By BRENDAN O'NEILL - THE TELEGRAPH
Added: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:35:26 UTC

Father, son and great-grandfather at a circumcision ceremony (Photo: Alamy)

There are many bad things about the modern atheistic assault on religion. But perhaps the worst thing is its rebranding of certain religious practices as "child abuse". Everything from sending your kid to a Catholic school to having your baby boy circumcised has been redefined by anti-religious campaigners as "abuse". This use of emotionally loaded language to demonise the practices and beliefs of people of faith has reached its ugly and logical conclusion in Germany, where a court has decreed that circumcision for religious purposes causes "bodily harm", against boys who are "unable to give their consent", and therefore should be outlawed.

This is an alarming attack on freedom of religion and on parents' rights to initiate their children into their faith. The court case centred around a four-year-old Muslim boy who was given a very bad circumcision, but the precedent set by the case will of course affect Jews as well as Muslims. And as Germany's Central Council of Jews rightly said, the court's ruling is "an egregious and insensitive measure", which represents "an unprecedented and dramatic intervention in religious communities' right of determination". He points out that Jews have the freedom to circumcise their male children in every country in the world – but soon maybe not in Germany

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TAGGED: ABUSE, CHILDREN, LAW, RELIGION