Circumcision

Imagine, if you can, the situation about 3 or 4 thousand years ago somewhere in the Middle East. Some bloke wakes up after a night of heavy drinking and gets up and demands to speak to the town council. Well the town council didn't have much on that day so they agreed to hear what this bloke has to say. So he walks in the to town hall and tells the councillors that god had a word with him in the night, no sorry there were no witnesses. Any way, he tells them that god has told him that he, god, has ruled that all boy children, as a mark of their faith in god have to have the skin around the end of their penises cut off when they are a week old. Now for some strange reason the town council agree that if this is what god wants then god being god gets what he wants. And nobody raised their voices against this madness. Some people went even further and said why stop at boys. What's good for boys should be good for girls. So millions, posibly billions of children without being asked have been mutilated down through the centuries. And it's still happening.

Finally someone had stood up and said STOP.

A German regional court ruled it amounted to bodily harm.

Good for that German regional court. Where they lead others must surly follow.

And Germany's Medical Association has followed, it's told doctors not to perform circumcisions.

Who will be next, not Israel I guess.

European Jewish and Muslim groups have joined forces to defend circumcision for young boys on religious grounds.

The unusual joint statement was signed by leaders of groups including the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, the European Jewish Parliament, the European Jewish Association, Germany's Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs and the Islamic Centre Brussels.

"We consider this to be an affront to our basic religious and human rights," it said. What about the children's rights to be able to decide if they want to have part of the most sensitive part of their body cut off without being consulted and no possibility off having it put back on if at some stage in their life they decide that the bloke I mentioned at the start of this post was completely off his head. I mean why did god give us foreskins if he intended then to be cut off a week after we were born. Not that god did give us foreskins, evolution did.

I'm kind of glad the religius ritual preformed on me as a baby only involved water being poured on my head. I can live with that.