levite

One of the fundamental ways membership in a society is generally understood is that parents are responsible for raising their children according to the rules of that society, with the presumption that those children, when grown, will wish to be fully participating members of that society also, and will as adults retroactively appreciate the efforts their parents have made on their behalf, even if they didn't necessarily appreciate them in the childhood moment. This is hardly a novel notion, and since Judaism and, if I understand correctly, Islam also, consider themselves not only religions but cultures, it is entirely applicable. What other religions in the world demand circumcision I don't know, but I would be surprised if there was not a strong cultural component to them.

In other words, just as nobody ought to come round to my door and demand that I not be a Jew, but be a Christian, or an atheist, instead, even so, nobody ought to go to the doors of Christians and atheists and demand that they be Jews. My point is, if you don't believe that you are religiously required to circumcize your son, nobody should compel you otherwise.

Judaism requires male circumcision at eight days. That is not a negotiable part of traditional Jewish identity. The only Jews I am aware of who do not circumcize their sons, or have any problem with doing so, are secular Jews who-- usually due to lack of Jewish education-- have little connection to the Jewish tradition. This doesn't make them bad people, but it does make them disconnected from Jewish society. An uncircumcized Jewish man, just as much as a child whose father is Jewish but whose mother is not, may feel like a Jew, but they are not, until they have (respectively) been circumcized and been through the form of conversion. That's simply how Jewish law works. Now, by the same token, if two secular Jews decide not to circumcize their son, nobody's going to come to their door and compel them to circumcize the baby. They will suffer no direct consequences of their actions, unless we include the dismay of their more traditional family members and friends. And I am in no way suggesting that they should be compelled, or should suffer other consequences. But there are consequences, none the less: by refusing to circumcize their son, they have ensured that should he desire to participate in Jewish society as an adult-- have a bar mitzvah, lead prayers, read publicly from the Torah, be a formal witness under Jewish law, marry a Jewish girl, etc.-- he will have to suffer adult circumcision. I assume that something of the same would be true in Muslim society, although I don't know the nuances of Shari'a well enough to be certain. Perhaps Dlish knows.

But at least with Judaism, it's an ethnoreligious culture, and as such, it has laws and rules and boundaries governing membership, association, and behavior. To be born into that tradition means that either you adhere to some accepted version of those laws and rules and boundaries, or you effectively are choosing not to participate in Jewish society. There is no compulsion: nobody will force you to follow Jewish law or the Jewish tradition if you don't want to. But like any society, disconnecting oneself from the way the rest of society operates is a choice that has consequences in one's life, and the life of one's family. If one considers those consequences outweighed by the temptations of belonging to a different society, or attempting to live with no society at all, then they should live and be well, but there are things in Judaism that will be closed to them. Not out of malice. Just because that's the way this society works. And if that's not to your taste, then perhaps this isn't the society for you to be part of.

It would depend on what you mean by genital mutilation. I said before and I say it again, that to my mind, calling it genital mutilation implies that either it is done haphazardly and without reason, or it is something done that causes crippling and/or consistently painful and/or notably impaired lack of genital function. It may have been done unsafely. It would also probably be significant to me if a majority, or a sizable minority at least, of those persons to whom the procedure was done objected later in life, and regretted that it had been done to them.

With female genital mutilation, you have all of those things: it is often done unsafely; it is not consistently done the same way in all societies that do it; it is done for varying reasons, none of which are mandated by, or even suggested by Shari'a, but rather stem from local, often pre-Islamic, cultural aesthetics. It causes severe impairment and often permanent pain associated with the impeded proper functioning and use of the genitals. And there are, unsurprisingly, a large number of women to whom it has been done that object later in life, and admit that they wish it had not been done to them.

Whereas, at least as far as I have been able to discover, circumcision among Jews and Muslims (and probably some others also) in Western Countries, and in most urbanized and/or developed portions of the Muslim world, is done safely; it is done for reasons of fundamental spiritual import to the religion; it causes no notable impairment to the sexual function of the penis, and no impairment to the urinary function at all; the vast majority of men to whom it has been done have no problem with it, do not regret it, and are for the most part quite happy with it. The majority of those I have encountered who do have a problem with it seem to object out of philosophical ideals about body integrity or holism, or sometimes a great zeal for free choice: it is seldom, if ever, objected to because of crippling or traumatic after-effects, and at least IMO, never credibly so.

That being the case, it seems to me that circumcision falls into the category of culturally-based body modification. Generally speaking, no permanent damage is done, no ill effects are suffered, and parents are not compelled by force to do it to their children. Which leaves me back at, if it doesn't appeal to you, don't do it. And if your conclusion is, "I don't like circumcision. I don't get why it would be OK. I will never do it to my son," OK, great. You should never have to. But to stand back and call it abhorrent when others do it for their own reasons, because it doesn't appeal to you, is essentially to say, "Your experience of bonding with God is yucky. You suck." Which I feel is counterproductive to discussion, and ultimately, is not a critique I will accept.

I apologized because I don't want to come off as "religious judgmental guy," and, as I said, because I really do love the board and respect you all. But I just felt I had to stand up for what I believe in, without intending disrespect to others, or wishing to quash the whole conversation.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)