inaccurately labelled "our African culture") than about the reported deaths and mutilations. <h4>The modern-day ritual is largely a hoax</h4> In fact, the barbarism perpetrated on today's hapless youth has little in common with what the ancient rite was all about. The ritual was about preparing youngsters for the challenges of manhood in he rural and pastoral world in which they lived. Furthermore, it was performed by experienced operators and overseen by traditional sages who served as teachers and sources of wisdom to the youths. The traditional practice was much like modern military training: hard, but intended to nurture. Importantly, the community, through its traditional leaders and healers â€“ not individual entrepreneurs â€“ set up and supervised the circumcision schools. That was then. What about now? H.G. Matjeke, who has done an in-depth study of the practice in the Bolopedu district in the Limpopo province, sums up the modern-day ritual as follows: "Of late, the practice has degenerated into a money-making operation. People pay as much as R400 per boy for the attendance of (circumcision) schools. The schools are launched annually at some localities (as opposed to the old tradition of every five years). Boys as young as six years are admitted at the schools." Matjeke goes on to observe how "as more and more boys are opting for clinical circumcision, the school leaders have resorted to the radical practice of abducting males to these schools. Many youths are mutilated or even die as a result of malpractices at thee schools." These malpractices include gratuitous beatings and other forms of physical abuse, extreme exposure to the elements, nutrition deprivation, and the withholding of medicines from the chronically ill. Matjeke observes how, instead of traditional herbal medicines, substances such as brake fluid and used motor car oil are used to treat the wounds of the victims. He concludes that "negligence and lack of accountability lie at the root of the problem". In short, many of the so-called "circumcision schools" of today are fake, and deadly. They have very little to do with the traditional ethos and practice of this ancient ritual, and something must be done to stop the carnage. I can think of three things that, if legislated immediately and enforced with the same vigour as the laws to enforce the ban on cannabis, could see many lives saved and the ritual of circumcision regain its traditional dignity: 1. Establish a registry of circumcision schools, and require that school be registered. 2. Require that circumcisers undergo training and be certified. 3. Require that bush circumcision venues pass inspection. Daniel J. Ncayiyana Editor <a href="http://72.41.110.51/journal_index.php?jid=76&tran=0&ab=0">South African Medical Journal</a>, Vol. 93, No. 8, August 2003 <h3>NOTE</h3> Circumcision is practised, traditionally when a boy reaches his mid- to late teens, among the Xhosa people of South Africa, but not among the other main tribal group, the Zulus. In the late nineteenth century medically rationalised circumcision was taken up by the British colonists, but not of course among the Dutch-originating Boers. It was realised as early as the 1980s that the circumcision ordeal was leaving a trail of ruin and despair among young Xhosa men, but it appears that little or nothing was done to rein in the carnage. One can imagine the feverish activity, in the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and other western agencies, if it had been women rather men who had been the victims of this barbarity. At least nobody (with the notable exception of the US Agency for International Development) has had the effrontery to try to claim that these traditional circumcision practices were some sort of miraculous anticipation of Victorian discoveries about the health benefits conferred by such surgery. It is also interesting to note that the South African Medical Association has not tried to argue for the retention of circmcison on the basis that it is might help to restrain the spread of HIV-AIDS. On the contrary, despite what Americans like to claim, and whether or not circumcision (by personal choice) of sexually-active adult men in areas of high heterosexual HIV prevalence can offer some protection against infection, SAMA recently issued a statement that there was no medical justification for routine circumcision of infants. <h4>South African Medical Association rejects circumcision</h4> In response to an inquiry from Nocirc of South Africa, the South African Medical Association has formally stated that there is no justification for routine circumcision of infants or children. In letter to Nocirc SA, dated 4 February 2005, and signed by Professor Ed Coetzee, Chairperson of the SAMA Education, Science and Technology Committee, the Association states: "After lengthy DISCUSSION on the matter, the Committee RESOLVED that it be conveyed to NOCIRC-SA that, from a medical point of view, there was no medical justification for routine circumcision in males and children." In this conclusion, SAMA joins medical authorities in Britain, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand in agreeing that there is no medical case for routine circumcision. In fact, it goes slightly further than the Royal Australian College of Physicians, which states that there is "no medical indication"; SAMA says there is "no medical justification", an even stronger rejection. Coming from a country with an extremely high incidence of HIV infection (and also a high incidence of male circumcision), this is a significant declaration. <a href="http://www.nocirc-sa.co.za/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Nocirc-South Africa website</a> <a href="http://www.samedical.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">South African Medical Association website</a> <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Policy statements by medical associations</a> <h3>References</h3> A.N.N. Ngxamngxa, "The function of circumcision among the Xhosa-spe tribes in historical perspective", in E.J. de Jager (ed.), Man: Anthropological essays presented to O.F. Raum (Capetown, 1971), pp. 183-204 Lumka Sheila Funani, Circumcision among the Ama-Xhosa: A medical investigation (Braamfontein: Skotaville Publishers, c.1990) N.C. Roles, "Tribal surgery in East Africa during the XIXth century: Part 1 â€“ Ritual operations", East African Medical Journal, Vol. 43, 1966, pp. 579-94 Nancy Scheper-Hughes, "Virgin territory: The male discovers the clitoris", Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 5, 1991, pp. 25-8 <h3>Statement on circumcision and HIV-AIDS by Nocirc South Africa</h3> HIV cannot be prevented by mass circumcisions Circumcision may result in a false belief that safe-sex practices are no longer required, implying a worsening of the incidence of HIV infection. Two separate papers were presented at a conference in Brazil, claiming that male and female circumcision has the potential to reduce HIV acquisition. Such claims may conversely have negative consequences in the struggle against HIV and AIDS. At the recent congress of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the findings of a study conducted amongst male South African participants were presented, suggesting that the circumcised penis is more resistant to HIV infection. TAC has been reported to be considering advocating circumcision as a result. We are encouraging them to reconsider their new strategy. This study could dangerously mislead people into believing that if they are circumcised, they would be protected against HIV. The natural response of a circumcised male to these reports is to assume that he is more resistant to HIV infection than is the intact male. The implication being that even more circumcised men may engage in unsafe sexual practices under the false impression that they won't contract HIV. Equally troublesome is the fact that this study offers no indication on whether or not the receptive partner of the circumcised male will become more or less vulnerable to HIV infection. The female receptive partner's risk will likely increase without adequate protection. Asecond study, performed by Stallings amongst African females in Tanzania shows that HIV transmission is also reduced among circumcised FEMALES. [See abstract below.] This has gone unreported by the media. Such selective reporting suggests the need for analysis from a gender prejudice point-of-view and suggests that male and female circumcision should be dealt with as a unity. The foreskin is not just a piece of skin, but rather a highly specialized erogenous and immunological structure, which cannot be cut off like hair or fingernails. We are therefore concerned about the frequent uncritical reference to particularly the male study in the media. The promotion of its uncorroborated findings, without adequate understanding of the behavioral consequences, is highly irresponsible. Feedback offered to our organization indicates that some individuals are now advocating "chop-shops," where parents will be able to bring their children for the non-consensual, non-therapeutic removal of their foreskins. The Lancet, the pre-eminent medical journal in the world, rejected the publication of the above French study. The broad quotation within the media is therefore, premature and irresponsible since the study has not been peer reviewed as yet. When extrapolating globally, the hypothesis of this study <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">could be proven to be wrong</a>. The United States has a very high rate of circumcision coupled with the highest HIV infection rate in the developed world. Scandinavia on the other hand has one of the lowest rates of circumcision in the world coupled with a comparatively low incidence of HIV infection. Global trends should be more accurate than one, demographically limited study. Neither does current research point to a significant difference in infection rates in South Africa amongst the non-circumcising tribes such as the Zulus, and the circumcising tribes such as the Xhosas. Other studies have thus far failed to corroborate that circumcision could prevent HIV. The highly respected <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/cochrane2003" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Cochrane Review</a>, which conducted a meta-analysis of circumcision and its relationship to HIV, "found insufficient evidence to support an interventional effect of male circumcision on HIV acquisition in heterosexual men." The most important emphasis of HIV prevention should focus on education, the use of non-contaminated medical equipment, and behavioral changes such as <a href="http://www.populationaction.org/resources/publications/condomscount/data.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">condom use</a>, and not foreskin amputation. The amputation of the male prepuce removes the only movable part of the penis, causing increased friction during sexual intercourse, leading to micro-tears of tissue, and subsequent increased vulnerability to possible infection. In South Africa, 'dry sex' practices, whereby lubrication mechanisms are purposely removed, make HIV infection even more likely to occur. It has also previously been demonstrated that circumcised men don't like using condoms as they suffer from a progressively desensitized penis. UNAIDS has cautioned against circumcision. "If circumcision were promoted as a way of preventing HIV infection, people might abandon other safe sexual practices, such as condom use. This risk is far from negligible â€“ already rumours abound in some communities that circumcision acts as a "<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/bonner1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">natural condom</a>". A sex worker interviewed in the city of Kisumu in Kenya summed up this misconception, saying, "I can sleep with circumcised men without a condom because they don't carry a lot of dirt on their penis." Circumcision does not eliminate HIV infection. In one study in South Africa, two out of five circumcised men were infected with HIV, compared with three out of five uncircumcised men. Relying on circumcision for protection is like playing Russian roulette with two bullets in a (five-shot) revolver rather than three." National Organisation of Circumcision Information Resource Centres of South Africa implores all organizations associated with the fight against HIV/AIDS to take note of these developments. We should not lose foresight in the fight against HIV/AIDS by these irresponsible statements promoting circumcision of healthy body parts of boys and girls as a preventative strategy. All children have a right to bodily integrity, and such procedures violate that right. This right is enshrined in the United Nations <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a>, to which South Africa is a state signatory. <a href="http://www.nocirc-sa.co.za/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">National Organisation of Circumcision Information Resource Centres â€“ South Africa</a> Email: <a class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="e68889858f9485cb9587a68780948f82879287c8888392" href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a> <a href="http://www.norm-sa.co.za/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">National Organisation of Restoring Men â€“ South Africa</a> Email: <a class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="b5dbdac7d898c6d4f5d4d3c7dcd1d4c1d49bdbd0c1" href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a> Dean Ferris â€“ National Coordinator Ethical and medical considerations Dr. D. Sidler, paediatric surgeon Email: <a class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="6602155426151308480705481c07" href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a> <h3>Female circumcision reduces risk of HIV infection in women</h3> Female circumcision and HIV infection in Tanzania: for better or for worse? Stallings R.Y. (1), Karugendo E. (2) <a href="http://www.ias-2005.org/planner/Abstracts.aspx?AID=3138">Abstract from paper given at Brazil conference</a> (1) ORC Macro, Calverton Maryland, United States of America, (2) National Bureau of Statistics, Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania Introduction It has been postulated that female circumcision might increase the risk of HIV infection either directly, through the use of unsterile equipment, or indirectly, through an increase in genital lacerations or the substitution of anal intercourse. The authors sought to explain an unanticipated significant crude association of lower HIV risk among circumcised women [RR=0.51; 95% CI 0.38,0.70] in a recent survey by examining other factors which might confound this crude association. Methods Capillary blood was collected onto filter paper cards from a nationally representative sample of women age 15 to 49 during the 2004 Tanzania Health Information Survey. Eighty-four percent of eligible women gave consent for their blood to be anonymously tested for HIV antibody. Interview data was linked via barcodes to final test results for 5753 women. The chi-square test of association was used to examine the bivariate relationships between potential HIV risk factors with both circumcision and HIV status. Restricting further analyses to the 5297 women who had ever had sexual intercourse, logistic regression models were then used to adjust circumcision status for other factors found to be significant. Results By self-report, 17.7 percent of women were circumcised. Circumcision status varied significantly by region, household wealth, age, education, years resident, religion, years sexually active, union status, polygamy, number of recent and lifetime sex partners, recent injection or abnormal discharge, use of alcohol and ability to say no to sex. In the final logistic model, circumcision remained highly significant [OR=0.60; 95% CI 0.41,0.88] while adjusted for region, household wealth, age, lifetime partners, union status, and recent ulcer. Conclusions A lowered risk of HIV infection among circumcised women was not attributable to confounding with another risk factor in these data. Anthropological insights on female circumcision as practiced in Tanzania may shed light on this conundrum. <h3>UNAIDS cautious on quick surgical fixes</h3> Despite the media hype celebrating the latest amazing news from Africa (driven as much by the desire to keep circumcision going in the USA as to control AIDS in the Third World), the <a href="http://www.unaids.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">United Nations AIDS</a> organization and the World Health organization have adopted a cautious and, indeed, sceptical attitude towards suggestions that mass circumcision should be introduced as a significant weapon in the battle against HIV infection. In the latest Epidemic Update report (December 2005), in a document of hundreds of pages, this is all they have to say: <h4>Male circumcision</h4> A recent study in South Africa found that circumcised men were at least 60% less likely to become infected than uncircumcised men. These promising results must be confirmed in ongoing studies in Kenya and Uganda before male circumcision can be promoted as a specific HIV prevention tool. If proven effective, male circumcision may help increase available proven options for HIV prevention, but should not cause the abandonment of existing effective strategies such as correct and consistent condom use, behavioural change and voluntary testing and counselling. Male circumcision does not eliminate the risk of HIV for men and the effects of male circumcision on women's risk of HIV are not known. It also remains to be demonstrated whether and to what degree circumcision could reduce HIV transmission in cultures where it is not currently practised. <a href="http://www.unaids.org/epi2005/doc/report_pdf.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">UNAIDS/WHO, AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2005, p. 40</a> <h3>AIDS now spreading fast in (largely circumcised) Middle East</h3> Whatever the US media may claim, there are increasing reports that AIDS is making rapid headway in the Middle East â€“ that is, among Moslem populations where most of the males are circumcised. A recent report by Nicholas Eberstadt and Laura M. Kelly in the US journal Foreign Policy suggests that denial of the problem (leading to failure to take action), repressive attitudes to sexuality and lack of attention to counselling in safe sex practices are more important factors in the spread of the disease than normal (or even abnormal) human anatomy. <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/templates/pages/aids_now_a_threat_in_middle_east.html">Full text of article here.</a> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ritual circumcision in South Africa (2003) darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> Although most Muslim fathers want â€“ insist â€“that their sons should "look the same" as them, Islam does not impose an obligation on parents to circumcise their children. Furthermore, its recommendations about circumcision apply to women as much as men. The Koran, the Moslem bible, makes no mention of circumcision at all, but the prophet Mohammed is reported to have stated that "Circumcision is a sunnah for the men and a makrumah for the women". (Note the reference to men and women: nothing about boys and girls.) The term sunnah means customary or traditional; the term makrumah means meritorious. The most you could conclude is that circumcision was customary for men and meritorious for women, and thus desirable for both but obligatory for neither. In these respects Islam is quite different from Judaism, which requires the head of the household not only to circumcise his baby sons at eight days, but also his male servants and employees, which makes no mention of women in this context, and in which the rule of circumcision is stated prominently in the first book of the Jewish bible. Circumcision is not one of the Five Pillars of the Faith, which consist of: daily prayer, the profession of faith, the giving of alms, fasting at Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Mohammed laid down five further rules for Moslem men, but they did not include circumcising their children: shaving the pubic hair; circumcision; trimming the moustache; plucking the hairs from the armpits; and clipping the nails. These constitute the fitrah, or laws of personal deportment, to which a pious man in pursuit of perfection must conform. According to Sami Aldeeb, "They are not compulsory, but simply advisable". The vital point about this list is that circumcision is a recommendation for adult men, perhaps no more important than trimming their moustache or shaving their pubic hair. It is thus less obligatory than the rule of prayer at least once a week, the pilgrimage to Mecca, fasting at Ramadan or abstention from alcohol and pork. There is certainly nothing in the fitrah which requires a father to circumcise his children. There is no unanimity among Islamic theologians as to whether Mohammed himself was circumcised and how it happened. Some say that he was born without a foreskin, others that he was circumcised by an angel or his grandfather. It is thus obvious that, whatever traditions may have evolved in particular cultures over the centuries, Islam does not require parents to have their boys and girls circumcised; and that parents who do have them circumcised cannot appeal to rules of their religion as a justification for this assault. Some Moslems even question whether circumcision itself is necessary and suggest it was merely a custom taken over unthinkingly from desert Arabs when Islam arose in the seventh century. The Egyptian Dr Nawal El-Saadawi writes: "If religion comes from God, how can it order man to cut off an organ created by Him as long as that organ is not diseased or deformed? God doe not create the organs of the body haphazardly without a plan. It is not possible that He should have created the clitoris in woman's body only in order that it be cut off at an early stage in life." As a woman and a victim of circumcision herself, she was referring to the female genitals, but the point is equally applicable to the male foreskin â€“ the part of the penis removed by circumcision. <h3>References</h3> Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, "Jehovah, his cousin Allah and sexual mutilations", in George C. Denniston and Marilyn Milos (eds), Sexual mutilations: A human tragedy, New York, Plenum Press, 1997 Available online at <a href="http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/fourth/aldeeb.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/fourth/aldeeb.html</a> Dr Sami Aldeeb, "To mutilate in the name of Allah or Jehovah: The legitimation of male and female circumcision" Medicine and Law, Vol 13, No 7-8, 1994, pp. 575-622 <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/aldeeb1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/aldeeb1/</a> Also available at <a href="http://www.quran.org/circumcision.htm" target="_parent">http://www.quran.org/circumcision.htm</a> <a href="http://www.fgmnetwork.org/samialdeeb/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.fgmnetwork.org/samialdeeb/</a> Dr Aldeeb's home page: <a href="http://go.to/samipage" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://go.to/samipage</a> Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Male and female circumcision among Jews, Christians and Muslims: Religious, medical, social and legal debate, Warren PA, Shangri-La Publications (Marco Polo Monographs, No. 5), 2001 <h4>The marsh Arabs: Report by an English traveller</h4> When he was travelling through the marshy region of the lower Euphrates River in the 1930s (present-day Iraq), the British traveller Wilfred Thesiger encountered many Arab people who did not practice circumcision, and others who did and suffered nasty injuries and infections as a result of the operation. His report makes a mockery of the ill-informed statement by the Australian College of Pediatrics (1996) that circumcision "probably originated as a hygiene measure in communities living in hot and dry environments". On the contrary: cutting flesh in primitive conditions was about the least hygienic thing anybody could do, carrying a high risk of bleeding, infection and permanent disability or death, as Thesiger found. Thesiger writes: Circumcision, although nowhere mentioned in the Koran, is generally regarded as obligatory for Moslems following the example of the prophet Mohammed himself, who was circumcised in accordance with Arab custom. No uncircumcised person may lawfully make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Among the tribes in southern Iraq ... the operation was often deferred until manhood ... and was seldom performed before puberty. It was done by specialists who travelled round from village to village in the summer. Their traditional fee was a cock [!], but more often they charged five shillings. The examples of their work which I saw were terrifying. They used a dirty razor, a piece of string and no antiseptics. Having finished, they sprinkled the wound with a special powder, made from the dried foreskins of their previous victims, and then bound it up with a tight rag. People living under these conditions acquire a remarkable resistance to infection, but they could not resist this, and boys sometimes took two months to recover, suffering great pain in the meanwhile. One young man came to me for treatment ten days after his circumcision, and although I am fairly inured to unpleasant sights and smells, the stench made me retch. His entire penis, his scrotum and the inside of his thighs were a suppurating mess from which the skin was sloughing away, the pus trickling down his legs. I cured him eventually with antibiotics. In spite of the social stigma of being uncircumcised, some boys not unnaturally refused. In other cases the fathers would not allow their sons to be operated on because there was no one else to look after the buffaloes. A few maintained that they had been circumcised by an angel at birth, a superstition that is also current in Egypt. Later I visited villages ... where I heard that hardly anyone was circumcised. Wilfred Thesiger, The marsh Arabs, London 1964, pp. 101-2 Further information on Islamic circumcision The comprehensive study by Dr Sami Aldeeb, To mutilate in the name of Allah or Jehovah: The legitimation of male and female circumcision, is available at <a href="http://www.quran.org/circumcision.