Betsy Shaw
posted in Mom Stories
After a controversial ruling from a German regional court that circumcision be viewed as a crime against children and banned, German Chancellor Angela Merckel has proclaimed support of the right of Muslim and Jewish communities to circumcise their children.
According to the BBC, a spokesman for Merckel said this is absolutely a matter of respecting religious freedom.
The spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said:
“For everyone in the government it is absolutely clear that we want to have Jewish and Muslim religious life in Germany. Circumcision carried out in a responsible manner must be possible in this country without punishment.”
The BBC also reports that both European Muslim and Jewish groups came together to defend the right to practice circumcision, which they considered to be their religious and human right.
The ruling was initially motivated by a case where the doctor of a four-year-old boy whose circumcision resulted in hospitalization was charged with inflicting bodily harm on a child. While the doctor was eventually acquitted, the local government saw fit to call for a country-wide ban on all religious-based circumcisions.
Opinions in Germany are reportedly mixed. If I had time I would get out my old college German dictionaries and read some German news on the topic but..
In the post I wrote covering this initial ban, 588 readers weighed in with their comments, many of which were in support of the ban, and seemingly just as many (I haven’t counted) which were opposed and some simply confused and surprised it would be a matter to be decided by anyone other than the parents.
According to another BBC report, a popular Jewish Hospital in Berlin has been turning away families seeking circumcision since the ruling that took place late last month. This particular hospital had been performing circumcisions for 250 years.
Now that everyone, even the leader of Germany, has weighed in, the practice of circumcision remains as loaded a topic as ever. Germany’s history of religious intolerance, only renders this particular case is extra volatile.
Germany is home to an estimated 120,000 Jews and 4 million Muslims.
What are your thoughts on this latest development? Do you think the German government is right in backing down in the face of accusations of racism and prejudice or should they stick to their original interpretation of the law?
photo: wikimedia creative commons
Read more from source:“babycenter-com-baby”
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