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== Religious Arguments ==
=== Jewish Religion ===
* '''"Circumcision is required by God."'''
*: This argument is brought by the Jewish communities, with respect to a Bible text where God ordered the Israelic forefather Abraham to have all male descendants circumcised. But in fact it is not a religion-giving, but a religion-confirming ritual act that can therefore be postponed to a later date without any problem.
* '''"Only the [[circumcision]] makes a boy a real Jew."'''
*: Refutation: In the Jewish-religious culture, a boy becomes a Jew automatically when he is born by a Jewish mother.
* '''"There is no internal Jewish debate about circumcision."'''
*: The many [[Intactivists|Jewish movements]] against the ritual [[circumcision]], founded in the Internet age, which also search for [[Brit Shalom|alternative rituals]], clearly show that an intra-Jewish debate exists very well.
*: But the ritual was repeatedly questioned in inner-Jewish debates even earlier. [[Walter Otte]] wrote about it in the [[HPD]]: "The combination of medicine and religion refers to the great decade-long intra-Jewish debate of the 19th century, brought in mainly Jewish doctors objection made against the circumcision of boys. In the middle of the 19th century, there were Jewish reform groups, Jewish doctors and rabbis, who entered intense discussions, which dealt with religious but also to health aspects of the Prepuce [[circumcision]] of boys. In debates or reform Rabbi and Jewish doctors (which even claimed the abolition of the [[FGM|Boy circumcision]]), the hospital doctor [[Gideon Brecher]] called the procedure a "bloody operation". The Dessau doctor [[Adolf Arnhold]] presented extensive arguing why [[circumcision]] is outdated as a "binding ritual of the Jews". He was based on religious considerations, called the biblical circumcision formations only of importance for "unbiased believers" and came to the conclusion that the material act of [[circumcision]] had become "a redundant and useless shell of the mentally bare core". [[Philipp Wolferts]] from Lemförde and the Hamburg doctor [[Moritz Gustav Salomon]] emerged with medical arguments, where Salomon came to the conclusion that [[circumcision]] was not religious but merely a political meaning in the 19th century at all."<ref>http://hpd.de/node/14033?nopaging=1</ref>
=== Islamic Religion ===
* '''"Circumcision has been recommended by the Prophet Mohammed."'''
*: This argument is brought by the Muslim communities, with respect to a Hadith of one fellow of the prophet where the male circumcision is required. The Quran itself neither mentions nor requires the [[circumcision]]. Although Ibrahim (Abraham) himself is mentioned in the Quran at least 67 times, his [[circumcision]] is not mentioned there. Instead, many places in the Quran describe that Allah created man "in great shape" <ref>(Quran 95:4)</ref>, "completed" <ref>(Quran 27:88)</ref> and "complete" <ref>(Quran 32:7)</ref>, and "made your bodies perfectly" <ref>(Quran 40:64)</ref>. "No mistake you can see in the Creation of the Most Gracious." <ref>(Quran 67:3)</ref> The [[circumcision]] itself would have to be an insult for Allah.<ref>http://www.quranicpath.com/misconceptions/circumcision.html</ref>
*: The recommendation for [[circumcision]] goes back to [[Abū Huraira]], who reported that the Prophet should have said: ''"To fitrah (at creation of man) five things are required: The [[circumcision]], the shaving of pubic hair, the short-cutting of the mustache, cuttin the (finger and foot) nails, and plucking the armpit hairs."'' <ref>[BUCHARI:1216]</ref>
*: Since this is five body treatments that have to do in the broadest sense with hygiene, one can understand even in temporal and spatial context of Islam in the 7th century AD, that [[circumcision]] was mentioned, too. But nowadays, [[circumcision]] is unnecessary for hygienic reasons. Hygiene can be no religious argument, too.
== Trivializing arguments ==
* '''"I've never heard anyone complain about being circumcised."'''
*: Chances are that a man does not talk about his sexual or other (genital) issues to others at all. There are many personal stories of men who did and do complain. There is an organization named [[Men Do Complain]], there are books with [[Case Histories|case histories]] of many men who do complain. But it is not the question if men do complain. The question is: Is [[circumcision]] of children a an illegel intervention in the physical integrity? That is continuously asserted by lawyers. The question for victims does also not arise here, because [[circumcision]] of children basically violates the fundamental rights of the child.
* '''"[[Circumcision]] is similar to removing a patch."'''
*: All published [[It´s A Boy!|circumcision videos]] show that those who are circumcised without adequate anaesthetic treatment (anaesthesia or anaesthetic), suffer immense pain. Infants fall regularly in shock as a reaction to the pain, when being circumcised without effective anaestesia. This shock is often misinterpreted and the parents believe that their baby would have simply slept through.
