Limmud 2: Circumcision

[liv]

To continue my write-ups after a bit of a gap:

3. Lena Salamayeh: Circumcising membership: Jewish and Islamic rituals
   
   So when I was teaching about conversion over Shavuot, someone asked me about the importance of circumcision in conversion to Islam, and I didn't really know, so it seemed fortuitous that someone was teaching at Limmud on just that topic, by a historian of religious law. ghoti attended the talk with me, and her write-up is more concise and probably more informative than mine.
   
   So Salamayeh seemed to be pretty sound on the history of Islamic law, and she answered what I wanted to know. Her thesis was that circumcision in Islam is not a direct borrowing from Jewish circ, but a mostly independent practice whose origin is primarily in pre-Muslim Arab and African customs, though of course influenced by contact with Jews. So specifically, in Judaism the act of circumcision is directly connected to entering into the Covenant, and is associated with specific rituals called brit milah, the covenant of circumcision. And adult male converts to Judaism usually have to undergo circumcision; there is controversy as to whether a symbolic cut is required for converts who happen to be already circumcised. Indeed, the Geonim, who lived in the time and place of early Islam, did make this symbolic spilling of blood a necessary part of conversion for a man who is already circumcised, eg a former Muslim who becomes Jewish, even though the Talmudic opinion as usual follows the School of Hillel to rule that this is not necessary. Whereas in Islam, circumcision is encouraged and customary (nearly all modern Muslim men worldwide are circumcised, except those originating from the former Soviet Union), though not really mandated in the Quran or early sources, but it is primarily associated with cleanliness. There is apparently no corresponding debate in Islam about whether a Jewish or otherwise already circumcised convert to Islam should undergo symbolic blood spilling; if he's already circumcised, he's already ritually clean and this particular rite of passage is not needed.
   
   Salamayeh's view was that the Prophet did not ban circumcision because he had little interest in suppressing general tribal practices as long as they did not directly contradict monotheism. But he may not have attached any particular positive value to the practice either. It is only by the tenth century that the Quran's injunction to follow the example of Ibrahim (Abraham) is interpreted as referring to circumcision, particularly when Muslims were preaching to non-Arab Christians. In this sort of period, stories emerge about the Prophet requiring circumcision as well as ritual ablutions from a convert. Conversely, there are stories of the Caliph's officers in the early Mediaeval period trying to check whether converts were sincere or just trying to avoid their jizya taxes, but religious authorities said it was not permitted to look whether a particular convert was circumcised; circ is explicitly not a requirement for Muslim identity or status.
   
   In Judaism, circumcision has to be carried out by a religiously qualified mohel, and ideally should be performed when a baby boy is 8 days old, unless there is some (usually medical) reason to delay. It's considered an obligation on the parents of male-assigned children, not just the individual. There are no such requirements in Islam, any time before puberty is ok, and anyone with the appropriate skill can carry it out. Salamayeh gave an example from what she called the Muslim responsa tradition, though I don't know its technical name, where people asked about a region where they only competent circumciser was a Jewish mohel, and this person was circumcising Muslim babies at 8 days old, and they question was posed as to whether this really counts as Muslim rather than Jewish circumcision. The conclusion was that it's valid and doesn't somehow accidentally make the child Jewish, but it's interesting that this was debated. And in modern times apparently it's most common for Muslim circumcision to be carried out in medical environments, with no associated ritual though there is often a celebratory party afterwards. Judaism would generally not consider circumcision carried out by a Muslim, or by a non-Jewish doctor, to be valid; a born Jewish person who had had that operation carried out would be obligated in symbolic blood spilling with appropriate ritual to be accepted as Jewishly circumcised.
   
   There was a bit of side-track about the role of blood in halachic attitudes to circumcision. Salamayeh kept referring to 'covenant blood', which, yes, is a literal translation of the Hebrew phrase used in these sorts of discussions, but in English it sounds really Christian. She mentioned a device being promoted in Africa, I think called a Prepex but I'm not sure of the spelling and don't dare Quack it. Anyway, this can be attached to a person's penis and gradually, over the course of a few weeks, dissolves the foreskin, with no blood involved and apparently painless. It's being used in Africa for health reasons, in order to give people the option to carry out their traditional circumcision without the risks attached to surgery in poorly sterile conditions, but there was some speculation about whether this would count as valid circumcision halachically. On the face of it it seems like it shouldn't be, because there is no blood and no moment at which the foreskin is removed when the appropriate ritual of brit milah can be carried out. But based on the reasoning that a convert who is already circumcised does not need to carry out symbolic blood spilling, maybe it could be used as a less painful method for adult converts to Judaism.
   