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.quran.org/circumcision.htm</a> Also available at <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/aldeeb1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/aldeeb1/</a> <a href="http://www.fgmnetwork.org/samialdeeb/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.fgmnetwork.org/samialdeeb/</a> A site maintained by Moslems who oppose circumcision <a href="http://www.moslem.org/khatne.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.moslem.org/khatne.htm</a> A Moslem site explaining why women should be circumcised and listing the hygienic and medical benefits <a href="http://www.themuslimwoman.com/hygiene/femalecircumcision.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.themuslimwoman.com/hygiene/femalecircumcision.htm</a> A semi-pornographic and sexual fetish site, favouring circumcision, whether elective or compelled <a href="http://www.circlist.com/rites/moslem.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.circlist.com/rites/moslem.html</a> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Muslim circumcision practices darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>Robert Van Howe dissects Gerald Weiss</h3> This is pediatrician Robert Van Howe's reply to G.N. Weiss's bizarre outburst, "Prophylactic neonatal surgery and infectious diseases", Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal, Vol. 16, 1997, pp. 727-34 Circumcision and infectious diseases revisited Robert S. Van Howe MD (Department of Pediatrics, Marshfield Clinic-Lakeland Center, Minocqua, WI.) Accepted for publication Oct. 24, 1997. Address for reprints: Robert S. Van Howe, M.D., Marshfield Clinic-Lakeland Center, 9601 Townline Road, P.O. Box 1390, Minocqua, WI 54548. Fax 715-358-1156 Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal, Vol. 17, January 1998, pp. 1-6 The recently published Opinion and Analysis piece by Gerald Weiss [1] invites rebuttal. On the basis of his previous publications, Weiss is unabashedly pro-circumcision. [2-4] He has made unsubstantiated claims in the past and as recently as 1994 still believed that neonates do not feel pain. [2, 5] Although Dr. Weiss is entitled to his viewpoint, the editorial structure of well-respected and mainstream medical journals such as The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal should permit factual refutation of what I believe are the many erroneous statements and assumptions in Weiss's article. <h4>Hyperbole</h4> The opening paragraph by Weiss, pointing out the prevalence and mortality of infectious diseases, has very little to do with infectious diseases involving the penis. He tries to create an urgency to intervene where no intervention is needed. To make this argument cogent, he would need to demonstrate that the penis is a common focus of serious infection and disease. He never does. While "half the people on this globe live in fear of plagues," only a small percentage of males ever have penile-associated infections. Weiss describes the preputial cavity as a "cesspool," demonstrating his ignorance of this cavity. The wetness found in this space is made up of prostatic, seminal vesicular and urethral secretions. The prostatic and seminal vesicular secretions are rich in lytic material, which have an immunoprotective function. [6] Weiss mentions Tyson's glands, which we today know do not exist, [7-11] and propagates the notion that a male with a foreskin must clean his preputial cavity at least three times daily or have odoriferous consequences. [4] Actually the penis with a foreskin can be self-cleaning with micturition, because sterile urine flushes out the preputial cavity before the urine is eliminated. [8] Weiss repeatedly refers to "the foreskin allowing for a pooled pocket of infected water to harbor" various pathogens. There is no research to support such a claim. The normal newborn phallus is equipped with a prepuce that contains smooth muscle arranged in a whorled pattern near the tip that acts as a muscular one-way valve, which allows urine out, but does not allow contaminants in. [12, 13] This pattern of smooth muscle fibers gives the distal infant prepuce its typical puckered appearance. Attempts to retract the prepuce prematurely violate the integrity of this natural valve and allow the influx of bacteria. While Weiss et al. [14] failed to find Langerhans cells in the mucosa of the newborn prepuce, these immunoprotective cells are present in older males. [15] Because boys are born with the preputial mucosa and the penile glans mucosa fused and because the uterus is a sterile environment, immunoprotection is initially not an issue at this location. <h4>The role of the prepuce in infectious diseases</h4> Although Weiss is correct in pointing out the role of human papillomavirus (HPV) as an etiologic factor in the development of genital cancers, he fails to point out that circumcised males are significantly more likely to have genital warts [16, 17] or that the foreskin is not a factor in other clinical HPV-associated lesions. [18] Citing a 1947 paper as evidence that horse smegma was carcinogenic in mice, he ignores the studies that attempted to replicate this result and failed, [19-21] or that horse smegma differs significantly from human smegma. [22] Intuitively it does not make sense that a natural body secretion produced in normal amounts would be carcinogenic. The rate of collected smegma in the preputial cavity is low, given that only 6% of men with preputial stenosis have collected smegma. [23] If smegma were carcinogenic, one would expect men circumcised later in life to have lower rates of penile cancer than those never circumcised, but several studies have demonstrated the opposite. [24-26] Although several studies have suggested a role of "phimosis" in the development of penile cancer, [24, 26-28] until a clear definition of phimosis emerges it is difficult to interpret this finding. Eighty percent of patients circumcised for phimosis have normal histology. [29-34] It is difficult to hypothesize how the removal of histologically normal tissue can lead to later malignancy. The remainder have balanitis xerotica obliterans, the cancer potential of which is unclear. [30, 35] Of the etiologic factors for penile cancer, smoking [26-28] and HPV infection [26, 27] emerge as the greatest risk factors, not the prepuce. Perhaps the most egregious and potentially damaging statement made by Weiss is, "No patient circumcised at birth in the United States has been reported to have developed carcinoma of the penis." There have been at least 39 such cases reported in the medical literature and untold cases that have gone unreported. [26, 36-50] Weiss listed a study with 22 such cases as one of his references, [26] demonstrating his unfamiliarity with the materials cited. The author provides a laundry list of infections and problems prevented by neonatal circumcision without providing any supporting evidence. The entire premise of the article rests on the notion that neonatal circumcision has a prophylactic benefit in preventing infectious diseases. A careful review of the medical literature demonstrates that it does not. Although some studies have found that circumcision lowers the incidence of urinary tract infections, significant factors such as rooming-in, [51] breast-feeding, [52-54] parental education and social status, hygienic practices, [55-58] race, [59-61] urine collection method [62] and diagnostic criteria [63] have never been controlled for. Any one of these factors could explain the less than 1% difference in urinary tract infections between boys with and without a prepuce seen in these studies. More importantly the incidence of asymptomatic bacteriuria is between 0.7% (95% confidence interval, 0.2 to 1.64%) [64] and 2.0%.65 This rate of "background noise," which is nearly identical with the urinary tract infection rate in non-circumcised boys, makes assessment of the significance of these findings difficult. Hoberman and Wald [63] found that in the absence of pyuria, a positive urine culture most likely represents incidental bacteriuria. Nearly one-half of the infants diagnosed with urinary tract infection in past studies did not have pyuria, [66-68] implying that all of these studies are either invalid or require reanalysis. There is strong evidence in four studies from Israel that neonatal circumcision increases the incidence of urinary tract infection. [69-72] A prospective study of 603 non-circumcised Japanese boys failed to find any urinary tract infections where 6 to 24 would have been expected. [73] Based on this, it is unclear whether the foreskin has a prophylactic effect on urinary tract infection. Although it has been speculated that circumcised males are less likely to develop sexually transmitted diseases, five studies in the past 5 years have found circumcised males to have an overall greater incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. [16, 74-77] Likewise previous studies have found no difference in the rates of penile infection or inflammation between males with and without foreskins, [78-79] but comparison of data from prospective studies [73, 80] strongly suggests that young circumcised males are more likely to develop balanitis. This has also been demonstrated in adults. [81] Finally the data regarding HIV infection have been inconsistent, but large random cross-sectional studies, which have the least degree of bias, have found that circumcised men are more likely to develop or transmit HIV infection. [77, 82-85] <h4>Surgical prophylaxis</h4> The lamentations of Weiss over Americans' reluctance to circumcise are misplaced. The current rate of neonatal circumcision continues to be more than 90% in the midwest. [80, 86] Weiss blames the separation of church and state for the lack of acceptance of "medical" circumcision in the United States. This does not explain why in Europe, where state religions are the norm, circumcision rates approach zero, with no measurable difference in penile problems. He bemoans our inability to embrace the surgical prophylaxis concept but fails to note that no one is willing to initiate surgical prophylaxis unless there is a compelling risk or medical factor. Indeed the only exception to this is the American fixation with altering male genitalia. [87] Recently the value of prophylactic oophorectomy and mastectomy in women with genetic mutations of BRCA1 and BRCA2 was evaluated. Although removal of the breasts and ovaries at 30 years of age in women without increased risk would increase life expectancy by an average of 8 months, the authors concluded that "Prophylactic surgery is obviously unreasonable for these women." Removing healthy tissue in women at increased risk is considered a "highly personal decision" made only after clear discussion of the effects of prophylactic surgery on medical outcomes takes place. [88] When the cost utility of neonatal circumcision is calculated, it has an overall negative effect on health [89] or little effect at all. [90] All analyses published have found neonatal circumcision to be cost-ineffective. [90-92] Strabo, the 1st century B.C. Greek geographer, documented that Jews circumcised girls as well as boys. [93] If the Egyptians were right about the males, they might also be right about the females. Because females have a greater incidence of fungal infections, urinary tract infections, genital cancers and smegma production, they are more likely to benefit from prophylactic surgical alteration of their genitalia than are males. If Weiss is truly interested in expanding the surgical prophylactic paradigm, a number of other possibilities exist. All breast tissue can be excised from males at birth. More men die of breast cancer than penile cancer [94] and breast tissue has no useful purpose in males. The left testis can be removed at birth, cutting the incidence of testicular cancer and testicular torsion by more than half. Toenails can be unsightly and can ingrow and become infected, so they too should be dispensed with. All of these would decrease disease risk without altering function: which is Weiss's stated goal. To paraphrase Weiss's hero, John Arderne, "What's holding us back? This will help people!" <h4>Revising history to support a modern agenda</h4> Most of Weiss's paper is taken up with a justification that the ancients instituted circumcision for its health benefits. There is no direct evidence that this occurred. To make his case Weiss cites a number of speculative pieces written around the turn of the century. During that era the medical profession was promoting circumcision as a preventive and treatment for masturbation, which was thought to be the source of a long list of maladies. [95] To convert circumcision from a religious blood ritual to a medical practice, many physicians were compelled to speculate that circumcision had a medical intent since its inception. When one looks at the primary sources, there is no evidence that it does. Although both the Old and New Testaments make numerous references to circumcision, none relates to health. In keeping with this Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the famous physician and philosopher, does not mention any medical purpose to circumcision, although he was 800 years closer to the source than any 20th century speculators. The only benefit Maimonides could find for circumcision was that it weakened the penis and made men more temperate sexually. He stated that the non-circumcised penis was so sexually superior that if a Jewish woman had intercourse with a non-circumcised man, she would not separate from him. [96] By contrast American women have little chance of having intercourse with a complete penis. Relying on ancient scholars such as Philo of Alexandria (1st century A.D.) [97] and Herodotus (ca. 484 to 425 B.C.) [98] is ill-advised because their writing represent opinions and impressions from an era that predates the development of the scientific method. Wallerstein points out four elements of circumcision that suggest that it was never thought of as a medical procedure. (1) If a child dies before it is 8 days old, the corpse must be circumcised before it can be interred in a Jewish cemetery. The ritual takes place at the cemetery, just prior to burial. (2) If a child is born without a foreskin or if no blood is shed during circumcision (both exceedingly rare occurrences), a drop of blood must be drawn from the glans as a symbolic circumcision. (This is known in Hebrew as hatafath dam berith.) The nicking of the glans may be done "with a knife, a needle or even the sharpened fingernails." (3) Such a symbolic circumcision is also performed when a convert to Judaism has been previously circumcised. Reform rabbis have tried to abolish this practice. (4) Up to a century or two ago, the linen cloth used in circumcision, presumably stained with blood, was retained and exhibited at the boy's Bar Mitzvah and wedding as proof of his circumcision. [99] Although Jews have been reassured and comforted by attempts to attribute health benefits to the rite, it is purely a religious exercise. The Jewish practice influenced non-Jewish acceptance of circumcision, which reinforced the Jewish ritual. [99] Erich Isaac stated, "Its presumed medical and physiological advantages are said to be at best unproven and at worst illusory." [100] The section on schistosomiasis is irrelevant and unfounded. The author admits that there have been no studies linking the foreskin to schistosomiasis. Weiss makes the assumption that circumcision was a health measure before it was transformed into a religious blood ritual. To make this statement convincing, he needs to demonstrate that the ancient Egyptians had the wherewithal to notice the small differences in health between men with and without foreskins that we have not been able to document consistently in the modern era. If it was a health measure, why is there no documentation of it as such? Why should we consider circumcision "surgical prophylaxis" in the ancient setting when no one at the time thought of it as such? Making the leap from the Egyptian Code of Cleanliness to ascribing a medical significance to a blood ritual is unfounded historically and scientifically. Weiss's reasoning then takes a circular turn. After assuming that the Egyptians instituted circumcision as a medical intervention, he uses this "fact" to prove that circumcision had medical origins. There are several historical facts inconsistent with Weiss's interpretation that he fails to address. It is not clear from the Bible whether Moses was circumcised. Some have speculated that the reason Zipporah circumcised their son was that Moses was not circumcised and like most genitally intact males did not want his son circumcised. [101-103] If Moses had been circumcised on the eighth day, he would have been killed by the Egyptians instead of being allowed to be raised in the palace. Speculating that Abraham had preputial problems that affected his ability to procreate is inconsistent with his siring Ishmael. The ritual cutting as begun by Abraham was markedly different from what is performed today. Originally the operation consisted of cutting off only the very tip of the prepuce. This fact seriously undermines Weiss's speculation about decreasing the amount of mucosa through which schistosomes could pass. This practice persisted until the Hellenistic period (ca. 300 B.C. to 1 A.D.), which may explain why David, as depicted by Michelangelo, has most of his foreskin. To fit in with the Greeks, Jews obliterated the evidence of their circumcision by blistering the tip of what remained of their foreskin to enlarge it. This practice became so popular that the rabbinate altered the surgery to make it impossible for a circumcised male to appear non-circumcised. Thereafter the entire foreskin was to be ablated, and the inner lining and frenulum excised by the mohel's fingernail, specially sharpened for this purpose. The next change, Metzitzah, occurred during the Talmudic period (ca. 500 to 625 A.D.) and consisted of moistening the lips with wine and taking the bleeding penis into the mouth and sucking the blood. [104] If circumcision was seen as a health measure, why were these unsanitary elements added? If Weiss wishes to be taken seriously, he needs to address these issues and attempt to refute them. <h4>Relying on the standard circumcision myths</h4> Weiss would like to blame operator inexperience for the horrific complications of neonatal circumcision. Although many have expressed this opinion, [105] it has never been proved. To the contrary a retrospective study found no difference in complication rates seen among physicians of differing experience levels. [106] "Speed is essential in eliminating pain," is also espoused by Weiss. Nothing eliminates the pain of neonatal circumcision. [107] A poster presentation has suggested that crying is decreased when the Mogen clamp is used, [108] but the adhesions still must be broken, and postoperative pain has yet to be addressed adequately. Weiss, citing a number of opinion pieces, states that later circumcision has increased mortality and morbidity than neonatal circumcision. This is not true. Reported retrospective complication rates include 2.0%, [105] 3.1% [109] and 6.4%. [106] The only prospective study documented hemorrhage after 9.9% of neonatal circumcisions. [110] These rates are higher than those documented in retrospective studies of circumcisions performed later in life (1.7%). [111, 112] <h4>Where are the primary references?</h4> An examination of the references used by Weiss is revealing. Of the 91 references cited 27 were pro-circumcision opinion pieces, 17 were textbooks(mostly outdated) and 12 were secondary articles. The 5 World Wide Web sites Weiss refers to cannot be considered serious resources. The majority of the citations are more than 10 years old. More than one-third are from before 1980. Instead of citing ancient sources, turn-of-the-century opinion pieces are used. The standard for review articles is to avoid citing opinion pieces, review articles or textbooks. Readers should expect review articles to be written by knowledgeable individuals who have taken the time to research primary sources of information. <h4>Conclusion</h4> Weiss is correct. Schistosomiasis, HPV and HIV do have something in common: none has been clearly shown to be reduced by circumcision. A careful examination of the medical literature would have revealed his faulty premise. He never establishes the premise that circumcision is effective or that any of the ancient authorities considered circumcision to be medical. He fails to acknowledge or address dissenting information. His arguments are disjointed, illogical and difficult to follow. 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Circumcision and urinary tract infection in infants. Am J Dis Child 1986;140:1092. 70. Amir J, Alpert G, Reisner SH, Nitzan M. Fever in the first year of life. Isr J Med Sci 1984;20:447-8. 71. Goldman M, Barr J, Bistritzer T, Aladjem M. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/UTI/goldman/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Urinary tract infection following ritual Jewish circumcision</a>. Isr J Med Sci 1996;32:1098-102. 72. Cohen HA, Drucker MM, Vainer S, et al. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/UTI/cohen/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Postcircumcision urinary tract infection</a>. Clin Pediatr (Phila) 1992;31:322-4. 73. Kayaba H, Tamura H, Kitajima S, Fujiwara Y, Kato T, Kato T. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/normal/kayaba/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Analysis of shape and retractability of the prepuce in 603 Japanese boys</a>. J Urol 1996;156:1813-5. 74. Seed J, Allen S, Mertens T, et al. Male circumcision, sexually transmitted disease, and risk of HIV. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr Hum Retrovirol 1995;8:83-90. 75. Donovan B, Bassett I, Bodsworth NJ. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/STD/donovan1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Male circumcision and common sexually transmissible diseases in a developed nation setting</a>. Genitourin Med 1994;70:317-20. 76. Laumann EO, Masi CM, Zuckerman EW. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/general/laumann/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision in the United States: prevalence, prophylactic effects, and sexual practice</a>. JAMA 1997;277:1052-7. 77. Urassa M, Todd J, Boerma JT, Hayes R, Isingo R. Male circumcision and susceptibility to HIV infection among men in Tanzania. AIDS 1997;11:73-9. 78. Herzog LW, Alvarez SR. The frequency of foreskin problems in uncircumcised children. Am J Dis Child 1986;140:254-6. 79. Fergusson DM, Lawton JM, Shannon FT. