Debate over the practice had been causing an uproar in the Jewish and Muslim communities. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle says, ‘It must be made clear that Jewish and Muslim traditions are protected in Germany.’
BY CHARLIE WELLS / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Politicians in Berlin offered legal protection for religious circumcisions Wednesday, giving Jews, Muslims, and doctors in the city-state a little clarity following a controversial ruling which banned the practice this summer.
“We explicitly welcome Jewish and Muslim life in Berlin. This applies also to the practice of their religions,” Berlin’s senator for justice, Thomas Heilmann, said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
Legislators in the city — which is both Germany’s capital and one of its 16 states — outlined a fairly strict set of rules that must be followed for circumcisions to be allowed.
They can only be performed when a child is too young to make the decision for himself. Only doctors can perform them, and the procedure must be conducted in a sterile environment with as little blood and pain as possible, according to Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle.
Debate on circumcision began in Germany after a district court in the city of Cologne ruled that circumcision constituted illegal bodily harm in June.
Even though the Cologne decision was just regional and did not have national impacts, doctors across Germany stopped circumcising because they feared new legal action could be brought against them in different courts.
This caused a firestorm in the country’s Jewish and Muslim communities, which typically view circumcision as an important ritual and right of religious expression.
As late as Wednesday, the former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany published a scathing editorial on the issue in the prominent newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung.
“Do you still want us Jews?” 79-year-old Charlotte Knobloch asked the country.
“I’m asking myself seriously whether Germany still wants us. I’m asking myself whether these know-it-alls from the world of medicine, law, psychology or politics who rant about ‘child torture’ or ‘trauma’ have any idea that in doing this they are putting the existence of Germany’s tiny Jewish presence into question,” Reuters translated from her article.
The debate on circumcision became so intense in Germany that the country’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, was forced to say that country with a traumatic history of religious oppression would become a “laughing stock,” if circumcision were outlawed.
And so Wednesday, Berlin became the first German state to legally protect the practice.
As far as the country at large, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said federal legislation to protect circumcision is on the way.
The debate over circumcision grew so heated that Angela Merkel said that, with its history of religious oppression, Germany would become a “laughing stock,” if the practice were outlawed
“It must be made clear that Jewish and Muslim traditions are protected in Germany,” he told Deutsche Welle.
cwells@nydailynews.com
Categories: Europe, European Union, Germany, Islam, Judaism