As the call to prayer echoes through the streets of Istanbul, Lale and I visit the courtyard of the magnificent Blue Mosque…and meet a young boy about to embark on a Muslim rite of passage.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Comments
This was the first Mosque that we had ever been in. It is absolutely beautiful and so different. I am not sure about Circumcision at seven years old. I was squeemish about my boys having it done as infants!
Any type of cosmetic surgery, whether for religious reasons or for any other reason, performed on a child not old enough to give informed consent should be a criminal offence.
I tend to agree, but the practice is so pervasive at least in the USA, across all ethnic groups, that an un-circumcised boy stands to suffer a lot more in the way of teasing and humiliation growing up, in gym class, and surprisingly also from members of the opposite sex who`ve never seen one as nature made it, and/or have read or heard it`s more likely for them to get cervical cancer from an uncircumcised partner. But I`m kind of surprised in today`s litigious society, that some guy hasn`t tried suing his parents for having him mutilated.