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/fergusson" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Neonatal circumcision and penile problems: an 8-year longitudinal study</a>. Pediatrics 1988;81:537-41. 80. Van Howe RS. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/vanhowe/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Variability in penile appearance and penile findings: a prospective study</a>. Br J Urol 1997;80:776-82. 81. Birley HDL, Walker MM, Luzzi GA, et al. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/balanitis/birley/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Clinical features and management of recurrent balanitis: association with atopy and genital washing</a>. Genitourin Med 1993;69:400-3. 82. Grosskurth H, Mosha F, Todd J, et al. A community trial of the impact of improved sexually transmitted disease treatment on the HIV epidemic in rural Tanzania: 2. Baseline survey results. AIDS 1995;9:927-34. 83. Barongo LR, Borgdorff MW, Mosha FF, et al. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/barongo/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The epidemiology of HIV-1 infection in urban areas, roadside settlements and rural villages in Mwanza Region, Tanzania</a>. AIDS 1992;6:1521-8. 84. Van de Perre P, Carael M, NzVanaramba D, Zissis G, Kayihigi J, Butzler JP. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/carael/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Risk factors for HIV seropositivity in selected urban-based Rwandese adults</a>. AIDS 1987;1:207-11. 85. Chao A, Bulterys M, Musanganire F, et al. Risk factors associated with prevalent HIV-1 infection among pregnant women in Rwanda: National University of Rwanda-Johns Hopkins University AIDS Research Team. Int J Epidemiol 1994;23:371-80. 86. Mansfield CJ, Hueston WJ, Rudy M. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/procedure/mansfield/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Neonatal circumcision: associated factors and length of hospital stay</a>. J Fam Pract 1995;41:370-6. 87. Van Howe RS, Cold CJ. Sex reassignment at birth: long-term review and clinical implications. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1997;151:1062. 88. Schrag D, Kuntz KM, Garber JE, Weeks JC. Decision analysis: effects of prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy on life expectancy among women with BRCA1 or BRAC2 mutations. N Engl J Med 1997;336:1464-71. 89. Ganiats TG, Humphrey JB, Taras HL, Kaplan RM. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/procedure/ganiats/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Routine neonatal circumcision: a cost-utility analysis</a>. Med Dis Making 1991;11:282-93. 90. Lawler FH, Bisonni RS, Holtgrave DR. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/procedure/lawler/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision: a decision analysis of its medical value</a>. Fam Med 1991;23:587-93. 91. Cadman D, Gafni A, McNamee J. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/procedure/cadman/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Newborn circumcision: an economic perspective</a>. Can Med Assoc J 1984;131:1353-5. 92. Chessare JB. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/UTI/chessare/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision: is the risk of urinary tract infection really the pivotal issue?</a> Clin Pediatr (Phila) 1992;31:100-4. 93. Strabo. Geography. 17.2.5. In: The geography of Strabo. vol. 8. Jones L, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982:152-3. 94. Wingo PA, Tong T, Bolden S. Cancer statistics 1995. CA Cancer J Clin 1995;45:8-30. 95. Hodges F. A short history of the institutionalization of involuntary sexual mutilations in the United States. In: Denniston GC, Milos MF, eds. Sexual mutilations: a human tragedy. New York: Plenum, 1997:17-40. 96. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204). <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/maimonides/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The guide for the perplexed</a>. New York: Dover Publications, 1956:378. 97. Philo. <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/quotes.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The special laws. 1.1.1-4</a>. In: Philo VII. Colson FH, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984:101-3. 98. Herodotus. History 2.37. in: Herodotus I. Books I-II. Godley AD, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920:319. 99. Wallerstein E. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/general/wallerstein/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision: an American health fallacy</a>. New York: Springer, 1980. 100. Isaac E. The enigma of circumcision. Commentary 1967;43:51. 101. Brown MS, Brown CA. Circumcision decision: prominence of social concerns. Pediatrics 1987;80:215-9. 102. Bean GO, Egelhoff C. Neonatal circumcision: when is the decision made? J Fam Pract 1984;18:883-7. 103. Stein MT, Marx M, Taggart SL, Bass RA. Routine neonatal circumcision: the gap between contemporary policy and practice. J Fam Pract 1982;15:47-53. 104. Weiss C. A worldwide survey of the current practice of milah (ritual circumcision). Jewish Soc Stud 1962;1:30-47. 105. Gee WF, Ansell JS. Neonatal circumcision: a ten-year over-view: with comparison of the Gomco clamp and the Plastibell device. Pediatrics 1976;58:824-7. 106. Moreno CA, Realini JP. Infant circumcision in an outpatient setting. Tex Med 1989;85:37-40. 107. Cold CJ, Van Howe RS, Storms MR. Anesthesia for neonatal circumcision. J Am Board Fam Pract 1997;10:310-1. 108. DeSilva H. Pediatric academic societies, cited in Childs ND. Physician's choice of clamp may cause more pain. Pediatr News 1997;31(8):40. 109. O'Brien TR, Calle EE, Poole WK. Incidence of neonatal circumcision in Atlanta, 1985-1986. South Med J 1995;88:411-5. 110. Sutherland JM, Glueck HI, Gleser G. Hemorrhagic disease of the newborn: breast feeding as a necessary factor in the pathogenesis. Am J Dis Child 1967;113:524-33. 111. Walfisch S, Ben-Zion YZ, Gurman G. [Circumcision of new immigrants.] Harefuah 1994;126:119-21, 176. 112. Wiswell TE, Tencer HL, Welch CA, Chamberlain JL. Circumcision in children beyond the neonatal period. Pediatrics 1993;92:791-3. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circumcision and infectious diseases revisted darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>What has been the traditional Christian attitude to circumcision?</h3> The readiness with which those eager to fight disease are willing to sacrifice part of the penis is partly an effect of the popular idea that the foreskin is of no importance to any bodily function and thus that its destruction is not really any sacrifice at all. (<a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/quotes.html">For two millennia of contrary evidence, click here</a>. ) This in turn is connected with assertions that the western world has not valued the foreskin and that Christianity has traditionally endorsed or at least had a neutral attitude to circumcision. Although they appear regularly in medical journals and popular articles on circumcision, these claims are false. Until the arrival of Islam in the eighth century, the only Mediterranean, European and Asian societies to practise circumcision were the Jews and the Arabs. The Greeks and the Romans admired the normal male body, and abhorred circumcision so strongly that they made several attempts to ban it. (1) Although Christianity began as a Jewish sect, it soon outgrew its parent, and in the process abandoned and then grew steadily more hostile to the rite. St Paul determined that circumcision was not necessary for converts, and the Church Fathers declared that Christ's sacrifice had removed the need for further shedding of blood; baptism had replaced cutting as the appropriate initiation for members of the church. (2) There was a good deal of controversy at first, St Ambrose observing in the fourth century that "many persons are disturbed over the question ... why circumcision should have been made an obligation under the ruling of the Old Testament, and set aside as useless by the teaching of the New Testament", (3) but by that time the church had passed a law which stated that "Roman citizens who suffer that they themselves or their slaves be circumcised ... are exiled perpetually to an island and their property confiscated; the doctors suffer capital punishment". (4) Thomas Aquinas formally restated the Christian ban on circumcision in the Summa, but the peak of the Catholic Church's opposition was probably reached in the Bull of Union with the Copts (1442) which prohibited circumcision outright and declared that it "cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation". (5) Even a humanist such as Erasmus, neither a bigot nor an anti-Semite, placed circumcision among the Jewish customs on which "we cry shame". (6) To most Englishmen, circumcision was a threat from which they had been saved by the defeat of Islamic armies. For Edward Gibbon, the prospect that "the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet" was the greatest of the "calamities" from which Charlemagne delivered Europe. (7) In the seventeenth century some servants of the East India Company deserted to the Mughals in the hope of a better career path, and in 1649 a company official sadly reported the defection of one Josiah Blackwell, who "most wickedly and desperately renounced his Christian faith and professed himself a Moor, was immediately circumcised, and is irrecoverably lost". (8) Forced conversions were more common than voluntary, however â€“ the fate of several hundred British soldiers captured after the Battle of Pollilur in 1780, who were circumcised and enslaved by Tipu Sultan of Mysore. One ensign recorded his shame in bitter yet revealing terms: "I lost with the foreskin of my yard all those benefits of a Christian and Englishman which were and ever shall be my greatest glory". (9) The teenage James Bristow and his mates were so distressed at what had been done to them that they caught and circumcised dogs, knowing that this would incense their captors because Moslems regard dogs as unclean. The action brought further punishment, but Bristow felt it justified because "compelling us to undergo an abhorred operation [was] so base and barbarous an act of aggression, that it was impossible to reflect on it with temper". (10) As a Christian country, England had no history of circumcision before the late nineteenth century, but there were strong "Judaizing" tendencies in Puritanism, as fundamentalist radicals turned to the Old Testament in their quest to purge Christianity of its popish accretions. Some of these went so far as to adopt Jewish customs such as Sabbath and dietary observance, and a few even tried to circumcise boys â€“ for which offence a certain Anne Curtyn was gaoled in 1649. (11) These impulses were revived in a number of utopian/millenarian sects which flourished during the turbulence of the Industrial Revolution, including the puritanical followers of John Wroe (1782-1863), one of whose disciples was prosecuted for manslaughter in 1824, after a boy he had circumcised in Bedford died from the wound. (12) Despite these examples of enthusiasm, the overwhelming English attitude was horror, and in Tristram Shandy Lawrence Sterne used a threat of circumcision to titillate his readers' sense of dread, and to emphasise the failings of Shandy senior as a father. (13) In his critique of artificial efforts to improve upon nature, John Bulwer followed the lead of Renaissance anatomists such as da Carpi and Falloppio in condemning circumcision as unnatural and emphasising the role of the foreskin in normal sexual functioning: That part which hangeth over the end of the foreskin, is moved up and down in coition, that in this attrition it might gather more heat, and increase the pleasure of the other sexe; a contentation of which they [the circumcised] are defrauded by this injurious invention. For, the shortnesse of the prepuce is reckoned among the organical defects of the yard, ... yet circumcision detracts somewhat from the delight of women, by lessening their titillation. (14) In her popular midwifery manual Jane Sharp wrote that a few people believed that the "Venerious action" might be performed better without the foreskin, but pointed out that circumcision had been forbidden by St Paul and hoped that no man will be so void of reason and Religion, as to be Circumcised to make trial which of these two opinions is the best; but the world was never without some mad men, who will do anything to be singular: were the foreskin any hindrance to procreation or pleasure, nature had never made it, who made all things for these very ends and purposes. (15) When, in the 1870s, Richard Burton remarked that Christendom "practically holds circumcision in horror", (16) the observation was ceasing to be true, but it was certainly the case before Victorian doctors sought to reconfigure the phallus. How odd that some well-meaning medical researchers today should still be treading in their footsteps. <h3>Further information</h3> CIRP, <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Documents on cultural and religious circumcision</a> <a href="http://www.catholicsagainstcircumcision.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Catholics Against Circumcision </a> <h3>Circumcision and the Bible</h3> <a href="http://www.norm-uk.org/circumcision_christian.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.norm-uk.org/circumcision_christian.html</a> <h3>References</h3> 1. Hodges, FM. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The ideal prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male genital aesthetics and their relation to lipodermos, circumcision, foreskin restoration and the Kinodesme</a>. Bull Hist Med 2001;75; 375-405 2. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, SA. Male and female circumcision among Jews, Christians and Muslims: Religious, medical, social and legal debate, Warren PA: Shangri-La Publications, 2001 3. St Ambrose, Letters, ed. Mary Beyenka. Washington: Catholic University of America, 1954. (Fathers of the Church, Vol. 26), 90 4. Fleiss P. What your doctor may not tell you about circumcision. New York: Warner Books, 2002, 98 5. Proceedings of the Council of Florence, 1438-1445, New Advent Encyclopaedia, seen at <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/councils/Florence.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://www.ewtn.com/library/councils/Florence.htm</a> 6. Steinberg L. The sexuality of Christ in Renaissance art and in later oblivion, 2nd edition, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996, 54 7. Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 52 8. Dalrymple W. White Mughals: Love and betrayal in eighteenth century India. London: Harper Collins, 2002, 24 9. Colley L. Captives, New York: Pantheon, 2002, 288 10. Lawrence AW (ed.). Captives of Tipu: Survivors' narratives. London: Jonathan Cape, 1929, 35 11. Shapiro J. Shakespeare and the Jews. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, 25 12. Harrison JFC. The second coming: Popular millenarianism 1780-1850. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979, 141-54; Mason M. The making of Victorian sexual attitudes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 136-7 13. Darby R. "An oblique and slovenly initiation": The circumcision episode in Tristram Shandy. Eighteenth Century Life 2003;27: 72-84 14. Bulwer, J. Anthropometamorphosis, man transform'd, or the artificial changeling. London: printed for J. Hardesty, 1650, 213-14 15. Sharp J. The midwives book: Or the whole art of midwifery discovered, London 1671, Facsimile reprint, New York: Garland, 1985, 31-2 16. Burton R. Love, war and fancy: The customs and manners of the East from writings on the Arabian Nights, ed. Kenneth Walker, London: William Kimber, 1964, 106 17. Miller G. Circumcision: Cultural-legal analysis. Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 2002;9: 497-585 <h2>Captivity and Captivation: Gullivers in Brobdingnag</h2> Review essay by by Robert Darby Books discussed in this essay Linda Colley. Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850 (London, Jonathan Cape, 2002). Pp. xvii, 438. $27.50. ISBN 0375421521 Daniel Vitkus, ed. Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, Introduction by Nabil Matar (New York, Columbia Univ., 2001). Pp xvi, 376. $22.50 paper. ISBN 0231119054 William Dalrymple. White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (London, Harper Collins, 2002). Pp xliii, 580. $34.95. ISBN 0670031844 Arthur Conan Doyle. The Tragedy of the Korosko [1898] (London, Hesperus, 2003). Pp x, 121. $12 paper. ISBN 18439039 "You cannot condemn the ways of Europe for not being those of Tahiti, nor our ways for not being those of Europe. You need a more dependable scale of judgment than that. And what shall it be? Do you know a better one than general welfare and individual utility?" -- Denis Diderot, Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage <h4>Introduction</h4> During the seventeenth century and much of the eighteenth three great Islamic empires, each more powerful and far wealthier than any European state, held sway over a vast territory in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of south-eastern Europe. The Ottomans controlled the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, the Safavids ruled Persia and parts of what is now Afghanistan, and the Mughals struggled to hold India against recalcitrant Hindu kingdoms and rival Moslem sultanates in the south. In North Africa the regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers were formally subject to but increasingly autonomous from the Sublime Porte, while the powerful Sultan of Morocco, controlling the vital Straits of Gibraltar, was fiercely independent and pursued his own course. An important part of the economy of these four regimes derived from plunder of European shipping in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and the regimes maintained large corsair fleets for this purpose. Successive Islamic dynasties had been the dominant Middle Eastern power for a thousand years; and although the seventeenth century marked the height of Ottoman expansion and the eighteenth century the beginning of the end, it was not apparent to contemporaries that they were in terminal decline or that defeat outside the walls of Vienna in 1683 or acceptance of the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699 â€“ which recognized the loss of European territory and acknowledged other powers as equal states â€“ were anything more than temporary setbacks. In the early stages of the Enlightenment radical thinkers such as Spinoza cited the might of Islam and the extent of its dominions as evidence that universal Christianity might not be the world's divinely appointed destiny, and as late as the 1750s Voltaire commented that nothing very positive had emerged from years of constant warfare with the crescent: "The Christian powers have lost a great deal to the Turks within these five centuries [i.e. since the Crusades], and have scarcely gained anything from each other." [1] The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a slow shift in the balance of power between East and West, the decline of all the Islamic empires, and the rise of Britain as the world's pre-eminent power â€“ eclipsing the former maritime empires of Spain, Portugal, and Holland, and limiting France to a peripheral role. Between the Ottoman defeat at Vienna and the 1840s, when its decline was so apparent that the Czar could dub it "the sick man of Europe," the stand-off between the European and Moslem worlds was not unlike the Cold War between the West and the Soviet bloc from the late 1940s to the 1980s. The major powers avoided direct conflict, but there was continual confrontation and skirmishing at the periphery, where the great tectonic plates rubbed together; and for two hundred years the major earthquake zones were southern Russia, North Africa, and India. As in the Cold War, defection and imprisonment were prominent features of the interaction between the two systems. The vivid parable with which Linda Colley chooses to illustrate the themes of her absorbing study is not an obvious story of conquest and domination like Robinson Crusoe, but Swift's jaundiced satire Gulliver's Travels, in which the hero is captured, bound and exhibited by tiny Lilliputians, enslaved by gigantic Brobdingnagians, and finally won over by the equine Houyhnhnms, whose natures seem so much more noble than his own that he yearns to become one of them and ends up rejecting his own society. In different ways and to differing degrees one or other of these experiences were those of Colley's captives, Daniel Vitkus' escapees, and William Dalrymple's officers and gentlemen. They languished in prison, toiled for Moslem masters, converted in the hope of improving their lot, escaped to tell the tale of how they remained steadfast to their native country and its faith, deserted to the American Indians to avoid the floggings and brutality of the British army, or fell in love with dusky Mughal beauties and found themselves pawns in a marital intrigue orchestrated by the surprisingly canny women of the zenana. <h4>The Barbary Corsairs</h4> From the late sixteenth century to the early nineteenth, state-sponsored privateers from North African ports preyed on European shipping and even raided coastal villages in England and Ireland, from which they captured men, women, and children for sale in slave markets. Over the centuries tens of thousands of seamen, traders, travelers, and miscellaneous others were sold into slavery, many spending years in captivity before managing to raise a ransom or, less frequently, escape. Some escapees wrote narratives of their ordeals. Many, such as the seven meticulously edited and annotated by Daniel Vitkus, are extraordinary records of cultural interaction, human adaptability, and sheer endurance. Placed in context by Nabil Matar's deeply-researched introduction, the narratives range in style from short summaries telling us about the writer's religious faith and gratitude for deliverance to lengthy and informative accounts of the manners and customs of the Moors â€“ for example, the remarkable memoir by Joseph Pitts, who was probably the first westerner to visit the shrines of Mecca and Medina, and certainly the first known to have survived to tell the tale. Only fifteen when captured at sea in 1678, Pitts spent fifteen years in captivity under a succession of masters, some brutal and some kind, converted to Islam under duress from one of the former sort, was freed from slavery by one of the latter, and eventually managed to escape while on a trip to Smyrna. Even then his misfortunes were not at an end: after a year's struggle getting back to England, he was immediately kidnapped by a press gang for service in the Royal Navy and saved from another stretch of captivity only by the intervention of a local gentleman. Britons might have sung they never would be slaves, but various forms of forced labor remained common in Europe and America until well into the nineteenth century: assignment of convicts in Australia, black slavery in the USA, serfdom in Russia, and impressed service in the British Navy could all be compared with slavery in North Africa â€“not necessarily to the advantage of the West. The galleys of Spain, France, Venice, and Genoa were also manned by slaves. The common British expression "Turning Turk" signified a crossing-over rather like defection to Moscow during the Cold War. Many did so under pressure; but others chose to convert to Islam and work for the Moors out of choice because it improved their lot in life: conditions for the average laborer in war-torn Europe for much of the period were so grim that many chose to remain with their captors because they offered better chances of prosperity and happiness. A surprisingly large number of the privateers who seized European human and material cargo were captained by renegade Christians who found service with the crescent more rewarding than that with the cross. Matar writes that there were as many as 25,000 captives in Morocco around 1700 and suggests that most lived in relatively comfortable conditions and produced a cosmopolitan mingling of cultures showing greater tolerance for religious diversity than in most European centres, and certainly far more relaxed than in places where the Inquisition was still rooting out heresy. Such a benign picture may be a trifle overdrawn, since Christians and Jews, even if not slaves, were second-class citizens in Moslem countries, with restricted civil