*: Actually, in some traditional ritual forms of [[circumcision]] not only the outer [[foreskin]]} is cut up or off, but rather even the (inner) foreskin is torn down. The comparison with pulling off a patch is safe only from the point of view of the person who tear down the patch or the [[foreskin]], but not from the point of view of the child who suffers the pain. It is at least not a single case known in which a [[mohel]] fell in shock after [[circumcision]], while it is regularely in only a few days old boys. Therefore, this comparison is more than cynical.
*: The [[foreskin]] of an infant firstly is connected with the [[Glans penis|glans]] and thus serves to protect it from everything. One can compare the state of the physiological connection between internal [[foreskin]] and [[Glans penis|glans]] with the way how fingernails are connected to the underlying tissue.
* '''"Babies feel no pain yet, therefore should be circumcised at an early stage."'''
*: This assertion is completely obsolete and refuted in many studies. The discussion is also quite schizophrenic. It is fiercely debated whether embryos that are to be expelled, should be stunned before. But you can easily cut off a body part without anesthesia on born babies because they do not feel pain? The reserch situation is however quite differently here: boys who were circumcised as infants, show even stronger reactions to pain (e.g. vaccination)) as intact ones.<ref>[http://english.alarabiya.net/en/life-style/healthy-living/2015/04/21/First-infant-MRI-study-finds-babies-feel-pain-like-adults-.html First infant MRI study finds babies feel pain ‘like adults’]</ref><ref>[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(96)10316-0/abstract?cc=y Taddio et al: Effects of neonatal circumcision on pain response during subsequent routine vaccination]</ref>
* '''"[[Circumcision]]is comparable with ear piercing or other piercings."'''
*: Apart from the fact that earlobes and piercings are bodily injury, usually any sensitive tissue or even functional body parts is removed when doing earlobes and piercings. Also earlobes and piercing holes can grow again. Therefore, this comparison is completely untenable. Children are no dolls that you can surgically change at will. The body belongs to the child alone, that alone should decide when and where permanent changes in their body are made. As long as the child is too young to make the appropriate statements, you should forgo any body modification.
* '''"[[Circumcision]] is like cutting fingernails or hair."'''
*: Fingernails and hair grow by themselves. This trivializing comparison of [[Circumcision|foreskin amputation]] with normal personal hygiene is untenable.
* '''"The baptism of a baby with ice cold water is also brutal and puts a shock to the child."'''
*: This argument is not only wrong, it's downright silly. First, it is common nowadays to use warmed water for infant baptisms, because you just do not want to scare the often only a few days old child. Second, here the actual gentle wetting of the head (or forehead) is compared cynically with the amputation of a healthy, important body part of a healthy baby body without adequate anesthesia. And third, there is no right in the wrong. If baptism with water would violate the fundamental right of the child to physical integrity to the extent that [[circumcision]] does, then still no equal (un)right to [[circumcision]] can be derived.
* '''"He should look like his father; you can't tell the child why he looks different '''''there'''''."'''
*: Probably one of the worst arguments, because where is the limit? So you can't also explain to the child why the father is sitting in a wheelchair and the child doesn't, so you have to cut his spinal cord? Maybe the father is blind or has scars on his face - does the child have to compensate the father, too? Of course not. The argument serves to protect the father's peace of mind, but not the child that must be protected against 'conflicts'.
* '''"I like my penises circumcised."'''
*: Often voiced by mothers who could not imagine who an intact [[penis]] looks like or works. The argument is not only dangerously close to a sexual assault, but has already exceeded this limit. Any man who would express himself this way about the genitals of his daughter, would have major problems with the DCFS and would expose himself to criminal prosecution.
* '''"You can't teach a boy to wash there. Thus he will be circumcised."'''
*: Parental education failure should not be borne on the backs of the boys. If parents do not feel able to educate their son to proper personal hygiene, they should take help from official aid agencies rather than to impose the son on an operation that has no other justification than parental laziness.
resorted arguments
Pro circumcision activists have many arguments why the medically not indicated [[circumcision]] should make sense. This page tries to offer an almost complete list and a ranking of the pro arcuments. All arguments listed hereafter can be and already have been refuted, the religious arguments included.
== Pseudo-medical arguments ==
* '''"Circumcised men can cum later."'''
*: In fact, many circumcised men have to work much longer for ejaculation, especially with age, because due to the lack of [[foreskin]] their [[Glans penis|glans]] is increasingly callous and unfeeling.
