Following a regional German court’s ruling that circumcision in children causes permanent harm to their physical integrity, Muslim and Jewish communities in Germany have criticized the court’s verdict as “discriminatory.”
The regional Köln High Court, ruled June 26 that the “fundamental right of a boy to bodily integrity outweighs the fundamental rights of the parents.”
Ali Dere, Turkey’s departmental manager for external relations of the Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in Germany, said this step was the beginning of a new wave of discrimination against Muslims in Germany.
“Instead of punishing the doctor who performed the surgery, the court’s ruling punishes communities. The German state is taking away the right of families to decide about their children’s religion. This is an intervention in the individual’s ability to build a Muslim identity,” Dere told the Hürriyet Daily News.
The court’s ruling said the religious freedom of the parents and their right to educate their child would not be unacceptably compromised “if they were obliged to wait until the child could himself decide to be circumcised.”