rights and only limited tolerance. Joseph Pitts commented that Algerian masters rarely forced slaves to convert because it would reduce the likelihood of ransom, but also that turning Turk did not necessarily mean release from bondage, or even better treatment as a slave. The North African states had a heavy demand for skilled labour, particularly gunners, seamen, carpenters, bricklayers, and other builders. To ascertain why they preferred to obtain them by capturing foreigners instead of training locals and why slavery and plunder were such vital parts of the economy is beyond the scope of these studies; but those questions are relevant to the scenario of western advance and Islamic decline. Colley suggests that the demand for foreign workers was generated largely by depopulation arising from repeated epidemics of plague that reduced the population of Algiers from 100,000 in the early seventeenth century to only 40,000 by 1800. This is a dramatic decline, particularly at a time when the populations of most European countries were growing rapidly; but such a desperate collapse might need the operation of other factors, such as economic stagnation, failures in the education system, and chronic political instability. It is interesting to compare the recognizably similar but more complex picture today, when vast numbers of unskilled workers from countries such as Turkey and Algeria are employed in low-level jobs in France and Germany, while such oil rich states as Saudi Arabia fly in expensive westerners to manage oil-extraction and medical care. Perhaps the enslavement of captives was an expedient in the days before immigration and the guest worker. <h4>Forced circumcision</h4> A major sub-theme in the encounters recorded in these texts is the embarrassing fact of male circumcision. Islam was (and remains) the world's largest circumcising culture, while Christianity had demarcated itself from its Judaic parent by decisively rejecting the rite and declaring its belief in the resurrection of the body with all the bits complete and unabridged. Meetings between two such opposed attitudes were sure to provoke sparks, and one of the deepest fears of Christians taken captive by Barbary pirates was that they would be circumcised as part of a forced conversion. Matar remarks that there were cases of forced conversion involving circumcision and that contemporary observers referred to the practice in general terms, but he provides no evidence from eyewitness accounts. Joseph Pitts agreed to convert after repeated beatings, but he does not reveal whether he was subsequently circumcised. He gives the impression that all that needed to be done when converting under compulsion was to make a declaration of faith and that it was only those who went over voluntarily who were required to take part in elaborate initiation ceremonies; but it is possible that the proceedings were so terrible and humiliating for him that he could not bear to refer to them. Vitkus, on the other hand, suggests elsewhere that the fear of circumcision was the result of exaggerated representations in plays and other popular literature, and that "for those who became Muslims in order to join the Barbary pirates, conversion was probably a mere formality," involving little or no obligation of religious practice. Stories of forced circumcision were "a scare tactic designed to discourage potential converts", not an accurate description of what really happened: "Because Christians ... did not practise circumcision ... this feature of Islamic custom was viewed with horror as an atavistic ritual performed by barbarians." [2] In Mughal India, however, a significant number of the thousands of British soldiers taken prisoner after the Battle of Pollilur in 1780 were later forcibly circumcised by Haidar Ali or his son and successor Tipu Sultan; and an unknown number agreed to convert to Islam in the hope of bettering the conditions of their servitude. One horrified officer wrote in his makeshift diary that they were "terribly alarmed this morning for ... [their] foreskin," while another recorded his feelings of shame in bitter terms: "I lost with the foreskin of my yard all those benefits of a Christian and an Englishman which were and ever shall be my greatest glory." Colley makes a rare lapse of cultural empathy in describing this admission as "at once comic, tortured and eloquent," being apparently unaware of the horror with which Europeans regarded circumcision; one cannot imagine her showing such cool detachment were she commenting on the reaction of a victim of clitoridectomy. Elsewhere, however, Colley does appreciate the significance of such a demonstration of raw power by the Sultan, referring to the operation as a "violation", a "mutilation" and "affront to British masculinity." The teenage James Bristow and his mates were so distressed at what had been done to them that they caught dogs and bandicoots and circumcised them, knowing that this would incense their captors because Moslems regard dogs as unclean. The action brought further punishment, but Bristow felt it was justified because "compelling us to undergo an abhorred operation [was] so base and barbarous an act of aggression, that it was impossible to reflect on it with temper." [3] Colley rightly notes that Islam does not mandate circumcision as a requirement of faith and suggests that Tipu probably intended the operation partly as a sign of his absolute control over the bodies of his prisoners and partly as "a mark of new ownership" and "an indelible symbol of these men's incorporation into the Mysore state." Both Colley and Vitkus refer to Freud's absurd claim that people less sophisticated than he confused circumcision with castration; but their own evidence establishes that there was no such confusion in the minds of captives in North Africa or India. In his discussion of eunuchs in Egypt, Joseph Pitts shows that he was perfectly clear on the difference between the two procedures; and it is evident that the Mysore prisoners also knew exactly what circumcision entailed, and that this knowledge explains both why the prospect appalled them yet also why some were willing to submit to it as the price of securing better treatment. Before most of them were executed as British forces advanced to capture Seringapatam in 1799, some four hundred Britons were still working for Tipu as soldiers in slave battalions, weavers of uniforms, or laborers in the royal mint or on roads and fortifications. <h4>Significance of captives</h4> In the sci-fi adventure Planet of the Apes the extra-terrestrials are persuaded that their human prisoners must be rational beings only when they catch a small animal in their enclosure and keep it in a cage, for only a rational being would keep other animals in captivity. But if caging other animals is a sign of rationality, perhaps it is a characteristic of humanity to lock up and observe members of one's own species: homo sapiens is the only species known to take its own kind captive; and if Linda Colley is to be believed, this tendency is a major but neglected factor in world history, having an impact far beyond the walls of any prison. In her stimulating and beautifully written study, Colley re-examines the experience of the British Empire from the perspective of the soldiers and minor officials who did the spadework overseas, great numbers of whom were captured by powerful and often cruel enemies in three significant theatres of cultural interaction â€“ the Mediterranean and North Africa, North America, and India â€“ with a concluding excursion into Afghanistan. Throughout the book she scrutinizes received readings and questions many myths, both imperial and anti-imperial. Far from having been acquired "in a fit of absence of mind," as Sir John Seeley famously ventured at the height of Victorian self-confidence, the Empire and its future was the topic of constant and often anxious debate, with fears of over-stretch, doubts about the future, and nervous memories of the corruption of Rome and the fall of Ninevah and Tyre. The core of truth in Seeley's remark is that the British probably did not set out deliberately to acquire a territorial empire; it was the unintended (though in hindsight inevitable) consequence of rivalry with other European powers for trade and trading posts. Colley emphasizes the military limitations of such a small country, the weakness of its armed forces (especially the army) compared with those of its European rivals, and its limited resources compared with those of many of the regimes in the new territories it sought to influence and then govern. She shows convincingly that the British preference for a policy of divide and rule and of relying on the local populations for military and civil tasks was dictated by sheer necessity: the Empire was acquired and managed on a shoestring budget and with a skeleton staff. The red line, she writes in an arresting image, was often anorexic, and in many places held together by teenage boys who today would be still at school or riding skateboards. <h4>Orientalism</h4> Post-colonialist accounts are also dissected with polite but telling intelligence. Colley acknowledges the seductiveness of the orientalist case, particularly Edward Said's eloquent argument that Europeans have stereotyped Arab and Islamic societies as mysterious, superstitious, backward, feminine, and stagnant, but counters with the observation that European attitudes were quite diverse and changed over time. The principal arena for the Christian encounter with Islam was the Mediterranean, where (until the 1760s) it was strong and Britain weak. The Ottomans had powerful navies and held strategic positions; Britain could not prevent its subjects from being captured and sold into slavery, and did not have the strength to rescue them. Morocco's standing army was many times the size of Britain's. In order to protect its vital bases at Gibraltar and Minorca, her majesty's government paid protection money to the rulers of Algiers and Morocco, and it relied on North Africa to supply food to its garrisons. Thus we see the surprising picture of English slaves in Algiers or Tangier visiting the English consul in those places to try to arrange a ransom and occasionally (though this was dangerous for all concerned) an escape. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was Europeans who were more likely to be feminised, violated, and penetrated, especially by Moslem captors who sold them into slavery, subjected some of them to circumcision, and occasionally forced them to play the passive role in sexual intercourse. No doubt the Christian picture of the sodomitical Turk was part of a demonizing caricature; but the fondness of Middle Eastern and North African men for white youths, especially if blond, is attested to this day by many a satisfied European and American sex-tourist. [4] As Joseph Pitts noted in the eighteenth century: "men, women and children would flock to see me, and I was much admired for having flaxen hair and being of a ruddy complexion. I heard one of them say, 'Behold! What a pretty maid it is'." It is hard to believe that he did not receive sexual attentions, though he does not mention any in his reticent narrative. Perhaps the most significant long-term contrast between the Christian and Moslem worlds, the importance of which has recently been stressed by several western scholars anxious to make sense of the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism [5], is that while the West showed a lot of interest in the East, the latter did not reciprocate, or not to the same degree. Where Europeans from the seventeenth century onwards displayed a lively curiosity about Islamic history and culture, established chairs of Arabic studies, travelled East and wrote detailed accounts of what they found, the Ottomans were relatively contemptuous of and indifferent to the infidel world and did not admit that there was much they could learn from it. Joseph Pitts recorded that the pious Algerians he encountered were "ignorant of astronomy and hold it to be a great piece of arrogance and profaneness for any to dive into these things which belong to that science. And they moreover say that no man in the world knows when the new moon is, but God alone knows. And they say that none but Christians will inquire into such hidden and abstruse matters." It is probable that had Pitts been traveling in Europe and meeting pious Christians they would have made much the same sort of comment, and it is possible that he was pandering to a perception of what his English audience wished to hear about Islamic benightedness. In former times Arabic mathematicians and astronomers had been far in advance of their European counterparts, and their sea captains must have known enough about celestial navigation to steer their ships. (Or was the loss of such knowledge a reason why North African rulers sought European sailors?) Islam posed as thorny a dilemma for Western progressives and radicals in the eighteenth century as it does today. Some, stressing its secular strength and the power of its clerics, denounced it as a variety of theological despotism even worse than that found in backward parts of Europe. Others, stressing its spiritual side, admired it as a purified and simple faith, free from idolatry, superstition and priests, more akin to Deism than an organized religion. [6] Today progressive thinkers are similarly divided between those with sympathy for Islamic regimes and movements as the only forces that seem capable of resisting the advance of US-dominated global capitalism, and those who see such forces as both immediately oppressive and threatening a tyranny as bad as Stalin's communism or the nightmare world imagined in Margaret Atwood's Orwellian dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. <h4>The ambiguities of "otherness"</h4> In her own discussion of such issues, Colley points out that, for the protestant English, the chief "other" was not Islam but Catholicism. The early captivity narratives collected by Vitkus describe far worse cruelty and oppression at the hands of Spanish or Genoese captors, who reportedly tortured Protestant refugees in the hope of forcing them to embrace the true faith, than from Moslem owners in North Africa, who were more interested in getting steady work or a fat ransom out of them. John Locke, in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1685, published 1689) advocated toleration for Jews and Moslems, but probably not for Catholics and certainly not for atheists. [7] The English contempt for poverty, despotism, superstition, and backwardness, so characteristic of eighteenth-century consciousness of nationhood, applied far more often to Catholic Europe, especially Britain's great rivals, France and Spain, than to the Islamic world. For their part, by the 1750s prominent Catholic intellectuals were concerned that Deists and spiriti forti (freethinkers) were greater threats to Christianity than Islam and Judaism combined [7A] â€“ and they were of course right. Belittling Moslem societies was by no means a universal tendency, and there are many examples of a counter trend to hold up the Ottoman or Persian empires as models of enlightenment and good government that Europeans would do well to emulate. Familiar examples include Montesquieu's Persian Letters, Voltaire's Zadig, and Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, in which the Pasha turns out to be an exemplar of humanity and justice. Perhaps such comparisons reflect both ignorance of real conditions and the perception, by the late eighteenth century, that the Ottomans were no longer dangerous, or perhaps the tendency for the dissidents of one country to appeal to the example of any enemy of their own rulers when arguing the need for reform; but it would seem that the orientalist caricature of the Islamic world did not emerge until the second half of the nineteenth century, more likely as a reflection of European domination than as a cause of or justification for it. Orientalism began as a genuine curiosity about the cultures and societies of the East and out of the impulse to know more about them â€“ exemplified by scholarly figures such as Sir William Jones, who learned Indian languages and founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal in 1784. The absence of a correspondingly vigorous "Occidentalism" on the part of eastern intellectuals has much to do with the later characterization of oriental societies as incurious and backward-looking, rather like Europe itself in the Dark Ages. It was the more popular works of lower or middlebrow culture that tended to embody the orientalist typecasting in its full colors â€“ the novels of H. Rider Haggard or G. A. Henty, the ambiguous examples of Kipling, or Arthur Conan Doyle's oddly topical story, The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898), recently republished by a small English press. This is a most hackneyed and predictable adventure tale about a party of tourists on a Nile steamer who are kidnapped by "Dervishes" (the Islamic extremists of the 1890s). The villains first intend to hold them for ransom, but this plan is frustrated by transport difficulties in the desert. They then threaten to shoot their captives, but they delay their doom by professing an interest in conversion, which the Mufti traveling with the band is eager to accommodate. The Europeans are soon rescued by a British military detachment in an episode that highlights how far the writing of thrillers has improved in the past hundred years. The most interesting passages of the book, and the only reason to read it (apart from some witty character sketches), are the exchanges concerning international politics between the retired English colonel and "a good natured but argumentative Frenchman" who held the most decided views about the deep machinations of British diplomacy and the illegality of Britain's position in Egypt. French subtlety over the dialectics of imperial reach and military intervention does not seem to have declined over the past century. There is also a remarkably relevant discussion between the colonel and an American about the white man's burden and whether the United States would indeed step in, as the colonel thought it should, to play the civilizing, modernizing, and order-keeping role, normally played by Britain, in regions then beyond the lion's reach. <h4>American War of Independence</h4> Crossing to another hemisphere, Colley's discussion of captivity in North America covers not only the narratives of settlers abducted by Indians, but the experience of all those who fought in the many conflicts among French, Spanish, British, and colonists about who would rule the territories that eventually became the United States and Canada; and Colley adds new dimensions to our understanding of the American War of Independence, particularly the significance of prisoners in the propaganda aspect of that struggle. In the early stages of colonization Indian defeats were related to divisions among the tribes, which allowed British and French forces to ally with one or other against their rivals in a complex play of shifting partnerships that was not possible in the Mediterranean but was pretty much replicated in India. At the same time, the demands of European commitments meant that Britain did not permanently station a large body of troops in America until after the Seven Years War, and they were not intended to assist the settlers in subduing Indians so much as to contain frontier conflict and keep settlers and Indians apart. Lack of funds stymied the plan to send a force of 10,000, and by the 1770s there were only some 4,500 troops to cover the entire vast expanse from Florida to Canada. The British were not racially exclusivist, and their policy of protecting Indian lands in the west annoyed the colonists: as a consequence, in the War of Independence, more support for Britain came from Indians, Negroes, and other racial minorities than from British Americans. Colley has a brilliant and fascinating discussion of the ambiguities of identity in this conflict and the importance of captives in the war of words, particularly the American endeavor to portray the British as cruel and, therefore, foreign â€“ that is, like savage Indians. The war resulted in the taking of thousands of captives by both sides and the birth of the idea that a nation's decency was to be measured by how it treated them. In their propaganda the rebels emphasized British cruelty to prisoners, thus casting doubt upon Britain's credibility among the enlightened circles of Europe and enhancing the justice of the patriot cause. Although rebel treatment of British prisoners was much the same, the British did not want to talk about the suffering of their own POWs because it was humiliating for the imperial mother to admit that so many of her children had been taken. The outcome of these manoeuvres was that, in the West, kind treatment of captives came to be one of the most important criteria by which to judge a nation's fairness in waging a war and, thereby, its civilized status in general. Subsequently, the alarm bells would ring every time a new and non-subscribing military culture was encountered, such as the Japanese in the Second World War, who reacted to European surrenders in much the same way as the Indians had: as a disgraceful abrogation of manliness that deserved punishment. To an Australian, such tales of captivity and escape have a particularly strong resonance. Modern Australia began, in Robert Hughes' provocative expression, as a Gulag for Britain after the loss of its American colonies [8], and the remote and inhospitable land was a prison for convicts and gaolers alike for many years. Rivaling the myth of Australia's noble defeat at Gallipoli, Australia's predominant wartime memories are the stories of captivity (occasionally including escape) from the Pacific War, particularly the ordeal of POWs on the Thailand-Burma railway and as slave laborers for the Japanese in other parts of east Asia. Confirming Colley's insight that the Seven Years War consolidated treatment of prisoners as the western benchmark for assessing how civilized a nation is, Australian attitudes to the Japanese were soured for two generations by the conviction that they had treated the POWs with brutal inhumanity. <h4>Fractured Islam in India</h4> The Christian-Moslem encounter was never a confrontation of pure essences. Even in the Mediterranean, Christians were divided by national and sectarian allegiances and fought as much among themselves as against the Turk; for many Christians, the main enemy could be Catholic, Protestant, atheist, or sceptic. In India these polymorphous and fracturing tendencies were magnified many times over. A traditional polytheism, later codified as Hinduism, held its own locally against Moslem monotheism; but Islam itself was riven by the great Sunni-Shi'ite division, and the Sunni Mughals had no empathy with the Shi'ite heretics to the south. In the eyes of strict Persian purists, Islam as practiced at Hyderabad or Mysore was heavily contaminated by Hindu superstition. One emigre recorded his disgust at the Hindus' blatant joy in sex and at people who removed neither their pubic hair nor the foreskins of their boys, and he was shocked that children of mixed marriages were left to choose their own religion as they matured. From the west came Portuguese and French Catholics and, later, English Protestants, followed in the eighteenth century by British who were scarcely Christian at all, but sceptical adherents of Enlightenment Deism. They held that human nature was pretty much the same everywhere and were open to other cultures, the worth of which they judged pragmatically on the basis of their contribution to individual happiness and social well-being, rather in the utilitarian manner implied by the words of the wise Tahitian in Diderot's Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage (quoted in the epigraph). They disapproved of religious fanaticism and would have agreed with the sort of detachment shown by Edward Gibbon in his celebrated characterization of religious life under the Roman Empire: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord." [9] <h4>Europeans in India</h4> Such diversity was pretty close to the situation the early European arrivals encountered in India. They were not conquerors or missionaries, but traders who wanted to make money through exchanges profitable to both parties. The missionaries came later, intent on restoring purity of faith and demarcating believer from non-believer: Jesuit priests intended to keep the Portuguese in line; and British parsons disapproved mightily of the lax, idolatrous, and