   So that was really interesting, but unfortunately Salamayeh was a lot less clear on the modern context of the debate about circumcision. And frankly confused about (the absence of) circumcision in Christianity. She was sort of making an aside about how early Islam was unlike early Christianity because the Prophet accepted the existing circumcision practices by some (though definitely not all) Arab tribes around Medina and by Jews, whereas Paul explicitly rejected the Jewish practice of circumcision. Except lots of people had questions about the history of Christian non-circumcision and she floundered a lot because she wanted to talk about Islam, not Christianity. I think her conclusion, that circumcision became a clear delineator of identity for Jews living in Christian contexts, is probably valid, but her explanation of what was going on when Paul decided that circumcision is not a requirement for gentiles who want to become Christian was quite a way off course.
   
   I was especially glad to have ghoti with me, because although I could tell Salamayeh was a bit confused about Christian history, it was definitely helpful to have someone on hand who could explain. Like, Salamayeh kept talking about baptism as symbolic circumcision or a replacement for circumcision, which didn't entirely hold together since Jewish conversion already includes immersion in the mikveh, which is the direct ancestor of Christian baptism, so how can this be a replacement for circumcision? So what I learned from ghoti is that Paul's rejection of circumcision was more about Christians not being required to keep the Torah mitzvot, one example of which is the obligation to have one's sons circumcized. And this is part of the broader debate in very early Christianity about whether Jesus' message was for everybody or only for former Jews, which of course was resolved in the direction of Christianity being a universal doctrine. In the evening we had a look at the relevant discussion in Acts, which was really interesting though a bit rushed since it was sort of in the middle of dinner. (Salamayeh had also alluded to a passage in Galatians but we couldn't find anything quite relevant in that book.) Also Judith wanted to join in when we were looking at the Bible, and she is just getting to the stage where she can more or less read that kind of complex language, with a bit of help, so I was extremely touched at her reading her Bible to me. (I admit I did not proactively explain the word fornication, just told her how to pronounce it and was somewhat relieved when she didn't ask.)
   
   So obviously in modern times there is some controversy about the practice of infant circumcision. Salamayeh started out by noting that it's fairly widely accepted in America; she put this down to the influence of the Evangelical Christians there, who though they don't circumcize themselves, generally respect the practice because they see it as Biblical. That was not my understanding of why circumcision is common among non-Jews in the US (though apparently the rates are falling rapidly in secular society); rather I thought it was to do with partially discredited ideas about hygiene and medical benefit, and historically an ineffectual anti-masturbation measure. So basically American circumcision is about cleanliness, AIUI, even though it's couched in medical rather than ritual language, whereas Salamayeh wanted to connect it to Christianity even though Christians don't generally practise circ as a religious thing.
   
   She had the beginnings of something interesting about the "intactivist" (anti-circ) movement over there. Like, there are some prominent Jewish voices condemning infant circumcision, even though this is a very long-standing and distinctive and unarguably Torah-based Jewish practice. I think it's probably facile to dismiss every Jewish person who criticizes mainstream Jewish thought as "self-hating"; certainly that can be a reason for someone's views, but it's not the only possible reason why a Jewish person would question circ. But these vocal Jews have some really strange bedfellows in the intactivist movement, right up to the horrible "Foreskin Man" guy, who distributes comics that are some kind of awful cross between superhero style comics and Nazi propaganda (oh wait, apparently this is mainstream superhero verse now, thanks a million, Marvel). So anyway, the discussion got a bit derailed by everybody being kind of horrified at the sheer awfulness of a couple of example panels from this comic.
   
