SAN FRANCISCO – A proposal to criminalize male circumcision in San Francisco has sparked outcry from Muslim and Jewish groups, denouncing the move as an attack directed at their religions.
“We’re currently reaching out to form a broad coalition of people who feel this is an attack directed at religion, parental rights and privacy rights,” Daniel Sandman, director of Anti-Defamation League, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Thursday, April 28.
The dilemma started when a coalition of anti-circumcision activists submitted 12,000 signatures to Californian city’s authorities this week in support of a ballot measure which would criminalize circumcision of males under 18 years old.
Such signatures would be reviewed within a month by the city’s Elections Division to verify that at least 7,000 of the signatures came from registered city voters.
If so, the issue will appear on a November ballot.
Those activists claimed that the practice poses health risks on individuals who perform it.
“Circumcision is harmful and very, very painful,” said Lloyd Schofield, 59, who been at the helm of the San Francisco effort.
Schofield added that it should be a matter of personal rather than parental choice.
“Parents are guardians – they’re not supposed to harm their children,” he said.
The raised issue was also highly criticized by a Muslim activist group which regarded it as creating problems from nothing.
“I think this ban is a solution in search of a problem,” Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR, told AFP.
“I don’t see it even as an issue to be addressed.”
Some 30 percent of men worldwide are currently circumcised.
Circumcision is a confirmed Sunnah in Islam as an act pertaining to fitrah (pure human nature).
The practice is also familiar among Jewish communities.
Others use the practice for hygiene purposes, generally among infant boys.
Healthy Practice
The director of Anti-Defamation League called Schofield’s effort discriminatory and misguided.
He noted that circumcision is a central religious obligation for Jews which has been practiced for centuries.
“Circumcision has been practiced safely for thousands of years,” Sandman said.
Earlier studies by the United Nations have recommended the practice as a preventive method of HIV/AIDS.
In 2007, a high-profile panel of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UNAIDS recommended male circumcision as an effective tool to curb the spread of the deadly HIV/AIDS.
WHO and UNAIDS experts affirmed that cells on the inside foreskin of the penis, the part cut off in circumcision, are particularly susceptible to HIV.
They also asserted that increasing male circumcisions could prevent 5.7 million sub-Saharan African men from contracting HIV over the next two decades, and save 3 million lives.
Their findings concurred with a recent research conducted in South Africa by the France’s National Agency for research on AIDS and found that circumcision reduced HIV infection by 60 percent.
The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) figures also show that 3.7 million AIDS infections and 2.7 million deaths could be averted over the next 20 years if male circumcision is added to multi-preventative strategies already in place.
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