sometimes polygamous habits of so many East India Company employees. Writing back from Portuguese Goa in 1560, one Jesuit official stated that "the Inquisition is more necessary in these parts than anywhere else, since all the Christians here live together with the Muslims, the Jews and the Hindus, and this causes laxness of conscience. ... Only with the curb of the Inquisition will they lead a good life." In similar vein, an English missionary denounced the "brahminised British" of the 1780s-1820s in his indignant tract, The Government Connection with Idolatry in India (1851): "The chief officers of the Government [sic] belonged to a peculiar class. ... [They] were on the whole an irreligious body of men; who approved of Hinduism much more than Christianity, and favoured the Koran more than the Bible. Some hated Missions from their dread of sedition; and others because their hearts 'seduced by fair idolatresses, had fallen for idols foul'." Among other lessons, the research in Colley's Captives and in William Dalrymple's enthralling saga, White Mughals (from which these revealing quotations are taken), confirms the validity of Jane Jacobs' suggestion that warrior or administrative cultures are characterized by values such as exertion of power, deception, revenge, and respect for hierarchy, tradition, and discipline; while commercial cultures nurture qualities like honesty, voluntary agreements, collaboration with strangers, dissent, respect for contracts, openness to novelty, and rejection of force. [10] Much of British-Indian history from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century might be interpreted as the sad process by which the former syndrome conquered the latter. <h4>Anti-racism of the Enlightenment</h4> Under the influence of the universalist ideals of the Enlightenment â€“ and before the rise of territorial imperialism, evangelical Christianity, and racism in the mid-nineteenth century â€“ there was a blending of cultures in India: British officials of the East India Company adopted local customs, dress, food, and lifestyle and formed sexual liaisons (both solemnized and otherwise) with local women (and sometimes surreptitiously, as Ronald Hyam reminds us, with local men and boys). [11] Many of these were captivated rather than captured by their hosts, like Gulliver by the Houyhnhnms, and "went native" to varying degrees. Before company policy put a stop to the trend, British India was on the road to becoming a Creole society. Some of these went back to England as the atmosphere chilled and made a living by preparing curries for other returned India hands who were homesick for their adopted native land and found England itself a place of exile. India offered two main religious choices for those willing to drift away from Christian certainties. William Gardner married a Moslem princess, and his son a grand daughter of the Emperor Aurungzeb; and although it eventually inherited the Gardner barony, the family elected to remain in the East. Major General Charles Stuart, a somewhat mysterious Irishman who arrived in the 1780s while still a teenager, turned to polytheism, published several defences of Hindu customs and culture and became known as "Hindoo Stuart." He built a temple at Saugor and when he visited Europe took statues of his favourite Hindu gods with him. Other prominent figures who similarly went native were Sir David Ochterlonie, the British resident at Delhi, and General William Palmer, envoy to the Hindu Marathas, who was eventually removed by the Governor-General, Richard Wellesley, for excessive sympathy with the Indians. Another product of this hybrid milieu was James Brooke, born in 1803 to an old EIC family in Bengal. Rejecting EIC employment himself, he pressed further east and became the founder of another cross-cultural political entity, the white rajahs of Sarawak. [12] Many of these characters practiced polygamy, and some accumulated quite large harems in the true style of a local grandee. One EIC employee was believed to have no fewer than sixteen concubines; when asked what he did with them all, he replied: "Oh, I just give them a little rice and let them run around". So much for the mystique of the seraglio. As this easy-going mood gave way to the conservative reaction against the French Revolution, the imposition of puritan views on sex, an evangelical style of Christianity, and an ethnocentric view of British superiority, so British policy in India underwent a decisive transformation. From operating as a commercial enterprise with only a limited and incidental interest in the acquisition of territory, the EIC became a major political force with a large army at its command (staffed mostly by native Indians, as Colley stresses), and determined to rule as well as trade. David Ochterlonie registered the changing mood around 1800, not using a term like racism, but regretting the sudden appearance of "ill nature" and "illiberal prejudices" among senior British officials. As Governor-General, Wellesley was committed to eliminating the presence of the French, whom he suspected of radical, republican, and Jacobin sympathies; what sealed Tipu's fate was not his treatment of British captives, but his alliance with revolutionary France, Britain's major antagonist after 1790, and especially following Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in 1798, from where an invasion to liberate India was feared. <h4>James Kirkpatrick, white Mughal</h4> Caught up in and exemplifying this momentous transformation, with its implications for every aspect of British-Indian life, from strategic policy to dinner parties, were James Achilles Kirkpatrick, EIC envoy to the Nizam of Hyderabad from 1798 to 1805, and his secret bride Khair un-Nissa, youngest daughter of an important aristocratic family connected with the court. British concern at the possibility that Kirkpatrick had "turned Turk" (he had reportedly embraced Islam in order to marry Khair in accordance with Moslem forms) was heightened by alarm at the large number of Tipu's captives who had gone over to his side. Whose interests would Kirkpatrick serve? William Dalrymple's engrossing account of Kirkpatrick's life offers many pleasures, including the genealogical complexity of the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic intrigues of Salman Rushdie's Shame, and two star-crossed lovers torn apart by mistrust between their respective societies and more particularly, by the angry, jealous, and exclusivist males of Khair's family and the EIC executive. A moving personal story is firmly situated within the context of the grand commercial and increasingly territorial aspirations of the EIC, encompassing a panorama of princes, begums, zenanas, female power, money, riches beyond belief, colorful ceremonies, landscapes, cities, gardens, architecture, portraits, affection, fraternal rivalries and jealousy, as well as love, birth, death â€“ and even taxes. It is a story as teeming with detail as the streets of India itself. The scholarship is impressive throughout, and the author has made use of materials in Indian languages not often consulted by Western scholars; he has also translated local and contemporary accounts that offer crucial details or telling insights, has used hitherto unexamined letters from women, and speculated intelligently in places where the evidence peters out. As an aesthetic bonus the book is beautifully illustrated and is written in a style accessible to the general reader. One of the most interesting themes to emerge from the narrative is the remarkable initiative of yet another class of captives, this time native ones â€“ the women of Baqar Ali Khan's zenana. The eagerness and skill with which Khair un-Nissa's mother and grandmother plotted to defeat the schemes of the family males and link up with the rising British power show a high degree of dissatisfaction with Persian/Islamic patriarchy and a shrewd awareness that better hopes for prosperity and greater freedom lay with the newcomers. At a broader level it indicates both the rigidity and flexibility of Mughal culture and the greater adaptability of the British before the Enlightenment idea of a universal human nature was replaced by the racist categories characteristic of the imperial high noon. The religious scepticism of the period encouraged people like Kirkpatrick to regard Islam as no more false than Christianity; to marry Khair he would probably have embraced any religion at all, even Catholicism. For her part, Khair always stressed that she had fallen in love with the handsome officer from the moment she glimpsed him from behind the curtain, but the marriage offered significant material advantages as well â€“ rescue from the unattractive cousin her grandfather wanted her to marry, avoidance of a bossy mother-in-law, the security of monogamy, greater opportunities for her children, and an escape from purdah. Although Kirkpatrick built her a pavilion in the garden of the magnificent official residence he erected in Hyderabad, there is no question that she was free to go where she pleased: indeed, after his death she travelled and took a lover in a manner sharply at variance with the customs of her people. In the context of captivity and escape narratives, Khair might be seen as engineering her escape from the prison of Islamic patriarchy, her very own Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. The sad melodrama of James Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa strikingly illustrates Richard Dawkins' argument that the human body is like a vehicle by which DNA achieves its desire to travel and mingle. [13] We are all mongrels, both genetically and culturally, and the more we mix our genes and memes (Dawkins' word for transmissible cultural constructs) and in the process modify our phenotype and social practices, the healthier and more interesting we become. Against this inexorable process stand the identity commissars, with their obsession with various forms of purity, whether racial, religious, cultural, social, or familial: the Jesuits of the Inquisition who condemned (and terrorized) the Portuguese traders at Goa, the British evangelicals who deplored the adoption of Indian dress and customs, the official who demolished the pavilion Kirkpatrick built for Khair because it smacked of "native immorality," the Islamic clerics who urged the faithful to avoid contact with the infidel, and the jealous males of Khair's family who wailed that their honor had been besmirched and their religion insulted and who seized her property and warned that she would be killed if she returned home. Khair's mother cursed religious distinctions and prayed that people could be free to follow the inclination of their hearts; as she explained to Dr. Kennedy, who had been sent to investigate rumors of the affair: "I wish he [Kirkpatrick] had her in the same manner as he might have had her before the Distinctions introduced by Moosa [Moses], Issa [Jesus] and Mahomed were known in the world." In recognizing that such ideological distinctions had little to do with the health and happiness of flesh-and-blood beings, this closeted eighteenth-century Mughal woman was far ahead of her time. <h3>Notes</h3> 1. "Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations", 1754, in Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader (New York: Penguin, 1995), p. 370. 2. Daniel Vitkus, ed., Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 5. 3. "The Narrative of James Bristow, Private in the Bengal Artillery", in A. W. Lawrence, ed., Captives of Tipu: Survivors Narratives (London: Cape, 1929), p. 35. 4. For a calm survey of the issue, see Rudi C. Bleys, The Geography of Perversion: Male-to-male Sexual Behaviour and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750-1918 (London: Cassell, 1996). 5. Such as Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 6. Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 702-03. 7. "A Letter Concerning Toleration," in David Wootton, ed., John Locke: Political Writings (London: Penguin, 1993), pp. 390-436, esp. pp. 426, 431. 7a. Israel, p. 681 8. The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868 (London: Harper Collins, 1987). 9. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. 2., p. 165. 10. Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993), pp. 23-24. Jacobs identifies two sets of values, which she calls the "guardian syndrome" and the "commercial syndrome." 11. Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 126-33. 12. J.H. Walker, Power and Prowess: The Origins of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with the University of Hawaii Press, 2002), esp. p. 30. 13. The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976). SOURCE: Robert Darby, "Captivity and Captivation: Gullivers in Brobdingnag", Eighteenth Century Life, Vol. 27, Fall 2003 </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Christian attitudes to circumcision darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>Ritual circumcision: A social custom</h3> A number of pre-scientific and mostly pre-literate tribal societies have traditionally practised various forms of bodily modification, on both boys and girls, as a social or religious ritual. These are now understood to mark rites of passage from one stage of life to another, which is why the most common time for operations on the genitals is around puberty. It was only in the late nineteenth century that anybody suggested that these rites had a utilitarian rationale, but the idea soon became an article of faith among doctors who favoured circumcision, and it still has currency in backward medical circles today. The idea that ritual circumcision was motivated by concern for health was the invention of nineteenth century doctors. They knew nothing of anthropology, but they were keen to find a respectable ancestry for the new surgical therapy they wanted to introduce. Antiquity, they thought, conferred legitimacy. With the increasing frequency of circumcision as a medical procedure came growing interest in the origins of the operation as a religious or cultural rite. The anthropological view was that circumcision originated strictly as a religious requirement and had no medical significance at all. The ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1876) discussed the practice as a religious rite among Jews, Moslems, ancient Egyptians and several tribal peoples, rejecting sanitary or hygienic explanations in favour of a religious one: Like other bodily mutilations ... [it is] of the nature of a representative sacrifice. ... The principle of substitution was familiar to all ancient nations, and not least to the Israelites. ... On this principle circumcision was an economical recognition of the divine ownership of human life, a part of the body being sacrificed to preserve the remainder. By the eleventh edition (1910) the entry has been turned on its head: "This surgical operation, which is commonly prescribed for purely medical reasons, is also an initiation or religious ceremony among Jews and Mahommedans": suddenly circumcision is primarily a medical procedure and only after that a religious rite. The entry explains that "in recent years the medical profession has been responsible for its considerable extension among other than Jewish children ... for reasons of health". By 1929 the entry is much reduced in size and consists merely of a brief description of the operation, which is "done as a preventive measure in the infant" and "performed chiefly for purposes of cleanliness"; readers are then referred to the entries for "Mutilation" and "Deformation" for a discussion of circumcision in its religious context. An eccentric but well informed Victorian scholar of sexual curiosities, John Davenport, [1] considered that circumcision was "founded almost exclusively upon either religious or political motives", originating with the Ethiopians and Egyptians for unknown reasons and spreading from there to the Arab and then the Jewish peoples, and thence to Islam (Davenport 174). Even as he was putting forward such sensible ideas - broadly confirmed by modern research [2] - he noted that others were offering speculative theories which sought the origins of the operation in terms of practical outcomes. Hypotheses circulating in the 1870s included (1) dampening men's amorous propensities; (2) physical utility related to a hot climate (as already suggested by Acton); (3) to facilitate conception; (4) for hygiene and cleanliness; (5) as a mark of distinction (Davenport 178-81). <h4>Doctors as amateur anthropologists</h4> Victorian doctors keen to introduce circumcision for their own reasons were naturally at the forefront of the trend to find a materialist explanation for the origins of the operation as a rite, and their suggestions were usually cast in terms of whatever they thought circumcision was meant to achieve in the present-day. The burgeoning confidence of the medical profession was expressed in their conviction that, having mastered the world of illness and disease, they could turn themselves into anthropologists with as little extra training as it took to amputate a prepuce. Eager to invest his new therapy with the patina of antiquity, the surgeon (Sir) John Bland-Sutton was typical of such amateur anthropologising and assumed that circumcision must originally have had a health-promoting rationale and became a religious ordinance only as a means of ensuring its perpetuation. Bland-Sutton described circumcision as "the most ancient as well as the simplest operation in surgery", differing from others "in possessing among many races and tribes a ceremonial value". He regretted that there should be so much "quibbling" over whether it should be regarded "as an ordinance for cleanliness or a purely religious rite" but insisted that its main purpose was to ensure fertility: "the text is very clear: it was to ensure fruitful coitus in order that the seed of Abraham should multiply according to the Covenant. A long foreskin is a recognised hindrance to convenient coitus". Never having fathered any children himself he certainly ought to have known about that. Bland-Sutton saw the ceremonial face of circumcision as enhancing rather than throwing doubt on its scientific validity; accepted the myths of the Old Testament as though they were factual history; celebrated every bloodthirsty aggression of the ancient Hebrews, including their murder of the Hivites (Genesis 34) and Saul's demand for a dowry of 200 Philistine foreskins (I Samuel 28); and applauded the biblical use of the word "uncircumcised" as an expression of contempt (Bland-Sutton, 1409). Beliefs about the origin and purpose of ancient circumcision tended to be a projection of doctors' assumptions about the utility of the operation in the present. Those anxious to stop masturbation were convinced that circumcision was introduced to discourage that habit, while those specialising in syphilis were equally certain that its original purpose was to confer protection against venereal disease. Uncritical celebration of Old Testament wisdom reached its fulsome extreme in the writings of American doctors such as Abraham Wolbarst and Edwin Hirsch, who wrote in 1930: The prophets knew their venereology so well that even in spite of scientific advancement the Bible remains the classic on illnesses of sexual origin. Biblical Jews ... regarded gonorrhoea as a distinct affection .... Circumcision was inaugurated as a national custom under the auspices of religious practice, and the sagacity of removing the prepuce on the eighth day is now universally recognised (Hirsch 414-15). But the claims did not end with VD: Dr Arthur Dampier-Bennett believed that circumcision was invented as a treatment for epilepsy. There was, he thought, evidence that "in all primitive peoples there is a peculiar tendency to epilepsy", which may be caused by cerebral pressure or "local irritation" such as that generated by a tight foreskin. He had treated "epileptiform convulsions" in a four-year old by excising his "remarkably long and adherent" prepuce, and he thus considered it "more than likely that, amongst wild tribes ... it has been discovered that a pacifying result follows the ... the operation" (Dampier-Bennett, 243-4). James Allen, a doctor employed by the South African railways, advanced the theory that circumcsion had been introduced as a preventive of the parasitic infestation now known as schistosomiasis; andproposed that if man was to prosper in the African tropics, circumcison would be mandatory - suggestions taken all too seriously by G.N. Weiss and Brian Morris. [3] He was unable to explain why, even though they lived in similar conditions, with rivers infested with the parasite, some African tribes did it and some did not (Allen 1909 and 1910). The medical profession's lack of interest in improving women's health by preventive surgery on their genitals is evident in the fact that nobody pointed out that many of these African tribes and Islamic cultures also practised circumcision and various other forms of genital mutilation on women. <h4>Exaggerated claims as to incidence</h4> Along with these anachronistic projections went a tendency to exaggerate the incidence of circumcision among tribal peoples. Bland-Sutton's "many nations" turns out to be Jews, Moslems, a few east and west African tribes and some Aboriginal tribes of north and central Australia. Dampier-Bennet referred "the universal dissemination of ... this rite", while a Dr John Knott described the operation as practised by Jews, Egyptians, the Arab peoples, many African tribes, the Aborigines of Australia and the Malay archipelago, Polynesians and people in "the Balkan regions ... Asia Minor, Persia and a great part of India" (Knott, 441). Dr Albert Churchward claimed that his recent book - Signs and symbols of primordial man - proved that "circumcision was practised in the Central States of America at least 10,000 years ago ... and was brought here from Ancient Egypt" (Churchward, 424). None of these speculations has been confirmed. Although some east Asian and Pacific peoples practised mild forms of penile mutilation (such as super- and sub-incision) it seems that amputation of the foreskin originated in north-east Africa, whence it spread to some southern tribes and north to the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsular. Of 108 tribal societies considered by a contemporary anthropologist, Karen Paige, only 23 practised some form of penis mutilation (usually circumcision, but in some cases dorsal slitting or subincision), and most of these were found in Africa (10 out of 18) and the southern or eastern coast of the Mediterranean (8 out of 10). Only one mutilating culture was found in the Pacific, and none in the Americas (Paige 1981, 286-9). The wide distribution of circumcision across the Balkans, central Asia, India and south-east Asia is the outcome of military conquest by Islamic armies from the eighth to seventeenth centuries, imposing the Muslim religion and the rule of circumcision on the conquered peoples by force, and attempting to wipe out the indigenous cultures with the same sort of fanatical zeal the Taliban recently displayed in blowing up historic Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. When discussing circumcision among the ancient Hebrews or Egyptians, doctors were quick to ascribe sanitary motivations, but no such assumptions were made in relation to circumcision among the Australian Aborigines. As described by James Frazer, their reasons for doing it were so bizarre and the associated rituals so incomprehensible that they merely confirmed the Aborigines' place as the lowest and most primitive race on earth (Fraser 1904). It was only a rationalist like Herbert Spencer and a critic of circumcision like Herbert Snow who picked up the inconsistency. Spencer rejected the hygiene argument because "while the usage does not prevail among the most cleanly races in the world, it is common among the most uncleanly races" (Spencer, Principles of sociology, I, 67). Snow wrote that it was "simply preposterous to imagine ... that the numerous savage tribes (witness the Hottentots and Australian Aborigines) ... could ever have been actuated by any such considerations" as medical hygiene (Snow 6). That these "ignorant and filthy savages" did much the same thing to boys' penises as learned Jews and hygiene-conscious Moslems was a conundrum which neither Victorian medicine nor its anthropology was able to resolve. Despite their fascination with primitive rites, the doctors missed the one point of striking similarity between their own and the savage world. In some of the Australian Aboriginal tribes which circumcise boys at puberty, the young and fertile women were monopolised by the old men, meaning that initiates faced a long period of celibacy before they could obtain a wife (Page 1981, 6). Such a system is oddly analogous to middle class life in Victorian England, embodying William Acton's insistence that youths must earn the right to marry, and pass the waiting period in strict continence. <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;">John Davenport, 1789-1877, a businessman and amateur scholar of erotic subjects. Publication of his book was financed by Henry Spencer Ashbee. See Ian Gibson,The erotomaniac: The secret life of Henry Spencer Ashbee, New York, Da Capo Press, 2001, pp. 24 and 54.