   It then got further derailed because Salamayeh claimed that there is no logically consistent legal distinction between male and "female circumcision". So the main reason why male circumcision is accepted is because, via Judaism and the kinds of Christianity that look to Jewish origins, it's a relatively mainstream Western practice, whereas FGM is taboo because it's almost exclusively an African practice. I think she had possibly the kernel of an argument there, particularly the concept that "harm" is culturally mediated and that the Western medical community is also a culture, and that racism plays into what practices are considered harmful. But if you say massively taboo-breaking things like in any way equating male and female genital cutting, you upset the audience too much to have a usefully rational discussion.
   
   There was also a bit of discussion about the legal issues in Europe where several countries have tried to bring in legal bans on infant circumcision. Again, interesting but a bit unsubstantiated. The German situation is interesting: apparently a doctor was prosecuted in Cologne after a 4-year-old Muslim boy suffered complications following this doctor circumcising him. Clearly, if a doctor can be found criminally liable for circumcision, that amounts to criminalizing the practice. Anyway was taken to higher courts and Germany ended up with a law which permits circumcision without a medical reason only during the first six months of a baby's life, and bans it after that. The idea is that this essentially gives an exemption for Jews who circumcise preferably 8-day-old and failing that still very young babies. But it bans the usual circumcision practice in, say, the majority Muslim Turkish community, where typically families wait until all their intended children are born and they have saved up enough money for a big celebration, before circumcising all the boys together. Salamayeh presented the argument (which I don't think was her belief, just an explanation of the ethical and legal reasoning), that since Muslims may, if they want to, circumcise infants and follow the Jewish practice, because there's no particular religious requirement to perform the rite at a defined age, this wasn't necessarily discriminatory. But it seems pretty clear that the reason the law ended up that way is that Germany is understandably squeamish about being racist towards Jews, but less bothered about being racist towards Turks and other immigrant groups.

So yes, that was partly informative but I felt like the XKCD citation needed guy quite a lot of the time. I'm not particularly interested in debating the ethics and legality of infant circumcision in the comments; I know a lot of people have strong views on the topic but I don't really care to rehash that debate. As it is I've made this way longer than I intended so I shall just post it and add the last couple of talks to another post.

Comments

[monanotlisa]

This was super-interesting, thank you for the write-up! I have definite Opinions about circumcision, but that makes it ever so important to actually know and internalize their history.

[liv]

Yeah, I totally trust you to think about the question seriously and not just make lazy racist assumptions :-) The situation in Germany is messy, and I can see how it's arisen from genuine good intentions to protect children and not exclude Jews, but the outcome is fairly unpleasant.

[nameandnature]

Re Galatians, chapter 5 contains Paul's warning against Gentile Christians being circumcised, couched in famously strong terms ("I wish the circumcisers would go the whole way and emasculate themselves").

[liv]

Thanks for identifying that, it's really helpful! I think partly we'd just missed it when flicking through the book. And partly the way the speaker expressed it it seemed like she was referring to proof text for why baptism is spiritual circumcision (an interpretation I doubt), rather than more evidence of the fact that Paul was strongly against circ for gentiles.

[nameandnature]

And partly the way the speaker expressed it it seemed like she was referring to proof text for why baptism is spiritual circumcision (an interpretation I doubt), rather than more evidence of the fact that Paul was strongly against circ for gentiles.

Ah, right. You can find the debate about whether Christian baptism replaces circumcision among Christians, because it's a plank of an argument that babies can be baptised (if it does) or can't (if it doesn't). The main proof text that it does can be found in Colossians, not Galatians. This article argues against infant baptism, but presents the argument of the other side.

[liv]

Awesome! Thank you, I really like the way that I have ended up learning about Christianity by attending a talk by a Jewish historian of Islamic law and getting clarification from my atheist friends on the internet.

That Colossians text looks like it needs some interpretative context I don't have; the Lyons essay is one way in though I clearly wouldn't want to judge all Christians by that sort of material. But it's really useful to have the corrected textual reference, thank you.

[boxofdelights]

Long, long ago, before the World Wide Web was a thing, I used to read a Usenet newsgroup called misc.kids. Like the mommyblogging of today, it contained many arguments about infant circumcision, and many arguments about proper Christian childrearing. I never saw anyone say that circumcision was Christian or Biblical. People defended circumcision with medical arguments, cleanliness arguments, psychological arguments (to look like Daddy/to look normal), and aesthetic arguments. So I agree with your sense that American acceptance of circumcision does not come from the Bible.

