Assessing a religious practice from secular ethical grounds: competing worldviews in the circumcision debate and a note about respect

Recent legal and public debates over circumcision in Germany have tended to pit religious freedom against bodily integrity. This paper examines the background assumptions about religion and the body on which this framing depends. Insofar as the body is assumed to represent a fixed point determinable independently of 'religion', to frame the debate over circumcision in terms of a clash between rights pertaining respectively to religion and the body is, I argue, to circumscribe and contain religion within boundaries marked by the non-religious and non-negotiable. The secular body is thus not simply an additional consideration to be weighed against religious freedom but a condition of and limit to the modern conception of (free) religion itself. If the physical body is a synecdoche for the social system, the normative, uncircumcised body can be interpreted as standing in for the universalist order of secular law. Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions 18 (2016)

The Complexity of Conversion

The 2012 verdict of the court in Cologne, Germany, maintains that circumcision limits religious freedom, since it 'runs contrary to the interests of the child in deciding his religious affiliation independently later in life'. This article analyses the assumptions about religion and gender that underlie this claim, which was restated in various ways in subsequent discussions by legal scholars. By using inclusive terms that are not gender specific, the authors examined present circumcision as relating not specifically to men, but to human beings in general. A comparison with the gendered discourse on contested practices concerning women shows that this is a strategy that relies on men being presented as the norm and male bodies as less physically vulnerable and culturally contentious than women. By limiting religion to the convictions and beliefs of the individual, the sources privilege an understanding of religion that, while purporting to be 'secular' and neutral, is in fact a Western, Protestant Christian construction. Moreover, this concept of religion has its roots in a rejection of circumcision and projects this rejection back onto contemporary circumcision practices.

Journal of Medical Ethics, 2013

The decision of the German regional court in Cologne on 26 June 2012 to prohibit the circumcision of minors is important insofar as it recognizes the qualitative similarities between the practice and other prohibited invasive rites, such as female genital cutting. However, recognition of similarity poses serious questions with regard to liberal public policy, specifically with regard to the exceptionalist treatment demanded by certain circumcising groups. In this paper, I seek to advance egalitarian means of dealing with invasive rites which take seriously cultural diversity, minimize harm and place responsibility for the burdens and consequences of beliefs upon those who promote practices.

In the fall of 2012, Germany witnessed a heated debate on male circumcision, triggered by a four-year-old Muslim boy who had suffered complications following a cir-cumcision conducted by a doctor in Cologne. Engaging with Charles Hirschkind's posed question " Is there a secular body?" the article uses this controversy as a starting point to push recent critical scholarship on secularism a little further. It argues that in order to understand the powers of secular governmentality, we need to take more seriously the entanglements between modes of power operative by the secular nation-state and the embodied attachments to the secular, as articulated both in social practices and in epistemological underpinnings of knowledge production bound and enabled by modern nation-state structures. Accordingly, the article suggests that the debates on male cir-cumcision reflect a broader discursive framework in which the ongoing division between proper and improper re ligious practice is part of the (re)production of a secular body politic and embodied forms of secularity. Its genealogy can be traced back to the nineteenth century and has currently gained a reconfigu red currency through the Muslim question in Europe.

2013

Is the non-therapeutic circumcision of infant males morally permissible? The most recent major developments in this long-simmering debate were (a) the 2012 release of a policy statement and technical report on circumcision by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and (b) the decision of a German court that ritual circumcision is an unconstitutional form of bodily injury. In this editorial I address the AAP's claims as well as evaluate religious motivations more specifically. I suggest that the AAP's "health benefits" arguments are weak, and that religious circumcision is in tension with post-Enlightenment ethical and legal norms--the root of much of the current controversy. I conclude by asking how this tension might begin to be resolved.

2018

Circumcision, a practice supported by religion, is nevertheless a mutilation of the human body that was created in God's image. As such, it is a problem for God, who wants to get beyond religious practices that are contrary to His-Her original design. Why is circumcision damaging, not only to the body but also to the spirit and to our relationship with God? Why did Judaism go down the road of circumcision, even to the point that Jesus was circumcised? Why was God unable to stop this practice, which was supposed to end within five generations of Abraham? These are some of the issues discussed in this monograph.

Law and Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Christianity, 2019

Analysis of whether attitudes toward religious circumcision in modern Europe bear resemblance to ancient discourses of otherness.

This paper is the opening contribution to the forum on The Immanent Frame on the topic of crossing and conversion, see https://tif.ssrc.org/2018/04/23/not-in-the-body/. It traces the Christian roots of the concept of religion that is used in the current debate about male circumcision. To arrive at the Christian idea of religion defined as belief, circumcision historically has been 'good to think with' and was a subject of debate from the earliest beginnings of Christianity. In this Christian view, both religion and circumcision should be in the heart, or the mind, not in the body. These origins make an application of this concept of religion to determine the legitimacy of circumcision today highly problematic.

University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 2016

After an appellate court made circumcision of minors effectively illegal in the absence of a medical justification, the German Parliament passed a statute that restored, with some limitations, the right of parents to seek ritual circumcisions for their sons. Between these events, a fierce controversy broke out in Germany involving Jews, Muslims, and other Germans. Whereas circumcision without medical indication is rare among most Germans, it is a common religious practice in Jewish and Muslim communities in Germany. The debate tapped into ongoing discussions of German cultural norms, German secularization, and a long history of anti-Semitism and a much shorter history of anti-Muslim sentiment in Germany. It also tapped into the religious and traditional practices - sometimes converging, sometimes diverging - of Jews and Muslims.This Article discusses the range of opinions on religious circumcision among Germans and other Europeans. It disentangles the social factors at work in the d...