</li> <li style="font-weight: 400;">For an introduction to an inconclusive literature, see Gollaher 2000, ch. 3, and Paige 1981 for more extended discussion</li> <li style="font-weight: 400;">Brian Morris,In favour of circumcision(Sydney 1999), citing (with evident admiration) G.N. Weiss, "Prophylactic neonatal surgery and infectious diseases", Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal, Vol. 16, 1997, pp. 727-34 - a preposterous farrago which, for sheer anti-scientific loopiness, outdoes even the posthephobic rantings of P. C. Remondino. Weiss was shot down in flames by Robert Van Howe in a coolly analytic reply, "<a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/circumcision_and_infectious_diseases_revisited.html">Circumcision and infectious diseases revisited</a>", Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal, Vol. 17, January 1998, pp. 1-6. Leonard Glick reports that after this effort Weiss was unable to get anything further published in a mainstream refereed journal and was reduced, like <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/general/hitchcock/">Edgar Schoen</a>, to the humiliating expedient of self-publishing: see Marked in your flesh, pp. 200-206</li> </ol> <h3>References</h3> Allen, James, "Bilharzia haematobia and circumcision", Lancet, 8 May 1909, pp. 1317-20; "Bilharziosis and how to prevent it", Lancet, 6 August 1910, pp. 375-6 Churchward, Albert (1910), letter, BMJ, 12 February, 424 Davenport, John (1875), Curiositates eroticae physiologiae, or tabooed subjects freely treated, London, privately printed, reprinted as Aphrodisiacs and love stimulants, with other chapters on the secrets of Venus, ed. Henry Hull Walton, London, Luxor Press, 1965 Dampier-Bennett, Arthur (1907). "The origin of circumcision", BMJ, 27 July, 243-4 Fraser, James (1904), "The origins of circumcision", BMJ, 24 December 1904, 1704-5 Gollaher, David L. (2000), Circumcision: A history of the world's most controversial surgery, New York, Basic Books Hirsch, Edwin (1930), "An historical survey of gonorrhoea", Annals of Medical History, NS Vol. II Knott, John (1906), "Literary notes: John Knott on circumcision", British Medical Journal, 25 August, p. 441 Paige, Karen Ericksen and Jeffery Paige (1981), The politics of reproductive ritual, Berkeley, University of California Press Snow, Herbert (1890), The barbarity of circumcision as a remedy for congenital abnormality, London, Churchill Spencer, Herbert (1876-82), Principles of sociology, Vols 1 and 2, repr. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood press, 1975 <h3>Further reading</h3> Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, "<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/aldeeb1/">To Mutilate in the Name of Jehovah or Allah: Legitimization of Male and Female Circumcision</a>", Medicine and Law, Vol. 13, Nos. 7-8 (July), 1994, pp. 575-622 Kirsten Bell, "<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anthropology/bell1/">Genital Cutting and Western Discourses on Sexuality</a>", Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2005, pp. 125â€“48 <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;">Fox and M. Thomson, "<a href="http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/31/8/463">A covenant with the status quo? Male circumcision and the new BMA guidance to doctors</a>",Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 31, 2005, pp. 463â€“69</li> </ol> Ashley Montagu, "<a href="http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/montagu.html">An anthropologist looks at circumcision and its probable origin</a>", <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/">CIRP cultural and religious resources</a> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Overview ritual/religious circumcision darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> The terms of the debate about non-therapeutic circumcision of minors have changed. The issue is no longer whether the so-called “benefits” outweigh the risks, or even whether the benefits outweigh the risks and harms. (As for the troglodytes who still mutter about pros and cons …) Coming on top of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tradition-vs-individual-rights-the-current-debate-on-circumcision-10199" rel="noopener" target="_blank">judgement of a German court</a> that circumcision is bodily harm and that it violates the child’s right to religious freedom, a leading legal philosopher now argues that boys have an inherent right not to be circumcised without medical need. In a paper forthcoming in Health Matrix, Stephen Munzer argues that current norms of autonomy and bodily integrity give male minors “a moral, anticipatory right-in-trust not to be circumcised without a medical indication.” Even more remarkably, it is now conceded by a prominent defender of religious/cultural circumcision that the practise is harmful and does violate the rights of the child. Writing in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Joseph Mazor acknowledges the physical and moral harms of circumcision and admits that the child has “a right of moderate strength” not to be subjected to “presumably harmful circumcision”. Both Munzer and Mazor go on to argue that, given the importance of circumcision within the cultural/religious communities that follow this tradition, the practice should not be criminalised. This is a fair point, far less important than the vital concession that circumcision is harmful and does violate the rights of the child to bodily integrity, personal autonomy and <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/ethics.html#recent" rel="noopener" target="_blank">an open future</a>. If it is now admitted that NTC is harmful and does violate the rights of the child, there can be no justification for medical authorities recommending the practice or “routinely” performing it on demand, or even sitting awkwardly on the fence; or for government agencies to encourage it (e.g. through health insurance coverage etc); and there is a strong argument for appropriate agencies to take measures to discourage it by removing incentives and imposing disincentives – in the same way as government programs have sought to discourage harmful practices such as smoking tobacco, without actually making it illegal. However these details are resolved, the debate now is not about whether or not circumcision should be performed, but about the best and most effective means of <a href="http://euromind.global/en/brian-d-earp-and-rebecca-steinfeld/?lang=en" rel="noopener" target="_blank">discouraging the practice</a>. In the background is a further question: whether non-therapeutic circumcision of minors is or should be illegal. <h3>Boys have a “moral right” not to be circumcised</h3> A straw – or perhaps a haystack – in the wind is a recent paper by legal philosopher Stephen Munzer giving detailed consideration to the question of whether male minors have a moral right not to be circumcised without medical need, and concludes that they do. Male minors, he argues, have “a moral anticipatory right-in-trust not to be circumcised without a medical indication.” The basis for this position rests on four key factors: (1) the permanent loss of functional tissue; (2) the “salience” of the penis in physical, psychological and cultural terms; (3) the limits on parental rights to modify their children’s bodies; and (4) the principle of gender equity. Although Munzer does not endorse criminalisation (taking account of the importance of circumcision to the cultures that practise it as a religious or cultural rite) he reaches the firm conclusion that it is morally wrong and that boys have the same right to genital integrity as currently enjoyed by girls. And if they do have such a right, society must eventually acknowledge its obligation to take action to translate that principle into practical reality. Abstract This Article argues that male minors have a moral anticipatory right-in-trust not to be circumcised without a medical indication. Based on norms of autonomy and bodily integrity, this Article’s treatment of children’s rights, parental rights, religious freedom, and tolerance offers arguments accessible to readers of many ethical, political, and intellectual persuasions. Three direct arguments rest on (1) the loss of non-renewable functional tissue, (2) genital salience, and (3) limits on a parental right to permanently modify their sons’ bodies. This Article also compares circumcision to a rare form of female genital cutting; the comparison contains the seed of an argument sounding in (4) gender equality. In current circumstances, however, it is unwarranted to treat nontherapeutic circumcision as a crime or subject it to burdens under tort, family, or administrative law. Stephen Munzer. Examining nontherapeutic circumcision. Health Matrix 28 (1) 2018: 1-77 (in press). <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3180209" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text at SSRN</a>. <h3>Mazor’s qualified defence of religiously motivated circumcision</h3> Abstract This article considers the question of how much weight the infringement of children's right to bodily integrity should be given compared with competing considerations. It utilises the example of circumcision to explore this question, taking as given this practice's opponents’ view of circumcision’s harmfulness. The article argues that the child’s claim against being subjected to (presumably harmful) circumcision is neither a mere interest nor a right so strong that it trumps all competing interests. Instead, it is a right of moderate strength. Indeed, even the aggregate strength of children’s rights against the practice of (presumably harmful) circumcision as a whole is not so weighty so as to always trump competing interests. The harms are not sufficiently serious to justify such a status. And the expressive wrongs associated with non‐negligently benevolent harming are much less serious than those associated with intentional harming. The debate over banning circumcision thus cannot be conducted only in terms of competing rights. Competing interests, such as those that would be set back by the departure of religious citizens, should be considered as well and might plausibly justify allowing even a rights-infringing practice to continue. Joseph Mazor. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/japp.12275" rel="noopener" target="_blank">On the Strength of Children’s Right to Bodily Integrity: The Case of Circumcision</a>. Journal of Applied Philosophy, on-line first, 24 May 2018. There will be continuing argument over how harmful these harms are; but once the reality of harm is conceded, there can be no going back to tired old clichés such as pros and cons or benefits and risks. It may be while before troglodytes such as the American Academy of Pediatrics catch up (let alone Prof Morris), but once it is agreed (as Mazor concedes and Munzer argues) that NTC of minors is morally wrong, it places pressure on government, the medical profession, regulatory agencies, bioethical watchdogs etc to take some sort of action to discourage it, and certainly to ensure that nothing is done to promote it. We are really entering new territory. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource As human rights advance circumcision advocates have nowhere left to hide darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> In a wide-ranging commentary, Brian Earp replies to a proposal from two American gynecologists that Western societies should tolerate and doctors should perform “mild” forms of female genital cutting on girls. This is the same argument that was advanced by bioethicist Dena Davis over a decade ago and which was adopted, very briefly, as the official policy of the <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/Protection_of_children.html">American Academy of Pediatrics in 2010</a>. The argument then, as now, was that since circumcision of boys was tolerated, it was discriminatory not to permit less damaging versions of female genital cutting. If the religious rites of groups that practised circumcision of boys were respected, it was consistent to respect the cultural/religious rites of groups that circumcised girls. In reply it was pointed out that the argument could just as well work the other way: that if genital cutting of girls was rejected as an abhorrent denial of human rights, why should similar (and often more severe) surgery on the genitals of boys be tolerated? While Davis, the AAP and the latest team argue that they are trying to even things up, other critics noticed that the situation would still be very unequal. Under their proposals, girls would still be protected from all but the most minimal and harmless scratch, while boys were still to have their entire foreskin cut off - no change, and not much equality there. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the real aim of these proposals is not to “show respect” for cultures that practise female genital cutting, but to make it easier to defend circumcision of boys. Over the past decade or so an increasing number of bioethicists, human rights experts and independent thinkers have questioned the “quarantining” of female genital mutilation from male circumcision and argued that the two practices have much in common, socially, ethically and even physically. If cutting a girl’s genitals is a violation of her human rights, it is hard to see why cutting a boy’s genitals is not a violation of his human rights. Arora and Jacobs have already published uncompromising <a href="https://www.academia.edu/12850710/The_mysterious_disappearance_of_the_object_of_inquiry_Jacobs_and_Aroras_defence_of_circumcision" rel="noopener" target="_blank">(though somewhat confused</a>) defences of specifically male circumcision and clearly recognise this problem; it seems likely that their latest “modest proposal” on female circumcision is intended to make male circumcision less vulnerable to criticism as an instance of sexism and double standards, and to make it more difficult for those who oppose the practice on bioethical and human rights grounds. In other words, A&J’s real and underlying aim is not to promote female circumcision, but to defend and preserve circumcision of boys as a cultural and medical rite. In his commentary on A&J’s latest efforts in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Brian Earp argues that all children have the same human rights and should have equal protection from non-therapeutic genital surgeries. Abstract: Arora and Jacobs (2016) assume that liberal societies should tolerate non-therapeutic infant male circumcision, and argue that it follows from this that they should similarly tolerate — or even encourage — what the authors regard as ‘de minimis’ forms of female genital mutilation (as defined by the World Health Organization). In this commentary, I argue that many serious problems would be likely to follow from a policy of increased tolerance for female genital mutilation, and that it may therefore be time to consider a less tolerant attitude toward non-therapeutic infant male circumcision. Ultimately, I suggest that children of whatever sex or gender should be free from having healthy parts of their most intimate sexual organs either damaged or removed, before they can understand what is at stake in such an intervention and agree to it themselves. Brian Earp. <a href="http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2016/01/20/medethics-2015-103030.abstract" rel="noopener" target="_blank">In defence of genital autonomy for children</a>. Journal of Medical Ethics, online first, 20 January 2016. The full version of the paper, with supplementary material, may be read at Brian’s <a href="https://www.academia.edu/19117334/In_defence_of_genital_autonomy_for_children" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Academia Page</a> or at <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285578712_In_defence_of_genital_autonomy_for_children" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ResearchGate</a>. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In defence of children's right to bodily integrity darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> In a landmark judgement, the High Court of England and Wales has ruled that children should not be circumcised until they are old enough to decide for themselves. The case arose when the Muslim father of the boy wanted him to be circumcised in accordance with his own religious beliefs, but the English mother disagreed. Top female Family Division judge Mrs Justice Roberts agreed with their mother’s wish to leave it for the boys, aged six and four, to make up their own minds when they are older whether they wish to have it done. The father, 36, was born in Algeria but is now separated from the 34-year-old mother. The couple met in 2006, lived together in a North London flat, and went through an Islamic ceremony of marriage in 2009 before the boys were born. In July 2012 the mother fled the flat with the boys following violent attacks on her by the father. The judge said the father came to England in 2001 on false documents, but had now been given British passport. In reaching her decision, Justice Roberts said: "First and foremost, this is a once and for all, irreversible procedure. There is no guarantee that these boys will wish to continue to observe the Muslim faith with the devotion demonstrated by their father although that may very well be their choice. They are still very young and there is no way of anticipating at this stage how the different influences in their respective parental homes will shape and guide their development over the coming years. There are risks, albeit small, associated with the surgery regardless of the expertise with which the operation is performed. There must be clear benefits which outweigh these risks which point towards circumcision at this point in time being in their best interests before I can sanction it as an appropriate course at this stage of their young lives." She added: "Taking all these matters into account, my conclusion is that it would be better for the children that the court make no order at this stage in relation to circumcision. I am simply deferring that decision to the point where each of the boys themselves will make their individual choices” Circumcision choice should be left until children are old enough to decide for themselves. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/19/circumcision-choice-should-be-left-until-children-are-old-enough/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Telegraph, 19 April 2016</a> Jonathan Wells, Should religious circumcision be banned? <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/health/should-religious-circumcision-be-banned/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Telegraph, 19 April 2016</a> <a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2016/849.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Read the full judgement</a> <h2>Analysis: Decision in circumcision case has wide implications for children's rights</h2> The decision of Justice Roberts in the case of L & B in the High Court of England and Wales has important implications for child rights and protection of children against genital surgeries desired by their parents or other adults. In a landmark judgement, the court ruled that children should not be circumcised until they are old enough to decide for themselves. The case arose when the Muslim father of the boy wanted him to be circumcised in accordance with his own religious beliefs, but the English mother disagreed. Top female Family Division judge Mrs Justice Roberts agreed with their mother’s wish to leave it for the boys, aged six and four, to make up their own minds when they are older whether they wish to have it done. The father, 36, was born in Algeria but is now separated from the 34-year-old mother. The couple met in 2006, lived together in a North London flat, and went through an Islamic ceremony of marriage in 2009 before the boys were born. In July 2012 the mother fled the flat with the boys following violent attacks on her by the father. The judge said the father came to England in 2001 on false documents, but had now been given British passport. The importance of the court’s judgement is that it confirms and extends earlier rulings that where parents disagree about whether a child should be circumcised, he or she should not be circumcised, but protected until he or she is old enough to make an informed decision. It further implies that for circumcision of a child t be lawful, both parents must give consent. This confirms the earlier ruling in the case of Re J that where the parents disagree, the best interests and possible future wishes of the child will need to be considered, which will normally dictate that the child should be free to decide for itself when older). The case represents a perceptible change towards giving priority to the child’s rights and possible future wishes, thus abandoning the old legal view of children as little more than objects in the possession of their parents. More obviously than in the <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/UKlaw/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">case of Re J</a>, the Court was receptive to the real risk of harm resulting from circumcision, largely owing to the evidence presented by the mother’s counsel, who was well versed in the recent medical literature. While noting them, Justice Roberts did not give priority to the prophylactic health benefit arguments, but rather correctly evaluated the risks and harms involved as the key factor. The vital thing is that the court accepted the primacy of the children’s right to make their own decisions about their lives. A key statement from the central argument of the judge (para 142-3): “First and foremost, [circumcision] is a once and for all, irreversible procedure. There is no guarantee that these boys will wish to continue to observe the Muslim faith ... although that may very well be their choice. They are still very young and there is no way of anticipating at this stage how the different influences in their respective parental homes will shape and guide their development over the coming years. ... I am ... deferring that decision to the point where each of the boys themselves will make their individual choices once they have the maturity and insight to appreciate the consequences and longer term effects of the decisions which they reach.” These comments are essentially consistent with the principle of the <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/ethics.html#OpenFuture">child’s right to an open future</a>. Justice Roberts also referred to <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/Brit_judge_on_FGM_and_circumcision.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Lord Justice Munby’s comment</a> from the Re B & G case last year: that when considering the legal questions around non-therapeutic circumcision, particularly the question of “significant harm” and comparisons with FGM, is to wade into “deep waters” - a suggestion that there is some wider concern about the tenability of this area of the law. Perhaps the most useful element of the case will turn out to be the factual findings. After hearing at length from an expert of Islamic Studies, the judge was quite satisfied that nothing in Islam requires Muslim parents to circumcise their boys or that a boy’s circumcision is obligatory at any particular age. On the contrary, she found that that even if not uncircumcised they will still be able to participate fully in their father’s Muslim culture. Given that most circumcision cases now involve Islam more than any other faiths, this finding is an important one on which subsequent cases will probably rely. