These are the points I planned to discuss briefl y in this paper. There are aspects t of the subject-such as the history of circumcision, its position in ancient cultures, I the social habits involved, the celebrations held, and so on-which I have not I dealt with, because they have no bearing on the actual problem that people face. I have appended to my paper the treatise written by Sudanese Professor Alliin Dawood, because of its great value.
It was originally published in Khartoum. I pray God to guide me and grant me sound judgement, and I pray that this paper and its companion piece be of benefit.
I pray God to make all our endeavours dedicated solely to His service. It is God who speaks the truth and guides people along the right path. Praise be to God, the Lord of all the worlds. Abadi, Shams al-Haq al-Azhim. Abd AI-Razzaq.
Al-musanaf Habib al-Rahman al-Aazhami, ed. Beirut, AH. Abu Dawoods anthology of authentic hadith. Muhammad Naser al-Din al-Albani, ed. Arab Office of Education, AH. Abu Dawoods sunnas. Muhammad Muhyi al-Din Abd al-Hamid, ed. Muhammad Naser al- Irwaa al-ghalil. Beirut: Islamic Office, AH. Baihaqi, AI-. The grand sunnas. Bakri, Abu Bakr a1-Sayyed, al-I'aanat al-talibin. Darmis sunnas, AI-. Muhammad Ahmad Dahman, ed. Dawood, al-Amin. Gha1ayibi, Al-. A comprehensive collection of Arabic lessons.
Haithami, Al-. Mujamma al-zawaed. Hakem, AI-. Hassan, Abbas. Comprehensive gram'nar. Egypt: Dar AI-Ma'aref. Ibn Abdin. Ibn Adi. Beirut: Dar a1-fikr Press. Ibn Abu Shaiba. Ibn al-Haj. Ibn al-Qayyem.
Tulifat al-mawdood. Abd aI-Qader al-Arna' out, ed. Ibn Hajar. A summary of AI-Barraz s additional attributed hadith. Sabri Abu Tharr, ed. Third edition. Tahthib al-tahthib. Taqrib al-tahthib. Muhammad Awadah, ed. Fath al-bari. Beirut: Usama ibn Zaid Bookstore. Ibn Kathir. An Interpretation. Egypt: Dar Ihya al-Kutub al-Arabiyya. Ibn Maja s anthology of authentic hadith. Muhammad Naser al-Albani al-Din, ed. Second Edition. Ibn Maja's sunnas. Muhammad Fuad Abd al-Baqi, ed.
Ibn Qudama. Iraqi, Al-. Published together with Al-ihya Jamie al-saghil; AI-. Damascus: Islamic Office. Kitab al-majruhin.
Mahmood Ibrahim Zayed, ed. Mazzi, Al-. Bashar Ma'rouf, ed. AI-Ahwathis masterpiece. India: AH. Muslim s anthology of authentic hadith. Nawawi, Al-Majmou'. The scholars agree that circumcision entails the removal of all or the majority of the foreskin that covers the glans only.
Rare voices, such as Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, a Swiss writer of Palestinian Christian origin, have recently called for Muslims to put an end to the practice of circumcision and consider it a violation of the sacred human body. Such activists believe that circumcision is in conflict with physical nature and constitutes the amputation of a healthy and functional part of the body.
Islam expresses a remarkable interest in the honor and preservation of the body. Many Quranic verses and Prophetic traditions set out the restrictions and instructions for its care. Islam views the body as a divine miracle, one that points to the existence of the Creator and the greatness of His creation. And on the earth are signs for those who have Faith with certainty. And also in their own selves. Will you not then see? And indeed We have honored the Children of Adam. The honor bestowed by Almighty Allah is the reason for the restrictions and practices set upon human beings.
These restrictions are boundaries set to guard human dignity and bodily integrity. Islamic law honors the body even after death. Islamic law forbids defacing or maiming a corpse. Breaking the bone of a corpse is equivalent to breaking the bone of a living being. Your body has a right on you. Each individual is responsible to preserve, care for, and respect the integrity of his or her body before God.
A human being is not just responsible for maintaining moral accountability with the body, but also its physical body as the body is a trust from God. Moreover, in Islam care of the body becomes a legal responsibility and religious duty, one with correlating rewards and punishments.
