Tanvir Ahmed.
Take a bow.
I didnt believe I'd hear a Muslim openly criticise the African cultural obscenities which you indicated you also dete4sted.
Can I ask you, Tanvir, to assure me that Asian Muslim women are not being brutalised in similar fashion. I hear that Malaysian women also are subjected to this carnage,especially where the ultra-conservative radicals are in a majority. I suspect that the custom is also practised in parts of Aceh.

Tanvir. You have taken a lot of flack. Please for the sake of a sensible dialogue do not pay attention to the most virulent abuse. We both know from where it's coming. If progress of adaptation and assimilation is ever to suceed then it needs the leadership of fearless and level-headed men like you.
Dont stop now.Pathetic abuse and mindless vitriol reveal absence of reason and humanity. Your critics display plenty of them.
Thank you.

By the way,friend. Far from curbing the appetite of males' sexual appetite the hijab and to a lesser extent even the burqa actually excite males. I have to admit to being one of them. Some women wear their hijabs with such taste and flaunt their sexuality. ASll I can say is "WOW!!"
But what about the male Muslim looking upon the bodies of half nude and nude western-oriented women of muslim and non-Muslim persuasion. I know a lot of Muslim women who sandme crazy by their sexuality. And I am not Muslim but what does it do to the male muslims.

socratease

I agree floatinglili, circumcision of boys is not in the same league as female circumcision.
However, it remains legal in Australia, much to my disgust.

CJ says <" Clearly, the reason the procedure persists is for cultural rather than medical reasons. Both practices should be outlawed, if we are to be consistent."

In actual fact, it is not only the Jewish boys, or boys with medical conditions that are subjected to circumcision, but those boys whose parents believe it 'looks better', or it should be done for 'sanitary reasons', or merely because 'daddy has it done".

Luckily, most good Doctors will absolutely refuse to attend to this procedure unless it is medically warranted.

We don't live in a third world country here, where personal hygiene is so bad that we need to circumcise our baby boys.

In any case, if the male circumcision is medically required, this usually becomes apparent later in their babyhood, and they can then have an anaesthetic for the procedure.

The other poor baby boys who have the misfortune to have parents who want them circumcised for their own selfish reasons, must suffer the procedure on about day 5 of their life.

These baby boys are held down, screaming, with legs apart, while a Doctor cuts off the foreskin, with no pain relief.

Anyone who says they don't feel pain at that age has never had to hold a baby down for that procedure!

Ban male as well as female circumcision in Australia, and let us drag ourselves out of the ancient past.

Jon J....spot on.

And CJ Morgan, honestly, you can't be for real. Trying to equate male circumcision with female genital mutilation?

That is akin to an apologist for slavery. Nothing less. Its terrible and I feel you must not think much of Muslim women to think the way you do.

Its shameful. I hope you clarify this - because while I disagree with you generally, to apologise for the utter barbarity that is FGM (which is NOT a Muslim practice but cultural - although given how anti-women Muslims are in general its not hard to see that it is common in the Islamic world) takes it to a different level.

As with others on the far left, I don't believe you would be so apologetic if it were Fred Nile who liked the idea and did it to his kids.

You have a chronic case of white guilt. It's a disease suffered mostly by wealthy whites with issues over past injustices.

But bizarrely, while those like you claim to be against discrimination, I have never seen such vitriol dished out like those suffering white guilt dish out to the poor white classes who live in the areas most asylum seekers settle.

They do not speak eloquently so are just called rednecks by the elitist barristers like Julian Burnside.

It is naive to believe that a 'ritual nick' is going to satisfy the expectations of all groups engaging in female circumcision; certainly not those who practice pharaonic circumcision.

As for male circumcision. Doctors from children's hospitals will tell you that they see horrific damage to young boys up to the age of 9 years, where diy circumcision without anaesthetic has taken place. Apparently "too much enthusiasm" leading to "too much tissue being removed" results in horrific mutilation to these "beautiful children'.

Recently, a young Muslim woman immolated herself. She had been a child bride overseas, brought to Australia with her husband and had been brutally treated by both him and his family. The federal officer who told me this remarked that "sadly, this is not an isolated incident.' It is equally naive to state that these women have places where they can get help. The help may be there, but these women have no chance of accessing it.

The whole issue of burkas, female and male diy circumcision, child brides and forced marriages should be openly addressed by Islamic leaders. Undoubtedly, there are many Muslims who abhore such practices, but their silence and lack of condemnation does nothing to assuage the concern of the wider community that some of these practices are endemic within Islamic society.

Other religions are fearless in condemning practices of fundamentalists within their own faiths. Why are Muslims so coy? Is it because if one does speak out, one attracts a fatwa. Like Western society, Islamic society must have its own "Enlightenment" before it can truly take its place in the modern 21st century world.

Maybe sexual mutilation atrocities committed against boys are not always reported in the western media.

250 boys in South Africa dead from circumcision since 1995
http://www.cirp.org/news/mailandguardian12-08-03/

"[c]hildhood genital mutilations are anachronistic blood rituals inflicted on the helpless bodies of non-consenting children of both sexes.

The reasons given for female circumcision in Africa and for routine male circumcision in the U.S. are essentially the same. Both falsely touch the positive health benefits of the procedures.

Both promise cleanliness and the absence of 'bad' genital odours, as well as greater attractiveness and acceptability of the sex organs. The affected individuals in both cultures have come to view these procedures as something that was done for them and not to them."

http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/smith/

C J Morgan, "However, we have something of a double standard in Australia whereby little boys still routinely have their genitals surgically mutilated for cultural reasons, but nobody ever wants to talk about that."

Yes, that is right and it was right for you to draw the apparent distinction. It is just as discriminatory and an invasion of a male child's body and rights to be cut as it is for cosmetic surgery to be undertaken on a girl's genitals.

As others have pointed out previously, the ritual tattooing or other scarification of children's bodies (mainly males) is also abhorrent.

If nothing else will convince those who think cutting of boys is not really a problem, they should consider that the sexual and other scarring and other misuse and abuse of one sex will certainly be visited upon the other sex. Anyhow, how convincing is it to argue that it is OK for the boy but not for his sister?