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource British court: Circumcision choice should be left until children old enough to decide for themselves darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h1>Male circumcision can be worse than female genital mutilation</h1> Circumcision of boys is “significant harm” and more damaging than mild forms of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is the considered opinion of Sir James Munby, President of the British Family Court, expressed during his judgement on a case involving a girl from a Muslim family suspected of having undergone FGM. If she had been subjected to FGM, the law provides that she should be placed under care and the parents charged with a criminal offence. But since the girl had a brother who had been or was likely to be circumcised in accordance with Muslim tradition, the judge observed that the case inevitably brought up the question of male circumcision and its very different status in British law. He noted that “circumcision involved the removal of a significant amount of tissue, created an obvious alteration to the appearance of the genitals, and leaves a more or less prominent scar around the circumference of the penis.” Accordingly, it can readily be seen that while severe forms of FGM are more invasive than male circumcision, mild forms (such as Type IV in the <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">WHO classification</a>), “are on any view, much less invasive than male circumcision.” Sir James further observed that any form of FGM, no matter how mild, constituted “significant harm” – this being the threshold condition for placing a child in care under the Childrens Act 1989 – and asked what this meant for male circumcision: Mr Hayes points to the recognition, both by Wall J, as he then was, and by the <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/Re_J/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Court of Appeal in Re J</a> (Specific Issue Orders: Muslim Upbringing and Circumcision) [1999] … that male circumcision does involve harm, or the risk of harm. Given the comparison between what is involved in male circumcision and FGM WHO Type IV, to dispute that the more invasive procedure involves the significant harm involved in the less invasive procedure would seem almost irrational. In my judgment, if FGM Type IV amounts to significant harm, as in my judgment it does, then the same must be so of male circumcision [Para 69]. The judge went on to observe that the only differences between FGM and male circumcision are that the latter is sanctioned by some religions and traditional cultures, while the former is merely a cultural tradition; and that certain health benefits are (controversially) claimed for circumcision, but not for FGM. Despite these points of similarity, the status of male circumcision and FGM in British law are strikingly different: the former tolerated and unrestricted, the latter legally prohibited under pain of severe penalties. The result is a paradoxical situation: In the present case the point [i.e. the paradox] arises in striking form. The family, as I have said are Muslims. I assume, therefore, that B [the boy] either has been or will in due course be circumcised. Yet, entirely understandably, and, if I may say so, entirely appropriately, this is not a matter that has been raised before me. There is no suggestion, nor could there be, that B’s circumcision can or should give rise to care proceedings. So, given the nature of the local authority’s case on this point, we are in this curious situation. G’s [the girl’s] FGM Type IV (had it been proved) would have been relied upon by the local authority, prior to its change of stance referred to above, as justifying the adoption of both children, even though on any objective view it might be thought that G would have subjected to a process much less invasive, no more traumatic (if, indeed, as traumatic) and with no greater long-term consequences, whether physical, emotional or psychological, than the process to which B has been or will be subjected [Para 63]. There is thus a crying anomaly in both law and custom. Although it constitutes significant harm and is more damaging than mild forms of FGM, non-therapeutic circumcision (NTC) of (non-consenting) male minors is both legally permitted and widely regarded as a legitimate aspect of “reasonable parenting”. Although the judge’s comments on circumcision in this case are strictly speaking obiter dicta (i.e. not directly related to the point being decided), they are of great importance as yet another recognition that non-therapeutic circumcision does involve significant harm, and are possibly the first such formal recognition in an Anglophone court. Sir James’ comments echo and reinforce the judgement of the <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/Circumcision_and_law.html">Cologne appeal court</a> in 2012 that NTC of minors was harmful and violated and violated the child’s right to both physical integrity and freedom of religion. It also supports the conclusion of the <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/Tasmania_law_reform.html">Tasmania Law Reform Institute</a> that NTC was sufficiently harmful (both physically and ethically) to warrant strict regulation and partial prohibition. The judge’s conclusion – – "that although both involve significant harm, there is a very clear distinction in family law between FGM and male circumcision. FGM in any form will suffice to establish ‘threshold’ in accordance with section 31 of the Children Act 1989; male circumcision without more will not" – – sends a very clear message to legislators that such a glaring inconsistency in the law cannot be tolerated indefinitely. Source (legal citation): Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division. <a href="http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/BandG_2_.pdf">In the matter of B & G (children)</a>. Case LJ13C00295, 14 January 2015. <h2>Further reading on male and female circumcision</h2> Robert Darby and J. Steven Svoboda. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7104790/A_rose_by_any_other_name_Symmetry_and_asymmetry_in_male_and_female_genital_cutting" rel="noopener" target="_blank">A Rose by Any Other Name: Symmetry and Asymmetry in Male and Female Genital Cutting</a> Brian Earp. <a href="http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/02/female-genital-mutilation-and-male-circumcision-time-to-confront-the-double-standard/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Female genital mutilation (FGM) and male circumcision: should there be a separate ethical discourse?</a> Brian Earp. <a href="http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/male-and-female-circumcision-are-equally-wrong/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Is there any moral difference between male and female circumcision?</a> Aeon magazine, January 2015. Brian Earp. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10197867/Between_moral_relativism_and_moral_hypocrisy_The_case_of_FGM">Between moral relativism and moral hypocrisy: The case of FGM</a> <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision legal issues at CIRP</a> <h2>Male circumcision can be worse than female genital mutilation</h2> <h3>Report in British magazine, insideMan</h3> One of the country’s most senior judges has courted controversy by declaring that male circumcision can be more harmful than female genital mutilation (FGM). Sir James Munby acknowledged he was entering “deep waters” by highlighting inconsistencies in the law, but said it would be “irrational” to dispute the fact that male circumcision can be more harmful than some forms of FGM. The High Court judge made the comments as he passed judgment in care proceedings brought by a local authority seeking to take a brother and sister, from a Muslim family, into care on the grounds that the girl was a victim of Type IV FGM. While the case failed on the grounds that damage to the girl’s genitals was probably caused by a condition called vulvovaginitis, Munby, who is president of the family division, felt compelled to highlight the sexist double standard that the case brought to light. In summing up the judge noted that while subjecting a girl to Type IV FGM could result in that child being taken into care, male circumcision would not lead to a boy being removed from his family, even though the procedure is more harmful than at least some forms of Type IV FGM. An inconvenient truth Campaigners against male circumcision have long been hampered by the myth that subjecting girls to FGM is different and always worse than circumcising boys. The uncomfortable truth, to which Munby has now given judicial credibility, is that male circumcision is different and sometimes worse than FGM. This is particularly true of Type IV FGM which incorporates practices such as pricking, piercing and nicking the genitals, which are less harmful and invasive than removing the foreskin in it’s entirety. Male circumcision in the UK is often performed without anaesthetic, in non-medical conditions and can cause complications such as life threatening haemorrhage, shock, sepsis an in extreme cases death. In 2012 a Freedom of Information request revealed that two boys a week are admitted to the emergency department of Birmingham children’s hospital as a result of male circumcision. Society more tolerant of male circumcision However, despite Munby’s assessment that ”on any objective view” male circumcisions is sometimes worse than FGM, he also made clear that current judicial thinking is that there is no equivalence between the two practices. “In 2015 ,” he said in his judgment, “the law generally, and family law in particular, is still prepared to tolerate non-therapeutic male circumcision performed for religious or even for purely cultural or conventional reasons, while no longer being willing to tolerate FGM in any of its forms. “Given the comparison between what is involved in male circumcision and FGM WHO Type IV, to dispute that the more invasive procedure involves the significant harm involved in the less invasive procedure would seem almost irrational. In my judgment, if FGM Type IV amounts to significant harm, as in my judgment it does, then the same must be so of male circumcision.” The phrase “significant harm” is important as this is the first threshold that must be crossed before a child can be taken into care under section 31 of the Children’s Act 1989. There is another criteria which must also be considered in care proceedings and this is whether the care given to a child is “what would be reasonable to expect a parent to give”. Why the law is different According to Munby, while it can never be reasonable parenting to inflict any form of FGM on a child, the position is quite different with male circumcision. Munby argued that there are at least two important distinctions between the two practices. Firstly, that FGM has no basis in any religion, while male circumcision is often performed for religious reasons. Secondly, that while FGM is said to have no medical justification and confers no health benefits; male circumcision is seen by some people as providing hygienic or prophylactic benefits, although opinions are divided. Even taking the conflicting medical evidence on any perceived benefits into account, Munby concluded that “reasonable” parenting should be seen to permit male circumcision. And that is where UK law stands on the matter today. The Head of the Family Division of the Family Court has judged that while male circumcision is sometimes worse than FGM, it is deemed to be reasonable for parents of all backgrounds to circumcise their sons, while carrying out a less invasive and less harmful from of Type IV FGM on their daughters is not considered reasonable parental behaviour. A welcome coup for campaigners Having a senior judge acknowledge that FGM can be less harmful than male circumcision is a welcome coup for those of us who advocate for the right of every human being to enter adulthood with intact genitals, except in rare cases where therapeutic surgery is unequivocally unavoidable. The fact that our society, led by politicians and the judiciary, is still prepared to tolerate greater harm happening to boys than to girls, reveals a great deal about the sexist double standards we apply to the issues that affect men and boys in 2015. The fact that we are collectively more tolerant of the harm that happens to men and boys, than the harm that happens to women and girls, doesn’t begin and end at genital mutilation. Our shared cultural beliefs that “boys don’t cry”; that men should “man up”; that women have problems and men are problems; that females are the weaker sex and that we should always put the protection of women and girls first; is reflected in our inability to tackle a whole range of social issues that, predominantly impact men and boys, head on. Why this is a men’s issue These include male suicide; male homelessness; the high rate of male workplace deaths; men’s lower life expectancy; the expulsion of boys from school; the exclusion and marginalisation of separated fathers from their children’s lives; the way we respond to male victims of violence and the harsher treatment and sentencing of men and boys in the criminal justice system. What Sir James Munby has uncovered is an inconvenient and important truth about men, manhood and masculinity in 2015 which is simply this—while the harm that happens to men and boys in our society is different and sometimes worse than the harm that happens to women and girls, we still view any harm that women and girls experience more seriously. Munby is part of the problem he has raised, for while he acknowledges that male circumcision can be more harmful than FGM, he has essentially declared that while it’s reasonable for parents to harm their sons, it is never reasonable to harm their daughters. Glen Poole, <a href="http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2015/01/15/male-circumcision-can-be-worse-than-fgm-rules-senior-judge/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Male circumcision can be worse than FGM, rules senior Judge</a>. insideMan (UK), 15 January 2015. Glen Poole author of the book, <a href="http://equality4men.com/book/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Equality For Men</a>. <h3>Further discussion</h3> Brian Earp, On the supposed distinction between culture and religion: A brief comment on Sir James Munby’s decision in the matter of B and G (children). <a href="http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/02/on-the-supposed-distinction-between-culture-and-religion-a-comment-on-sir-james-munbys-decision-in-the-matter-of-b-and-g-children/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Oxford Practical Ethics Blog, 8 February 2015</a>. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource British judge calls circumcision “significant harm” darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> Over the last hundred years or so, a remarkably strong movement against circumcision among Jewish people has emerged. This development may surprise people, but it is a logical development of the modernisation and integration that began in the early nineteenth century, as European Jews were freed from the ghettos and joined the mainstream of modern life. In the process they naturally questioned many ancient observances and practices. Such questioning is also an expression of commitment to human rights, going back to the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen">Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen</a>), strengthened by the <a href="http://www.arclaw.org/arc_human_rights_table/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> just after the Second World War. The principles developed here asserted an individual’s right to freedom, autonomy, and personal rights, of which the most basic was control over his or her own body. Given their own sad history of discrimination and persecution Jewish people have naturally been at the forefront of campaigns for human rights in many areas other than freedom of religion. This critical trend also derives from new historical information about the origin of circumcision (male and female) in Egypt and Africa, scientific discoveries about the damage caused by circumcision, and a desire on the part of individuals to observe a higher level of spiritual ethics. This movement to question and often reject circumcision includes Jewish Rabbis, scholars, parents, intellectuals and educators, both in the United States and in Israel itself. In the United States, especially, Jewish people are so prominent in the general anti-circumcision and child protection movements that the controversy over circumcision is sometimes seen as a debate internal to the Jewish community. That would be a mistake: human rights are enjoyed by all humans, simply by virtue of their birth. The Jewish people’s long experience of, and heroic resistance to, persecution and discrimination has naturally made them particularly sensitive to human rights issues, so it comes as no surprise to see the most thoughtful members of the community having doubts about a practice that is increasingly seen as unconscionable denial of individual autonomy and personal choice - in short, a violation of those same rights that Jewish people invoke when defending their own religious freedom and cultural/personal identity. <h2>Increasing opposition to circumcision in Israel</h2> As worldwide opposition to routine circumcision grows, increasing numbers of Jewish people in Israel are deciding not to circumcise their sons. A well-researched article in the newspaper Haaretz (June 2013) reports the results of a survey conducted in 2006 which found that while nearly 5 per cent of respondents had not circumcised, fully a third (33 per cent) of parents would have preferred not to circumcise; they were persuaded by fear of social pressure. The greatest anxiety is about the reaction of relatives, especially grandparents - who usually get over their shock once they see their grandson and realise how beautiful he is. For example, Ido (an uncircumcised Jerusalem resident) told Haaretz that his paternal grandmother “did not stop crying from the moment she heard that her grandson was not going to be circumcised − until the first time she saw him and was enchanted by him. After that, he says, the subject never came up again.” Further evidence of the changing tide of sentiment are the increasing numbers of opinion pieces in Israeli newspapers criticising and rejecting circumcision, such as Uri Misgiv, who challenges the connection between circumcision and Judaism, declares his opposition to the cutting of children’s genitals on ethical and human rights grounds, and wonders why “people without any religious faith anxiously keep track of every heartbeat of their infant in the womb, run with him to the monitor, sonogram and every possible pregnancy test, guard him carefully from the moment of his birth – and then hasten to cut his sexual organ.” Also of significance is an editorial in Haaretz which stated firmly that “individual rights take precedence over religious customs”. The editorial was referring to a case in which an Israeli religious (rabbinical) court ordered a woman to have her boy circumcised and fined her for refusing; criticising the court’s decision, the editorial rejected forced circumcision and asserted the primacy of personal autonomy. <h3>Israeli writer challenges link between Judaism and circumcision</h3> The idea that Judaism is inextricably linked to circumcision must be challenged and corrected. When my beloved son was born I didn’t circumcise him. It was an easy and natural step, which I saw as an expression of my existence as a free man. I’m opposed to circumcision, and also have reservations about the use of the term “brit milah” (“covenant of circumcision”). It involves cutting the infant’s sexual organ, and I am opposed to the cutting of the sexual organs of boys and girls. Until now, I have naturally focused my efforts at persuasion on the population of secular parents. After all, it’s quite strange that people without any religious faith anxiously keep track of every heartbeat of their infant in the womb, run with him to the monitor, sonogram and every possible pregnancy test, guard him carefully from the moment of his birth – and then hasten to cut his sexual organ. It is relatively easy to reject the two reasons for continuing to practice circumcision that are common among the secular community. First, the health-related hygienic reason is relevant for other times or other continents, and in any case it should be confronted by a medical reason which is usually not reported: The percentage of accidents and mishaps in circumcisions is significant. Quite a large percentage of newborns who are hospitalized arrive with injuries and infections resulting from circumcision. Also, as opposed to refraining from making the cut, circumcision is an irreversible process, liable to cause irreversible damage. Second, the “social” reason is gradually declining on its own with the welcome spread of refraining from circumcision – and in any case is quite hard to understand. (Recently I encountered two separate cases of lesbian couples who brought a baby into the world together and decided to cut his sexual organ in order to “prevent him from being different.”) Recently, though, I realized that maybe the secular community should be left in peace. After all, at least the “secular circumcision” is frequently performed by a surgeon, with anesthesia. The “Jewish circumcision,” however, is performed by a mohel who is not necessarily a doctor, and always without anesthesia. This is an invasive and brutal act – abuse of a helpless infant, which I am certain will be outlawed in the future. In effect, there are two acts: Cutting the foreskin, and retracting it from the membrane that separates it from the glans, sometimes with a knife and sometimes with a fingernail. These are tissues that are full of nerves; it’s no wonder the victims scream. Sometimes, traditional circumcision also includes a third act by the mohel – sucking the injured organ until blood is drawn. Regarding this primitive ritual, Avi Shilon wrote in Haaretz ("Circumcision: A good trick for preserving Jewish identity," Dec. 25) that “a society cannot exist without symbols.” Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein wrote on Ynet that “parents who refrained from this small operation forced their children to be uprooted from the most basic symbol of their identity.” And Naftali Bennett, the economy and religious services minister, rejected the very existence of the discussion, declaring: “Friends, since the circumcision of our forefather Abraham, this is the strongest tie connecting the Jewish people to its Creator and itself … Make no mistake, this campaign is not motivated by compassion or enlightenment … only the desire to see a state of all its citizens, neutered of Judaism.” Strange. According to Jewish law, a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother and, according to a more progressive approach, anyone who sees himself as belonging to the Jewish people. There were periods and communities in Jewish history in which circumcision was not practiced – from the days of ancient Egypt up to the Communist bloc. Moses was opposed to circumcision and didn’t circumcise his son, and the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan into Canaan uncircumcised. Circumcision does not determine that a person is Jewish, and non-circumcision does not determine that a person is not Jewish. So to come and claim that the preservation of Jewish identity rises and falls with the cutting of the sexual organs of infants? That this is the most basic symbol that guarantees the survival of Jewish society? That this is the strongest tie connecting the Jewish people to itself and its God? More than faith? More than the Torah and the Ten Commandments? More than the State of Israel and the Land of Israel? In light of such groundless claims, both religious and nonreligious Jews should start asking themselves questions. Source: <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.566724">Uri Misgav, Let’s talk about circumcision</a>. Haaretz, 2 January 2014. <h3>Israel newspaper rejects forced circumcision, asserts primacy of individual rights</h3> Civil courts need to send an important message that individual rights take precedence over religious customs, however widespread they are. Elinor's baby son was born with a medical problem, so he couldn’t be circumcised after eight days. During the time that elapsed, Elinor learned what the circumcision procedure actually entails, “and I realized that I couldn’t do that to my son. He’s perfect just as he is.” She claims the baby’s father was a party to this decision. But when the two began discussing their divorce in a rabbinical court, the father demanded that the mother be forced to have their son circumcised, as reported by Netta Ahituv on November 26. In an unprecedented decision, the rabbinical court ordered Elinor to circumcise her son against her will, and ruled that for every day for which she refuses to carry out the procedure, she will have to pay a fine of NIS 500. In response to the appeal she submitted to the Rabbinical Court of Appeals, the rabbinical judges wrote that “Removing the foreskin prepares the spiritual soul to receive the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and to learn God’s Torah and His commandments.” Another explanation they gave for rejecting the appeal related to the public battles against circumcision in Europe and the United States. “The Israeli public sees this as another expression of anti-Semitism, which must be fought,” they wrote. Alongside these embarrassing arguments, they claimed that “The commandment of circumcision is the covenant God made with His chosen people.” But circumcision is first and foremost a surgical operation performed on the body of a baby who is under his parents’ care. The fact that this operation is “performed on every Jewish boy,” to quote the rabbinical judges, doesn’t justify their conclusion that “When one parent demands this, the other parent cannot stay his hand.” The question of whether a baby should be circumcised should not be decided by a rabbinical court at all, but by his parents. If the parents cannot resolve their disagreement, reason actually mandates refraining from this irreversible operation, and letting the child decide for himself when he grows up. It is hoped that the High Court of Justice, which will soon be asked to decide this case, will overturn the rabbinical court’s decision. The justices will thereby send an important message that in Israel, individual rights take precedence over religious customs, however widespread they are. Source: <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.560811">No to forced circumcision.