Diseases and calamities that befall the human body have a moral dimension, one related to the will of God. This dimension is the foundation both for bodily and moral integrity. It is for this reason that righteous Muslims who are sick or wounded or have lost part of their bodies have been asked not to feel deficient.
They believe that their ordeals are the will of God. No fatigue, nor disease, nor sorrow, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a Muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that. Verily, We created man in the best stature mould. Who made everything He has created good and He began the creation of man from clay.
All actions that would deface or maim the body are forbidden in Islam. The body must remain in its original form unless specific permission is given from the Creator to make a change. Any change in the original creation of the body is considered one of the great sins in Islam. Verily, I will mislead them, and surely, I will arouse in them false desires; and certainly, I will order them to slit the ears of cattle, and indeed I will order them to change the nature created by Allah.
Consequently, cosmetic changes of the body are not lawful because aesthetic reasons are not considered moral justifications for violating bodily integrity. Tattoos, cleaved teeth, plucked eyebrows, and other procedures are absolutely forbidden. A hadith states:. Although women are the direct subject of this hadith, the prohibition covers both men and women. Moreover, the ruling concerning bodily integrity also encompasses animal bodies, so it is unlawful to violate their integrity.
Do not mutilate the animal bodies. Accordingly, physical interventions that are forbidden become permissible when performing indicated surgery. Islamic jurisprudence distinguishes between various types of surgery and divides them into categories: necessary surgeries for preserving life , required surgeries for treating diseases that usually do not lead to death, such as tonsillectomy , and cosmetic surgeries such as face lift and breast augmentation.
Islamic law allows the first two types while the third type, cosmetic surgery, is forbidden. It says that legalizing any forbidden procedure, such as violating bodily integrity, must be within the narrowest limits and in accordance with only that which is absolutely necessary.
Therefore, there must be a good reason for an intervention into the human body. In terms of circumcision, this rule means only removing the part of the skin that covers the glans. Many bioethicists, both Muslims and non-Muslims, see a greater moral value in the treatment of living bodies than in the treatment of corpses. They believe that violating a dead body is less serious than violating a living body, as the living body belongs to someone who is aware of his or her surroundings, in contrast to when he or she is dead.
As such, Muslims avoid cutting, maiming or anatomizing the body, except in a case where there is a considerable necessity, for example, studying anatomy in medical schools or autopsy to determine the cause of death. The concept of bodily integrity is deeply rooted in religious and philosophical considerations. For example, a child fears blood flowing from a wound in a finger. The same is true for surgeons in their early days of surgical experience, forming a memory that will never leave them.
In the same way, a person witnessing for the first time a circumcision performed on a small child might consider the procedure a violation of bodily integrity and an unjustified aggression. However this strong instinctive feeling may diminish gradually, day after day, by experience and practice.
The surgeons remain the best example for that. While there is general agreement among Muslims that the principle of bodily integrity is something natural and instinctive, a correlation between circumcision and the violation of bodily integrity does not exist. Most Muslims find no reasonable explanation for the campaigns against the procedure that originate with institutes and organizations that were originally Christian, a religion which, contrary to Judaism and Islam, does not command circumcision.
Bodily integrity and its various consequences for medical practice cannot be properly understood unless a shift is made from seeing the human body as simply a material body to seeing it within a set of aesthetic or moral values and dimensions.
Islam, along with Judaism and Christianity, provides a different viewpoint in that these religious traditions do not give an individual full control over his or her body. Rather, Islamic texts restrict the autonomy of the individual on the body as it is a creation of God.
Each person is held accountable before God, for the way he or she takes care of his or her body. From a body-oriented approach, there are three distinguishable dimensions of bodily integrity: biological, subjective, and normative wholeness. The idea of biological wholeness means that, although the human body consists of numerous body parts, organs, tissues, cells, and sub-cellular components, it is still an anatomical and physiological unity, an integrated whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
The anatomical point of view focuses on the structure of the body and the texture of its tissues and organs, whereas the physiological refers to how these tissues and organs function properly. There is a general consensus that preserving the biological structure and the physiological function of the body is an ethical duty in many divine laws, religions, and societies. Such violation is either material, i. Most of the time, a medical intervention in the human body is not considered a violation except when it leads to removing a healthy part of the body or inactivating a function that was working naturally beforehand.