[liv]

Thank you for reporting that. It does seem likely that if American circumcision came out of Evangelical Christian culture, at least someone in your Usenet group would have justified it on those grounds. It's possible the prejudice against masturbation may have partly Christian origins, but I also think nobody is seriously arguing these days that circumcision prevents boys from masturbating.

[siderea]

Yeah, I can't say I've ever heard anyone defend circumcision as any sort of Christian sacrament or tradition.

Re "cleanliness", which along with sexual continence, most definitely was an American motivation: I'm given to understand that historically in the US, "cleanliness" has been a dogwhistle for racism and classism. So I wonder – speculating wildly here – if the proliferation of infant circumcision in the US, by which I mean of course among the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant hegemonic majority, was driven by the urge among the dominant race/class/religion complex to differentiate themselves from the later 19th century influx of darker, poorer, and above all Catholic immigrants by whom they felt (it is well known) enormously threatened.

Some casual googling about this turned up a handy anti-circ site that helpfully points out that historically, circumcision has been forbidden to Catholics, citing specific medieval Popes decrying it such as in Bull of Union with the Copts in 1442AD:

Therefore [the Catholic Church] denounces all who after that time observe circumcision, the [Jewish] sabbath and other legal prescriptions as strangers to the faith of Christ and unable to share in eternal salvation, unless they recoil at some time from these errors.

Since Europeans didn't spontaneously all start circumcising their children at any point between then and now, I must assume that the great numbers of Irish and Italian and Polish unwashed "wretched-refuse" Catholics showing up on our shores and causing great consternation at then end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th were not just tempest-tossed but uncut. And possibly believing – I don't know – that circumcision is forbidden by their religion.

I figure it's a pretty safe bet it wasn't the masses of new Catholic Americans who were insisting on circumcision as a "cleanliness" practice. But I also bet that over the 20th century assimilative pressure (i.e. racial insecurity) is what drove vast numbers of parents to anxiously submit their baby boys to a surgery to make them "clean".

Or put another way, I surmise that at some point in the 20th century, you could turn a Catholic Immigrant into an White American by lopping off his foreskin. Presuming he had one of course: the trick didn't work on women and Jews.

[liv]

This is disturbingly plausible as speculation goes. I could well believe that racists were capable of simultaneously thinking Catholics are despicable because they don't circumcise and Jews are despicable because we do. I'm really interested to see historic evidence of actual bans on circumcision from the Vatican, too, thank you for finding that.

And yes, it's a really good point that cleanliness concerns are often entangled with racism. I'm not sure it's even a dogwhistle, more an unconscious or cognitive dissonance thing. My impression is that a lot of people pushing these sort of ideas genuinely believe their concerns are about hygiene and propriety.

[siderea]

Oh, hey, I just discovered that "WE HAVE TO OPPRESS JEWS BECAUSE THEY KEEP TRYING TO CUT OUR PENISES" was yet another great old Medieval European antisemitic libel!

[...]the Edict of Expulsion (1492) of the Jews issued by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in conjunction with the Holy Office of the Inquisition, stated one of the reasons for the expulsion is the Jewish attempt to:

“by whatever ways and means possible…[to] attract and pervert them [Christians] to their Jewish injurious belief and opinion, instructing them in their ceremonies and observances of the Law…including trying to circumcise them and their children.”

And

Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II, April 9, 423:

“Jews shall be condemned to confiscation of property as well as to perpetual exile, If it shall be established that they have circumcised a man of our Faith or ordered him to be circumcised.”

And by "Medieval" I mean "between 300 and 1500 AD, and also some ultra-conservative Catholics to the present day who are still grinding this axe, and helpfully put together a compendium of illustrative citations". Thanks, antisemitic bloggers!

I haven't validated these sources, and I'm not linking to where I got them, so take with salt; they may be bogus.

I'm really interested to see historic evidence of actual bans on circumcision from the Vatican, too, thank you for finding that.

