Religious Male Circumcision - Other Faiths and Traditions

Other Faiths and Traditions

Bahá'ís do not have any particular tradition or rituals regarding male circumcision, but view female circumcision as mutilation..

Circumcision is widely practiced by the Druze. The procedure is practiced as a cultural tradition, and has no religious significance in the Druze faith. Male Druze infants are usually circumcised shortly after birth.

There is no reference to male circumcision in the Hindu holy books and Hindus in India do not practice circumcision. Sikh infants are not circumcised.

Circumcision in South Korea is largely the result of American cultural and military influence following the Korean War. The origin of circumcision (tuli) in the Philippines is uncertain. One newspaper article speculates that it is due to the influence of western colonizers. However, Antonio de Morga's seventeenth century History of the Philippine Islands speculates that it is due to Islamic influence. In West Africa infant circumcision may have had tribal significance as a rite of passage or otherwise in the past; today in some non-Muslim Nigerian societies it is medicalised and is simply a cultural norm. In early 2007 it was announced that rural aidpost orderlies in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea are to undergo training in the circumcision of men and boys of all ages with a view to introducing the procedure as a means of prophylaxis against HIV/AIDS, which is becoming a significant problem in the country. Circumcision is part of initiation rites in some African, Pacific Islander, and Australian aboriginal traditions in areas such as Arnhem Land, where the practice was introduced by Makassan traders from Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago. Circumcision ceremonies among certain Australian aboriginal societies are noted for their painful nature, including subincision for some aboriginal peoples in the Western Desert. In the Pacific, ritual circumcision is nearly universal in the Melanesian islands of Fiji and Vanuatu; participation in the traditional land diving on Pentecost Island is reserved for those who have been circumcised. Circumcision is also commonly practised in the Polynesian islands of Samoa, Tonga, Niue, and Tikopia. In Samoa, it is accompanied by a celebration. Among some West African animist groups, such as the Dogon and Dowayo, it is taken to represent a removal of "feminine" aspects of the male, turning boys into fully masculine males. In many West African traditional societies circumcision has become medicalised and is simply performed in infancy without ado or any particular conscious cultural significance. Among the Urhobo of southern Nigeria it is symbolic of a boy entering into manhood. The ritual expression, Omo te Oshare ("the boy is now man"), constitutes a rite of passage from one age set to another. For Nilotic peoples, such as the Kalenjin and Maasai, circumcision is a rite of passage observed collectively by a number of boys every few years, and boys circumcised at the same time are taken to be members of a single age set.

The Navajo Nation believes that they are put on the earth the way that they are intended to be. No man would disrupt the spiritual harmony of the family by having circumcision performed on his child. "By the bottom of our feet to the tips of the hair, whence the eagle feather lies on its side."