Male infant circumcision is declared illegal in Germany.

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Even Dr Spock changed his mind about the need for it.

There was a time when he said it was necessary

gramps are you saying you haven't reached puberty?

Many so-called religious practices are really cultural and were designed for health reasons in days before safe water, refrigeration and better hygiene. There is no reason for allowing them to dictate the way people live today.

Glad I'm not living there! thanks Annobel!

Possibly, gramps. There are certainly African tribes (though not all) that practise male circumcision. Sometimes this is done at puberty as an initiation into manhood. Painful and risky.

Was male circumsission practised originally in hot countries, to help prevent infection beneath the foreskin of infant boys?
In the same way that the dead had to be buried within a certain number of days, Purely for health reasons!

Likewise, mishap, but religious beliefs are not open to rational thought

As for the perfection of the human body – Ha! I found Elaine Morgan's very readable book The Scars of Evolution very enlightening.

It is indeed about child mutilation and not about religion or beliefs. But we must not forget that the babes who are mutilated remain so for the rest of their lives and many are highly resentful about this. And who can blame them.

I can never understand that those who believe in a perfect almighty creator on the one hand, can, on the other, take a look at one of his creations (a perfect baby boy) and come to the conclusion that the creator has got it wrong and stuck on an extra bit that need not be there - so they chop it off. How very odd.

As someone who lives in Germany I have admit that apart from a little paragraph in the daily paper I had not talken much notice of this law.
There is defimitely no fuss being made of the fact that the feelings of Jews will be hurt. They will go to Switzerland then.
Many German men have been circumcised especially the older generation. It was done in the weeks after the birth when mother and baby were still in hospital.
I think there are more people upset here about female circumcision.

Germany is not governed centrally but mostly in the differnt 'lands' or counties.
We have individual systems for finance,health and education to mention just a few. Perhaps it is only the Cologne area.

I mean from other reports not the Reuters one which sounds eminently moderate - but who is going to repeat that when they can stir up trouble?

The usual journalistic hyperbole.

Reading the Reuters article (Elegran's link above) this appears to be something that applies only in Cologne and not elsewhere in Germany – at least not yet.

I don't think that when making these laws you should take belief systems into account - they are so many and so varied. The issue at stake here is child mutilation nothing to do with any type of belief system.

Reuters have an interview with "a jurist with a leading role in the legal debate"

uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-germany-circumcision-jurist-idUKBRE85S0XE20120629

Agree with you wholeheartedly bags!

Joan says: "A better plan would be to make it illegal to circumcise a child anywhere but in a hospital, and never by a non-surgeon and never without anaesthetic."

I agree that that is a good plan. Without knowing exactly what the new law says, how can we be sure that this is not in fact what has been put in place? News media are famous for not telling the whole story. Given that circumcision for medical reasons will not be illegal, what Joan suggests above is, in effect, what the law seems to be saying with the additional proviso that so-called religious "reasons" for the operation do not count as valid reasons.

I'm afraid I don't care if Jews or Muslims "get upset" about the law. There is far too much kow-towing to cranky out-dated and ridiculous religious beliefs. If people want to "take offence" at something that is clearly civilised and for the protection of children, let them. They are just being silly. I bet there is as much relief among sensible Jews as there is outcry by the diehards.

Three years ago my niece had her son circumcised and in the seventies my neighbour had her eldest son circumcised but not her younger son. My niece is not at all religious and I believe her reasons were because her husband had been circumcised.

Joan Muslims who choose to circumcise their boys can do so before they reach seven, but there is no obligation on them to have a child circumcised at all.

The thought of some doddery old iman or rabbi operating on a week-old baby without anaesthetic is horrendous. Too many babies have been mutilated and there is no good reason for circumcision on a healthy child.

What a good idea, Joan.
I have a friend who knows some people from East Germany and, far from being overjoyed at being 'liberated', they are very angry that they have lost their jobs-for-life and pensions. They say they were not bothered by the actions of the Stasi as they were law-abiding citizens. Bread and circuses, indeed.

Yes, I know Germany has risen above its Nazi past, and since at least the 1980s the West of the country has been educating the children about the horrors that were done 1933-1945. Almost all the old Nazis are dead, and their descendants should not be blamed for that mass insanity. The former East Germany is a different matter - before reunification they blamed the holocaust on the West and never really confronted it. This is probably why many of their neo-Nazis come from the former East Germany. Still, Germany does the right thing today, has anti-racist laws, and imprisons holocaust deniers.

But the history will not go away, and it echoes to this day. How to get rid of the barbarous practice of baby circumcision under these circumstances, without upsetting Jews and making them suspicious of the motives?

A better plan would be to make it illegal to circumcise a child anywhere but in a hospital, and never by a non-surgeon and never without anaesthetic. That way it would be clear that only the infant's welfare was the motivation. It would also make illegal jobs less likely, and would give concerned Jewish and Muslim parents a chance to give their babies more protection.

Actually, I have a feeling Muslims do their circumcisions later in a child's life. Such children would be immensely glad of these laws!!

It really is time that Germany was treated as the civilised country it now is. Of course it has its share of right-wing racists, just as many other European countries have but at least holocaust denial is a crime. Britain and France have not got a squeaky clean record when it comes to treatment of Jews.

I just admire Germany's collective guts! To speak out against something barbaric even when, with their history, daft accusations of anti-semitism will be made, takes courage. They have had the courage to come out against such predictable knee-jerkism and stand up for a principle. Good for them.

Oh dear, it had to be Germany didn't it? The last country in the world that should propose a law that will upset some Jews.

Having said that, I feel infant circumcision is barbaric. It was offered for my new born son 33 years ago and I refused because I felt it would be so easy to make a surgical mistake, and I did not want my baby son hurt.

17 years later he had a bit foreskin trouble, and circumcision was recommended. He had it done, and all was well. His little brother thought the circumcised organ looked a lot better than his, so he conned us all that he had a painful foreskin and thus got his done too, at 16!

At least at that age the surgeon has something a bit bigger to deal with, and it is done under anesthetic. And of course it was informed choice.

There is evidence that a circumcised partner can reduce the risk of cervical cancer, though this risk is gone now with the new vaccinations. My sister got her husband to have it done years ago - I remember he bragged about how many stitches he had!

Yes, it is the right thing to do, to ban infant circumcision - especially as it is done without anesthetic.

We have had this discussion before - there is a strong movement amongst Jewish people to ban circumcision, and there are many examples of botched circumcisions that have blighted children's lives. Many Jewish youths have corrective surgery via the NHS because of the damage that was done to them when they were a few days old. Many young couples are struggling to prevent their babies being circumcised against their will. It may be orthodox for baby boys to be circumcised, but that orthodoxy was written by humans and is a custom.

There is a large Jewish population in Manchester, on the boundaries of Cheetham, Bury and Salford, and many young people amongst them who support banning circumcision. A Muslim friend chaired a debate in high school a couple of years ago, between teenage Muslims, Christians and Jews and the majority agreed after the discussion that circumcision was not a practice they would want for their children in Great Britain. The Christians didn't vote, because they all opposed it in the first place and they didn't want to skew the results.