== Trivializing arguments ==
* '''"I've never heard anyone complain about being circumcised."'''
*: Chances are that a man does not talk about his sexual or other (genital) issues to others at all. There are many personal stories of men who did and do complain. There is an organization named [[Men Do Complain]], there are books with [[Case Histories|case histories]] of many men who do complain. But it is not the question if men do complain. The question is: Is [[circumcision]] of children a an illegel intervention in the physical integrity? That is continuously asserted by lawyers. The question for victims does also not arise here, because [[circumcision]] of children basically violates the fundamental rights of the child.
* '''"[[Circumcision]] is similar to removing a patch."'''
*: All published [[It´s A Boy!|circumcision videos]] show that those who are circumcised without adequate anaesthetic treatment (anaesthesia or anaesthetic), suffer immense pain. Infants fall regularly in shock as a reaction to the pain, when being circumcised without effective anaestesia. This shock is often misinterpreted and the parents believe that their baby would have simply slept through.
*: Actually, in some traditional ritual forms of [[circumcision]] not only the outer [[foreskin]]} is cut up or off, but rather even the (inner) foreskin is torn down. The comparison with pulling off a patch is safe only from the point of view of the person who tear down the patch or the [[foreskin]], but not from the point of view of the child who suffers the pain. It is at least not a single case known in which a [[mohel]] fell in shock after [[circumcision]], while it is regularely in only a few days old boys. Therefore, this comparison is more than cynical.
*: The [[foreskin]] of an infant firstly is connected with the [[Glans penis|glans]] and thus serves to protect it from everything. One can compare the state of the physiological connection between internal [[foreskin]] and [[Glans penis|glans]] with the way how fingernails are connected to the underlying tissue.
* '''"Babies feel no pain yet, therefore should be circumcised at an early stage."'''
*: This assertion is completely obsolete and refuted in many studies. The discussion is also quite schizophrenic. It is fiercely debated whether embryos that are to be expelled, should be stunned before. But you can easily cut off a body part without anesthesia on born babies because they do not feel pain? The reserch situation is however quite differently here: boys who were circumcised as infants, show even stronger reactions to pain (e.g. vaccination)) as intact ones.<ref>[http://english.alarabiya.net/en/life-style/healthy-living/2015/04/21/First-infant-MRI-study-finds-babies-feel-pain-like-adults-.html First infant MRI study finds babies feel pain ‘like adults’]</ref><ref>[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(96)10316-0/abstract?cc=y Taddio et al: Effects of neonatal circumcision on pain response during subsequent routine vaccination]</ref>
* '''"[[Circumcision]]is comparable with ear piercing or other piercings."'''
*: Apart from the fact that earlobes and piercings are bodily injury, usually any sensitive tissue or even functional body parts is removed when doing earlobes and piercings. Also earlobes and piercing holes can grow again. Therefore, this comparison is completely untenable. Children are no dolls that you can surgically change at will. The body belongs to the child alone, that alone should decide when and where permanent changes in their body are made. As long as the child is too young to make the appropriate statements, you should forgo any body modification.
* '''"[[Circumcision]] is like cutting fingernails or hair."'''
*: Fingernails and hair grow by themselves. This trivializing comparison of [[Circumcision|foreskin amputation]] with normal personal hygiene is untenable.
* '''"The baptism of a baby with ice cold water is also brutal and puts a shock to the child."'''
*: This argument is not only wrong, it's downright silly. First, it is common nowadays to use warmed water for infant baptisms, because you just do not want to scare the often only a few days old child. Second, here the actual gentle wetting of the head (or forehead) is compared cynically with the amputation of a healthy, important body part of a healthy baby body without adequate anesthesia. And third, there is no right in the wrong. If baptism with water would violate the fundamental right of the child to physical integrity to the extent that [[circumcision]] does, then still no equal (un)right to [[circumcision]] can be derived.
* '''"He should look like his father; you can't tell the child why he looks different '''''there'''''."'''
*: Probably one of the worst arguments, because where is the limit? So you can't also explain to the child why the father is sitting in a wheelchair and the child doesn't, so you have to cut his spinal cord? Maybe the father is blind or has scars on his face - does the child have to compensate the father, too? Of course not. The argument serves to protect the father's peace of mind, but not the child that must be protected against 'conflicts'.
* '''"I like my penises circumcised."'''
*: Often voiced by mothers who could not imagine who an intact [[penis]] looks like or works. The argument is not only dangerously close to a sexual assault, but has already exceeded this limit. Any man who would express himself this way about the genitals of his daughter, would have major problems with the DCFS and would expose himself to criminal prosecution.