Removing a gangrenous foot should therefore not be considered a violation of bodily integrity, although some argue that it is a violation of the integrity of the body, even if there are good reasons for intervention. Concerning the requirement to respect the body and avoid violating the health of the body, Islam has the same attitude as the other Abrahamic religions. However, a significant question arises in this respect: is the foreskin an essential part of the body such that removing it constitutes an anatomical deficiency or causes physiological dysfunction?
If so, circumcision would be considered a violation of bodily integrity, unless there are clear medical reasons to perform the intervention. Opinions differ as to the anatomical and functional significance of the foreskin. Some hold the opinion that it is no more than an extra piece of skin that lacks value and function and, subsequently, bears no anatomical or physiological significance.
Therefore, the process of circumcision is no more than a minor operation. Those who oppose circumcision describe the process of circumcising as a major operation that leads to a permanent anatomical, structural, and functional change in the penis.
The prevailing opinion among Muslims, however, is that the foreskin does not form an essential part of the body and that it bears no physiological function. This opinion also raises a theological contradiction. How could God, who repeatedly declares that humans are created in the best image, form an organ the prepuce whose anatomical and physiological significance is in question? Why would He then command the performance of a painful operation to remove it?
Muslim intellectuals argue that the answer is two-fold. First, they conjecture that the foreskin might be significant in the fetal stage or that it provides protection during birth while removing it later on becomes important for purity, something to which Islam gives great attention. Second, there is a theological underpinning in that circumcision is considered a test in order to make a distinction between those who obey and those who disobey God.
Through rarely seen tears he began to explain how important circumcision was, that it was about belonging, and that, in effect, if his sons were not circumcised, they simply would not be his. I replied there was so much more to being a father that created a sense of belonging. I was disturbed by his emotions and the extremity of his statement, recalling the time he told me to take the baby and go.
I refused to accept responsibility for his feelings about whether he felt his children were his or not. It sounds perhaps obvious that I should have left earlier. But I never agreed to it, and never expressed a wish to become Muslim. Even if I had, I would argue that I had the right to change my mind, and that Islam has space for pro-intact arguments on health and religious grounds.
I wanted to create a good relationship with my husband, I wanted our children to have both of us bringing them up. But with each argument and the intensity of them stacking up, together with refusal on his part to read the evidence against circumcision and for staying intact, I found it increasingly impossible to trust him.
I began to worry he might just take them and have the operation done. Our lives grew more separate on an everyday basis. He stayed overnight at work, and we met to do food shopping, or I would take the children to meet him for breakfast or lunch. I had my date set for leaving Turkey for the UK and was open about keeping to it. We arranged a visa to the UK for my husband. I hoped he might join us after we had settled there — once he had visited a few times and could see opportunity for work or creating a business.
In private, I counted down the days, growing desperate to leave and be safely back home. In the end, my husband remained in Istanbul. As soon as we were in the UK, my husband tried repeatedly and angrily to persuade me to visit. Without him expressing a wish to join us to live in the UK and with his angry outbursts over circumcision, I saw this as threatening.
I needed to retreat from direct contact and continued to let the children talk with him on Skype, supervising from a distance. He visited and, as it became more difficult, with his demands that I take them to Istanbul or put them on a plane or take them to London so that he could take them, I made it clear this would not happen until they were older. I also began to fear that were they to go to Turkey I might never see them again.
The mirror situation was not lost on me — it is difficult and expensive for many Turks to travel to the UK and his family is large. They are missing seeing our sons grow up. Time passed and anger again cooled. In between visits they talk and laugh on Skype, exchange voice, emoticon and text messages. We each value their happiness and wellbeing, and want them to grow aware of their Turkish heritage and family.
But I do not feel free to build trust on behalf of my children that they would not be circumcised given some opportunity for it to be done, in the UK or elsewhere. In Turkey, I would not have a legal say either way. Over the phone, I also explained I felt unsafe going to Istanbul, where my consent or presence was not required for our sons to be circumcised. As much as I could not accept it would happen, he still seemed to think it unimaginable it would not, that I simply needed reassuring that I would be there to care for my children.
My husband agreed to read some of the research on circumcision that explained its negative impacts and why staying intact was healthier. He re-agreed on our original compromise, saying he did not want to hurt us.
But trust is hard and slow to rebuild. The High Court ruling, upholding the rights of two children to choose upon maturity, and the rights of both parents to be heard, offers some reassurance.
0コメント