</a> Haaretz Editorial, 29 November 2013 <h3>More Israeli parents decide not to circumcise</h3> When their first child, a son, was born 11 years ago, it was clear to Eran Sadeh, now 42, and his partner, Maya, 40, that he would be circumcised. “We arranged it with a mohel [ritual circumciser] and then I started to look for information and references about the man on the Internet,” says Eran, a former lawyer-turned-computer instructor in a software company. But while surfing the Web, he came across a world of information about circumcision. “For the first time in my life I learned what’s cut, how it’s cut and what the risks are. I didn’t have a clue until then. The word was just another check mark on the list of tasks related to the birth. I treated it almost as a bureaucratic process. But the new information I came across shook me, and I knew I wasn’t capable of inflicting that on my son.” Eran Sadeh is not alone. In the past decade, increasing numbers of Jewish parents in Israel have decided not to have their sons circumcised. They hardly constitute a majority, but today, in contrast to the past, many Israelis are considering this idea. An informal online survey conducted in 2006 by the Israeli parenting portal Mamy found that of 1,418 parents of boys, 4.8 percent did not have them circumcised. The reasons given: 1.6 percent were not Jews; 2 percent objected to disfiguring the body; and 1.2 percent refrained because the act is painful. The survey also found that nearly a third of the parents would prefer to forgo circumcision but nevertheless have it done for social reasons (16.6 per cent), health reasons (10.4 per cent) and because it is important for the grandparents (2.1 per cent)‏. ... Among those in the latter group are Eran and Maya Sadeh, who live in the north of the country. They say that the most shocking piece of information they came across about circumcision, and the one that influenced them most deeply was the view of Maimonides on the subject ‏(see Circumcision in Judaism below‏). The great 13th century physician and philosopher “accorded emasculating justification to circumcision,” Eran Sadeh says. “He maintained explicitly that it is done in order to affect male sexuality and reduce the pleasure of the sex act. For me, that connected with female circumcision and shocked me. I immediately read up on the physiological aspects and understood that what Maimonides said is correct: Circumcision affects the functioning of the genital organ in sexual relations. “I connected that with my legal knowledge about human rights and understood that it’s wrong from that point of view as well. You take a person in the most vulnerable and helpless condition and amputate part of his body. Maimonides talks about that, too. Circumcision is performed when the infant is eight days old, because the bond between the parent and the child is not yet very strong and the parent is capable of inflicting this on his son. It is a gross violation of human rights, perpetrated by none other than the child’s parents, those who are responsible for protecting him.” Source: Netta Ahiuv, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/even-in-israel-more-and-more-parents-choose-not-to-circumcise-their-sons-1.436421">Even in Israel, more and more parents choose not to circumcise their sons.</a> Haaretz Weekend Magazine, 14 June 2013. Accessing articles in Haaretz may require registration: it's free and fast. <h2> <a id="Schonfeld" name="Schonfeld"></a>Circumcision – defending the indefensible</h2> By screening my TV documentary 'It’s a Boy!' for European parliamentarians I aim to help shore up their commitment to protection of children’s right to physical integrity. I am a Jewish filmmaker and I have been invited by the Council of Europe to its Parliamentary Assembly next week. By screening my television documentary It’s a Boy! for European parliamentarians I aim to help shore up their commitment to protection of children’s right to physical integrity – a key step toward ending ritual circumcision of boys. Yet there is a struggle underway. Israeli Knesset members have orchestrated moves to reverse progress and protect the ancient custom instead of protecting children from harm. That’s why remarks quoted by MK Nachman Shai defamed me in this newspaper this week. Shai insinuated that the documentary, celebrated for its depiction of parental remorse over circumcision, was made by an enemy of the Jewish state. Never mind that I have lifelong deep ties to Israel evidenced in several acclaimed films, an ad hominem attack has been levelled without a shred of evidence for it. But will thinking people therefore shun an authoritative film? Those who would hope so demonstrate the poverty of their argument in favor of a cruel birth rite. In Strasbourg, my film will show the hidden casualties of circumcision – bleeding infants rushed into hospital, infected babies in intensive care, permanent deformities of young boys, and deaths. It will show mothers and fathers, Jewish, Muslim and African, full of sorrow and remorse for what they inflicted on their offspring. And I will refer to my experience as a Jewish father, the story I tell here. From a very young age attending Jewish schools my personal preoccupation was the Jewish thirst for justice and our empathy for suffering. Tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, the Jewish injunction to heed the distress of living beings, became the wellspring of the filmmaking I’m most proud of, including films about Israeli society, its past, present and future. When my wife and I were trying for our first baby, for a worryingly long time it wasn’t happening. But eventually we brought into our home a tiny lad with a wide-eyed look, a soft gurgling presence, and he brought out more gentleness than I knew I had in me. Until the calls started coming through. Have you fixed who will do the deed? When is the circumcision? But slicing away a body part from a healthy baby seemed to me neither natural nor inevitable, and I worried about him suffering. After several weeks of ignoring the messages, they became insistent. You do know your mother is dying of cancer? Get it done. The counsel from relatives was it’s harmless, it’s healthy, it’s just a few seconds. The doctor assured us the liquid anaesthetic he applied to the foreskin would make the procedure pain-free. The nurse spread our boy’s limbs and gripped them tightly. He started bawling. A frenzy of bawling. No-one had ever restrained him like this. There was a shriek. High-pitched, prolonged, unlike any sound I’d heard from him before. An instrument was attached to our son’s penis, and with each manipulation our child let out more shrieks. And then when the cutting edge was pressed through his flesh we heard a twisting, animal-like groaning and he writhed and grimaced as though something truly awful was being done to him. And then it was over. But it wasn’t over. The instruments were wielded again for “neatening the cut” and then “dressing the wound” – steps usually done out of sight of parents and celebrants. Our boy had a new kind of voice which rose up hoarsely at each contact with his genitals. At home, the wide-eyed look and soft gurgling were gone. Instead there was a helpless being with a raw wound to be re-bandaged repeatedly. For two days and nights he was writhing and crying. It had not been pain-free. It had not been a few seconds. It had been a betrayal of our son, and of ourselves. Only much later did I learn from a consultant paediatric anaesthetist how a baby’s pain is likely to be greater than an adult’s with the same procedure. If anaesthetics are injected, the procedure can be almost pain-free, but anaesthetic injections entail risks for a baby, and afterward while the wound heals protracted pain is inevitable. I learned that no matter who performs circumcisions, significant complications can threaten a child’s survival or his future experience of life; bleeding, infection and deformities are one-in-50 events by conservative estimates. And each year there are deaths. How many? It’s impossible to know because no-one is counting, and such deaths are sometimes attributed to heart failure or other causes less controversial than circumcision. Had I known such facts earlier, my son would have remained intact, as is the case with increasing numbers of Jewish boys today, including thousands in Israel. What of the health benefits claimed? A very slight reduction in the extremely rare condition of penile cancer is cited. The circumcision of grown men in Africa is credited with a reduction in HIV transmission in that region, but is not a serious justification for circumcising babies and young boys in Europe or Israel. A decrease in frequency of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in babies – that is vaunted as the statistically significant benefit from circumcision. But the same result can be achieved by soap and water, and in any case UTIs are readily treatable with antibiotics. Parents like me know from our remorse that it was wrong to make such an irreversible, painful and dangerous decision for our children. We owed our children protection, and we owe it to our communities not to be silenced when we have erred as parents. But the fear of being cast out from our tribes remains an intense pressure. Fear cows individuals who wish to dissent publicly. Fear cows parents who want to reject circumcision. That’s why boys from all backgrounds need the protection of the rule of law – secular law – wherever they may live. The necessity for this now in Israel is obvious. To deprive children of Jewish and Muslim descent in any country of full legal protection because of their lineage amounts to a most perverse kind of prejudice against those children. As for any attempt by real anti-Semites to latch onto this issue, that would be denounced publicly. But then real anti-Semites are not usually the people keen to protect Jewish children from harm, and real anti-Semites would probably like nothing better than continuance of a practice that stokes anti-Jewish feelings and for generation after generation inflicts suffering on Jewish boys. Children’s right to physical integrity should be what Israeli parliamentarians defend – rather than a brutal anachronism. <a href="http://www.itsaboythefilm.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The author produced and directed It’s a Boy!</a> Source: Victor S. Schonfeld, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Circumcision-defending-the-indefensible-339081">Circumcision – defending the indefensible.</a> Jerusalem Post, 22 January 2014. <h2>Jewish anti-circumcision resources</h2> Jewish Voices – Many Jews Question Circumcision <a href="http://intactnews.org/node/104/1311886091/jewish-voices-current-judaic-movement-end-circumcision-part-1">Jewish Voices: The Current Judaic Movement to End Circumcision: Part 1</a> http://intactnews.org/node/104/1311886091/jewish-voices-current-judaic-movement-end-circumcision-part-1 <a href="http://intactnews.org/node/105/1311886372/jewish-voices-current-judaic-movement-end-circumcision-part-2" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jewish Voices: The Current Judaic Movement to End Circumcision: Part 2</a> http://intactnews.org/node/105/1311886372/jewish-voices-current-judaic-movement-end-circumcision-part-2 <a href="http://intactnews.org/node/112/1313862929/jewish-voices-current-judaic-movement-end-circumcision-part-3" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jewish Voices: The Current Judaic Movement to End Circumcision: Part 3</a> http://intactnews.org/node/112/1313862929/jewish-voices-current-judaic-movement-end-circumcision-part-3 <a href="http://salem-news.com/articles/august212011/jewish-circumcision-nw.php" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jewish Parents are Trading Circumcision for Peaceful Covenant Ceremonies</a> http://salem-news.com/articles/august212011/jewish-circumcision-nw.php <a href="http://intactnews.org/node/103/1311885181/jews-speak-out-favor-banning-circumcision-minors" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jews Speak Out in Favor of Banning Circumcision on Minors</a> http://intactnews.org/node/103/1311885181/jews-speak-out-favor-banning-circumcision-minors Peaceful Ceremonies: Brit B’lee Milah, Bris Shalom, Brit Hyiam, Brit Chayim, Brit Ben <a href="http://www.nocirc.org/religion/Naming_ceremony.php" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Brit B’lee Milah (Covenant Without Cutting) Ceremony</a> http://www.nocirc.org/religion/Naming_ceremony.php <a href="http://www.nocircofmi.org/BrisShalom.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Bris Shalom Ceremony by Norm Cohen</a> http://www.nocircofmi.org/BrisShalom.htm <a href="http://www.interfaithfamily.com/life_cycle/pregnancy_and_birth_ceremonies/Sample_Non-Cutting_Naming_Ceremony_1.shtml" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Sample Non-Cutting Naming Ceremony #1</a> http://www.interfaithfamily.com/life_cycle/pregnancy_and_birth_ceremonies/Sample_Non-Cutting_Naming_Ceremony_1.shtml <a href="http://www.interfaithfamily.com/life_cycle/pregnancy_and_birth_ceremonies/Sample_Non-Cutting_Naming_Ceremony_2.shtml" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Sample Non-Cutting Naming Ceremony #2</a> http://www.interfaithfamily.com/life_cycle/pregnancy_and_birth_ceremonies/Sample_Non-Cutting_Naming_Ceremony_2.shtml <a href="http://www.veryveryfine.com/imported-20101215221410/2010/12/29/the-naming.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Naming at Very, Very Fine</a> http://www.veryveryfine.com/imported-20101215221410/2010/12/29/the-naming.html <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/brit-shalom-alternative-naming-ceremony.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Brit Shalom: An Alternative Naming Ceremony by Mark D. Reiss, MD</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/brit-shalom-alternative-naming-ceremony.html Jewish Religious and Historical Perspectives <a href="http://www.noharmm.org/rationaljew.htm">Being rational about circumcision and Jewish observance by Moshe Rothenberg, MSW</a> http://www.noharmm.org/rationaljew.htm <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/defying-convention-interview-with_27.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Defying Convention: An Interview With Miriam Pollack</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/defying-convention-interview-with_27.html <a href="http://www.rabbinathan.com/writings/circum.shtml" rel="noopener" target="_blank">One Rabbis’ Thoughts on Circumcision by Rabbi Nathan Segal</a> http://www.rabbinathan.com/writings/circum.shtml <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/eli-ungar-sargon-debates-kosher-sex.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Eli Ungar-Sargon Debates Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the Moral Problems of Circumcision</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/eli-ungar-sargon-debates-kosher-sex.html <a href="http://vadimcherny.org/judaism/how_judaic_circumcision.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Israeli Linguist Vadim Cherny: How Judaic is circumcision?</a> http://vadimcherny.org/judaism/how_judaic_circumcision.htm <a href="http://hyphen.bravehost.com/QuestioningMilah.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Brit Milah : Inconsistent with Jewish Ethics? By D.A. Huffman-Paren</a>t http://hyphen.bravehost.com/QuestioningMilah.htm <a href="http://www.circumstitions.com/Jewish.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">A Case for Bris without Milah</a> http://www.circumstitions.com/Jewish.html <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/goodman1999/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">An Alternative Perspective by Jenny Goodman, MD</a> http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/goodman1999/ <a href="http://www.cutthefilm.com/Cut_Website/Home.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision – A Film by Eli Ungar-Sargon</a> http://www.cutthefilm.com/Cut_Website/Home.html <a href="http://lisabravermoss.com/uploads/Challenging_the_Circumcision_Myth.pdf">Jerusalem Post: Challenging the Circumcision Myth by Jan Jaben-Eilon [PDF]</a> http://lisabravermoss.com/uploads/Challenging_the_Circumcision_Myth.pdf Jewish Parents – Mothers Voices <a href="http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/miscarticles/circarticle.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Laura Shanley: A Jewish Woman Rejects Circumcision</a> http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/miscarticles/circarticle.html <a href="http://mothering.com/health/my-son-the-little-jew-with-a-foreskin" rel="noopener" target="_blank">My Son: The Little Jew with a Foreskin by Stacey Greenberg, Mothering Magazine</a> http://mothering.com/health/my-son-the-little-jew-with-a-foreskin <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/04/lucking-into-bris-shalom.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Lucking Into Bris Shalom by Sarah Rockwell</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/04/lucking-into-bris-shalom.html <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/05/how-cut-saved-my-sons-foreskin-movie.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">How “Cut” Saved My Son’s Foreskin: A Movie Review by Diane Targovnik</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/05/how-cut-saved-my-sons-foreskin-movie.html <a href="http://blogs.evtrib.com/spirituallife/2006/08/31/jewish-mom-circumcision-spiritually-wounds-breaks-bonds-and-trust/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jewish mom: Circumcision spiritually wounds, breaks bonds and trust</a> http://blogs.evtrib.com/spirituallife/2006/08/31/jewish-mom-circumcision-spiritually-wounds-breaks-bonds-and-trust/ Jewish Parents – Fathers Voices <a href="http://www.cirp.org/pages/cultural/kimmel1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Kindest Un-Cut Feminism, Judaism, and My Son’s Foreskin, by Professor Michael S. Kimmel</a> http://www.cirp.org/pages/cultural/kimmel1/ <a href="http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/rothenberg.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Ending Circumcision in the Jewish Community? by Moshe Rothenberg, MSW</a> http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/rothenberg.html Men’s Voices <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/06/to-mohel-who-cut-me.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">To the Mohel Who Cut Me by Shea Levy</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/06/to-mohel-who-cut-me.html <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/06/on-circumcision-authority-and.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">On Circumcision, Authority, and the Perpetuation of Abuse by Jonathan Friedman</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/06/on-circumcision-authority-and.html <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/03/howard-stern-jewish-intactivist.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Howard Stern: Jewish Intactivist by Rebecca Wald, JD</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/03/howard-stern-jewish-intactivist.html Women’s Voices <a href="http://www.noharmm.org/pollack.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision: A Jewish Feminist Perspective by Miriam Pollack</a> http://www.noharmm.org/pollack.htm <a href="http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/circumcision-identity-gender-and-power" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision: Identity, Gender, and Power by Miriam Pollack</a> http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/circumcision-identity-gender-and-power Circumcision Referendums and Legal Issues <a href="https://www.forward.com/articles/137577/">Outlawing Circumcision: Good for the Jews? by Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon</a> http://www.forward.com/articles/137577/ Jews Speak in Favor of Banning Circumcision on Minors <a href="http://intactnews.org/node/103/1311885181/jews-speak-out-favor-banning-circumcision-minors">http://intactnews.org/node/103/1311885181/jews-speak-out-favor-banning-circumcision-minors</a> <a href="http://thejewishreporter.com/2011/06/02/questioning-circumcision/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Questioning Circumcision: Op/Ed by Rebecca Wald, JD., The Jewish Reporter</a> http://thejewishreporter.com/2011/06/02/questioning-circumcision/ <a href="http://www.sandfordborins.com/2011/06/09/the-circumcision-referendum-a-liberal-jewish-perspective/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Circumcision Referendum: A Liberal Jewish Perspective by Sandford Borins, PhD</a> http://www.sandfordborins.com/2011/06/09/the-circumcision-referendum-a-liberal-jewish-perspective/ <a href="http://www.rebeccasteinfeld.com/publications" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jewish Journal: Circumcision critic has Board links</a> http://www.rebeccasteinfeld.com/publications Jewish Groups for Genital Integrity <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Beyond the Bris: Jewish Parenting Blog</a> http://www.beyondthebris.com/ <a href="http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jews Against Circumcision</a> http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/ <a href="http://www.jewsfortherightsofthechild.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jews for the Rights of the Child</a> http://www.jewsfortherightsofthechild.org/ <a href="http://www.circumstitions.com/Jewish-shalom.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Bris Shalom Officiants by Mark D. Reiss, MD</a> http://www.circumstitions.com/Jewish-shalom.html <a href="http://www.jewishcircumcision.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective by Ron Goldman, PhD</a> http://www.jewishcircumcision.org Israeli Groups for Genital Integrity <a href="http://www.kahal.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Kahal: Giving Up Brit Milah</a> http://www.kahal.org/ <a href="http://www.britmila.org.il/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Intact Son: the Israeli Association Against Genital Mutilation</a> http://www.britmila.org.il/ <a href="http://www.gonnen.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Gonnen: Protect the Child</a> http://www.gonnen.org/ <a href="http://www.beofen-tv.co.il/circumcision/main.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Af-Mila: Israeli Intactivist</a> http://www.beofen-tv.co.il/circumcision/main.html </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jewish voices against circumcision getting stronger darby