Oh, well then: There's a somewhat addled claim floating around the internet (example [pdf, page 2]) that there's a rather more pointed thing that was some sort of Important Resolution of Doctrine about circumcision, out of some Papal Council of Whatever. The problem is, these bloody amateurs are so confused about the cite that I can't run it to ground. From that PDF:

The theory that cir-
cumcision held some spiritual benefits even for Christians, prompted some condemnations. The Council of Vienna (1311) for example, decreed that Christians should not be lured into Judaism or be circumcised for any reason.

Vienna is a city in Austria, Vienne is a city in France and is where the fifteenth Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church was held in 1311 and 1312. According to wikipedia "The acts of the Council have disappeared, with the exceptions of a fragment in a manuscript in the National Library in Paris, and of the financial documents of the Templars that were requisitioned." The Council of Vienne was a big deal because of something having to do with the Knights Templar. I think they got defunded? Whatever. The word "circumcision" does not appear on the wikipedia page about the decisions the Council came to. I have no idea if the claim that the Roman Catholic Church banned circumcision at Vienne in 1311 has any basis whatsoever.

I don't care enough to try to run this one to ground. Happy hunting to anybody who does.

[rushthatspeaks]

Both the Catholic and the Baha'i religious education I attended as a child/adolescent discussed circumcision as an outgroup marker, i.e. 'this is something Jews and Muslims do for religious reasons and we explicitly do not think of it the same way'. It was described by the Catholics as being among the laws that were set aside by the Christian dispensation, on a level with food laws, things that Christians are not forbidden to practice, and might find wise to do for some non-religious reason, but which are not required.

With the Baha'is, the reasoning is that the founding prophet did not say to do it (didn't say anything on the matter either way), but it's turned into an interesting marker because one of the justifications used by Muslim authorities for Muslim persecution of Baha'is (ongoing in Iran and under Daaesh) is the insistence that Baha'is are a heretical sect of Islam. Which the Baha'is heartily deny, and I agree, as they have an entirely different set of holy books and prophets. So Baha'is in the Middle East explicitly don't circumcise, which is both an argument against being Islamic and a potential source of danger in that it identifies non-Muslims, and this has been something of a bone of contention between Iranian Baha'i refugees and American-born Baha'is, because the American Baha'is follow accepted medical practices for their area and don't see why they shouldn't. The higher religious authorities basically say sort it out for yourselves, as it isn't like women and the veil-- Baha'i women are explicitly forbidden to wear anything that might be mistaken for an Islamic veil as an indication of different beliefs about women. (Context is important here, btw, a Baha'i woman could wear a headscarf for inclement weather if not in an area with a lot of Muslims, for instance.) So the American Baha'is are all, it's not like women and the veil and also context, and the refugees are all, you are not practicing solidarity, and when I was growing up at least it got pretty loud.

The Christians I've been in contact with, both Catholic growing up and Anglican at my current church, certainly don't have any remotely similar fights.

[liv]

Thank you, this is really informative and fascinating stuff, and thanks for explaining it so clearly. I had heard a bit about the veil issue, so I'm interested this led to tensions you witnessed. The refusing circumcision even when that marks you out in a dangerous way (and is not technically forbidden) has lots of parallels in Jewish history. It's horrible that fanatics are killing people over something like that, of course.

I think sometimes European Christians take a view that circumcision is Jewish or Muslim and therefore a bad thing for Christians to do, but I don't think that's a common line of argument. And when I do see it it's more likely to be phrased in identity terms than explicitly religious: circumcision is a "barbaric" practice and we are "civilized" so we don't do that.

[redbird]

Another possible legal approach to complications after circumcision would be to treat the complications as possibly making it malpractice, though at least in the US that's almost always a civil rather than a criminal matter (barring extreme things like falsely diagnosing cancer in order to charge for unneeded chemotherapy).

[liv]

Yes, I think that is where Salamayeh was going, even if there was malpractice by the doctor, either in carrying out the circumcision when there was only a cultural reason, no medical need, in the first place, or in the way the operation was performed, this would normally be a civil matter. It's only because there was a political appetite to criminalize that the local judicial system went down the prosecution route in the first place, and this was the trigger for actually getting a ban into German law.

[lethargic_man]

Interesting; thanks for posting.