Germany: Should circumcision be a crime?

Suddenly, “all of Germany is talking about foreskins,” said Jens Mühling in Der Tages-spiegel. After a 4-year-old Muslim boy had to be treated at a hospital for post-circumcision bleeding, the regional court in Cologne ruled that circumcising young boys was illegal, finding that the “fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity” trumps parents’ right to practice their religion. It’s a puzzling decision, given that nearly one third of men across the world were circumcised as children—including all Jews and Muslims and most North Americans—and that the World Health Organization recommends it to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Jewish and Muslim leaders promptly denounced the ruling, and they weren’t the only ones, said André Anchuelo in the Berlin Jungle World. German evangelical and Catholic leaders also spoke out against the ban, which they see as an assault on religious freedom. The Cologne court claimed it was actually protecting such freedom, by preserving the right of the child to decide for himself which religion to join. “But that implies that any child circumcised as a Jew or Muslim could not later become a Catholic, or an atheist—which is obviously nonsense.” It certainly looks like the courts are trying to make it harder for Jews and Muslims to practice their faiths.

Don’t be ridiculous, said Henryk M. Broderin Die Welt. The Cologne ruling is not binding on all of Germany, nor does it suddenly outlaw all circumcisions even in Cologne—it’s simply a single finding that could be overturned, should anyone wish to mount a challenge. Far from being motivated by anti-Semitism, the ban is an example of the German government going out of its way to protect Jews. Remember how horrified we all were when it came out that the Nazis had used Jewish children for medical experimentation? The Cologne court was trying to do something good, in effect saying “that no harm must be done to Jewish children in Germany—not even by their own parents.”

Nice try, said Cuneyd Dinc in Today’s Zaman (Turkey). The ruling was aimed not at Jews but explicitly at Muslims. Is this a sign of “growing Islamophobic tendencies” in Germany? Ever since German Muslims, who are overwhelmingly of Turkish origin, “decided to step out of their backyard mosques and claim their religious rights as German citizens, thus becoming visible,” the backlash has been mounting. Recently, German President Joachim Gauck actually said that while Muslims are a part of Germany, Islam is not. “Translated: Muslims are a reality in Germany, but we hope that they will be reasonable and will leave their backward culture.”

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The ruling won’t stand, said Matthias Drobinski in the Süd-deutsche Zeitung. The judges have obviously “overreached.” Male circumcision is not an outrage on the body on a par with female genital mutilation, which causes lifelong pain and destroys sexual function, so the state has no business banning it. Nor can it enforce such a ban. “Wealthy Jews and Muslims will simply go abroad,” while poor ones will submit their kids to back-alley operations. If the point really is to protect children’s health, then a ban on circumcision will do no such thing.