* '''"You can't teach a boy to wash there. Thus he will be circumcised."'''
*: Parental education failure should not be borne on the backs of the boys. If parents do not feel able to educate their son to proper personal hygiene, they should take help from official aid agencies rather than to impose the son on an operation that has no other justification than parental laziness.
== Exclusionary arguments ==
*: Cases are already on record in Germany, in which courts have eluded parents the right to determine residency of their children when it was to expect that they wanted to take a child abroad for a [[circumcision]] and the court ruled for the benefit of the child.<ref>https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Text=XII%20ZB%20166/03</ref>
*: They who still want to do something legally prohibited, will not be quenched by law at all. Arguing that legal banning would lead to dodging into illegality, should result in a situation where all criminal laws could be abolished.
== Religious Arguments ==
=== Jewish Religion ===
* '''"Circumcision is required by God."'''
*: This argument is brought by the Jewish communities, with respect to a Bible text where God ordered the Israelic forefather Abraham to have all male descendants circumcised. But in fact it is not a religion-giving, but a religion-confirming ritual act that can therefore be postponed to a later date without any problem.
* '''"Only the [[circumcision]] makes a boy a real Jew."'''
*: Refutation: In the Jewish-religious culture, a boy becomes a Jew automatically when he is born by a Jewish mother.
* '''"There is no internal Jewish debate about circumcision."'''
*: The many [[Intactivists|Jewish movements]] against the ritual [[circumcision]], founded in the Internet age, which also search for [[Brit Shalom|alternative rituals]], clearly show that an intra-Jewish debate exists very well.
*: But the ritual was repeatedly questioned in inner-Jewish debates even earlier. [[Walter Otte]] wrote about it in the [[HPD]]: "The combination of medicine and religion refers to the great decade-long intra-Jewish debate of the 19th century, brought in mainly Jewish doctors objection made against the circumcision of boys. In the middle of the 19th century, there were Jewish reform groups, Jewish doctors and rabbis, who entered intense discussions, which dealt with religious but also to health aspects of the Prepuce [[circumcision]] of boys. In debates or reform Rabbi and Jewish doctors (which even claimed the abolition of the [[FGM|Boy circumcision]]), the hospital doctor [[Gideon Brecher]] called the procedure a "bloody operation". The Dessau doctor [[Adolf Arnhold]] presented extensive arguing why [[circumcision]] is outdated as a "binding ritual of the Jews". He was based on religious considerations, called the biblical circumcision formations only of importance for "unbiased believers" and came to the conclusion that the material act of [[circumcision]] had become "a redundant and useless shell of the mentally bare core". [[Philipp Wolferts]] from Lemförde and the Hamburg doctor [[Moritz Gustav Salomon]] emerged with medical arguments, where Salomon came to the conclusion that [[circumcision]] was not religious but merely a political meaning in the 19th century at all."<ref>http://hpd.de/node/14033?nopaging=1</ref>
=== Islamic Religion ===
* '''"Circumcision has been recommended by the Prophet Mohammed."'''
*: This argument is brought by the Muslim communities, with respect to a Hadith of one fellow of the prophet where the male circumcision is required. The Quran itself neither mentions nor requires the [[circumcision]]. Although Ibrahim (Abraham) himself is mentioned in the Quran at least 67 times, his [[circumcision]] is not mentioned there. Instead, many places in the Quran describe that Allah created man "in great shape" <ref>(Quran 95:4)</ref>, "completed" <ref>(Quran 27:88)</ref> and "complete" <ref>(Quran 32:7)</ref>, and "made your bodies perfectly" <ref>(Quran 40:64)</ref>. "No mistake you can see in the Creation of the Most Gracious." <ref>(Quran 67:3)</ref> The [[circumcision]] itself would have to be an insult for Allah.<ref>http://www.quranicpath.com/misconceptions/circumcision.html</ref>
*: The recommendation for [[circumcision]] goes back to [[Abū Huraira]], who reported that the Prophet should have said: ''"To fitrah (at creation of man) five things are required: The [[circumcision]], the shaving of pubic hair, the short-cutting of the mustache, cuttin the (finger and foot) nails, and plucking the armpit hairs."'' <ref>[BUCHARI:1216]</ref>
*: Since this is five body treatments that have to do in the broadest sense with hygiene, one can understand even in temporal and spatial context of Islam in the 7th century AD, that [[circumcision]] was mentioned, too. But nowadays, [[circumcision]] is unnecessary for hygienic reasons. Hygiene can be no religious argument, too.
== See also ==