493
Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
493 points (99.0% liked)
United Kingdom
5747 readers
187 users here now
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't see how this will see the light of day given sensitivity towards Judaism at the moment. Unfortunately a lot of people think that anything which conflicts a religion has a different standard and that a little bit of abuse is then ok.
Judaism and (some of?) its daughter religions - Islam also carries out this practice, and if anything Islam is even more protected by the state.
As many know, Islam also carries out FGM, which is indisputably worse for the victim than male circumcision. Now, there is already a specific criminal offence for FGM, strengthened by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. This makes it illegal to perform FGM in the UK or to take a UK national or permanent resident abroad for FGM.
In over 20 years, only a handful of cases have been brought to trial. The first successful conviction for FGM in the UK did not happen until 2019, and even now there are typically less than 10 prosecutions per year. There are thousands of cases identified every year, (but it's not often clear how many of those are recent).
My point is that while this suggested new law is welcome, it is unlikely to result in any significant reduction in religious child mutilation.
Wait wait wait... Islam is more protected by the state? Can you go into detail a bit there please?
FGM is a relatively rare practice (it's not mainstream in Islam as a whole) and so outlawing it doesn't a bunch of mainstream doctors and religious leaders to go "you know what, it's not worth going to jail" whereas a circumcision ban very well could
But my point was that currently the government is very sensitive about antisemitism and less sensitive about islamophobia. Maybe this was always the case, but it certainly is right now, so for that reason a change like this isn't going to happen at the moment
I remember seeing a TED talk about this which very much pointed to FGM being a central african problem, yes the majority of people doing it Muslim nations, but there are christian nations doing it too like Etheopia and in places like nigeria that have diverse religious backgrounds, christians practice it too. for example, google tells me 25% of nigerian catholic women have been circumcised.
When you go outside africa, yuou find the majority of cases are eithert from a country right next door in the middle east. or from somewhere further away, but by people who have emigrated from said central african or middle eastern country.
There is Indonesia, with its high fgm rates exclusively among muslims there, efforts have been made to regulate/ban/mitigate (making the act symbolic, rather than actually physical) over there and some other nations would do well to nose over their efforts.
Thing is, fgm predates both islam and christianity. And its a mistake for anyone to attatch a specific culture to a specific religion. Thats as accurate as attaching a specific proffession to a religion. Oh my car mechanic is Jewish, therefore all Jews are car mechanics, crikey, Israeli cars must run forever. No it means the manufactures get lazy because they assume everyone can fix even complex faults, ah but they won't be able to get away with that, they are all trained mechanics so they could spot lazy design a mile off and vote with their wallet.
What a ridiculous discussion eh? well its no less ridiculous than when somebody invokes 'muslim culture' as a thing in their argument. Anyway, FGM is a cultural thing, not a religious thing.
Your "point" makes no sense given that Islam also carries out male circumcision. In fact, the vast majority of non-medical male circumcisions in the UK are carried out by Muslim parents.
Does this change your view? Now you know this, do you now think that the government will actually implement a male circumcision ban after all?
No? It only takes one religion that the government is sensitive to avoid pissing off for them to not do something.
Just say arabs do it. /s
How can they defend Metzitzah B'Peh though?