The Koran forbids circumcision and excision1
(français : Le Coran contre la circoncision (et l'excision)
(Arabic : (49) القرآن ضد الختان۱، | Michel Hervé Bertaux-Navoiseau - Academia.edu)
Twenty-three verses of the Koran oppose sexual mutilation.
Seven are categorical:
- 4: 118-119: “... cursed be he who said: ‘I shall take a determined part of your servants...’”
What other part than the foreskin or the clitoris can it be?
“‘I will lead them astray, I will make them (false) promises, will order them to split the ears of cattle, to alter God’s creation.’ Whoever takes Satan as his master, rather than God, is doomed to certain loss.”
- 6: 38: “... We have neglected nothing in the book...”
- 6: 115: “No one may change his words.”
- 10: 59: “... Have you seen the gifts that God has granted you? You hold some as lawful and others as unlawful. Has God allowed you to do so?...”
Boubakeur, ex-rector of the Paris mosque, in his French translation of the Koran1, had fun commenting on verse 10: 59 by stating that it concerns food. Did God allow him that restriction? By excluding what would not be food, he is precisely doing what verses 6: 115 and 10: 59 forbid. Moreover, the Arabic term “rizq” (gifts) is very general and that fallacious interpretation is the classical lie of the upholders of circumcision who state that the gifts in question concern food. Whatever it is, the following verse forbids that liar interpretation:
- 16: 116: “And do not say, according to the lies uttered by your tongues: ‘This is allowed, this is forbidden.’, to forge lies that you attribute to God.”
Those two verses imply that man has no right to condemn what God does not condemn and thus, very particularly the organs of the human body that He created. The only prohibited foods: carrion, blood, pork, and alcohol, are not forbidden by men but by the Koran itself. Therefore, in Islam, the gifts of God that men forbid to themselves can only be the foreskin and the clitoris. None of the Arabic terms naming sexual mutilation: khitan, khatna, tahara, and tohhor (cut, purification) appear in the Book. Nowhere does the latter order to mutilate the human body. It even seems that Muhammad’s refusal, like that of Moses, to use the word circumcision reveals a deep aversion to the cruel torture.
- 30: 30: “… no change in the creation of God; here is religion in its uprightness, but most men do not know -”
Since, according to verse 6: 38, everything is written in the Koran, men cannot allow themselves a practice of the importance of female and male sexual mutilation without violating verses 6: 38, 6: 115, 30: 30, and 95: 4.
Sixteen other verses oppose sexual mutilation by asserting the perfection of divine creation:
- 3: 6: “He is the one who forms you as he pleases in your mothers’ womb...”
- 3: 191: “... ‘Lord, you did not create this in vain!...’”
- 13: 8: “... All things have their measure next to him.”
- 23: 115: “Had you assumed that we had created you without aim...”
- 25: 2: “Blessed be the one who... created all things, giving them the proportions.”
27: 88: “... the work of God who perfected all things...”
- 32: 7: “(He) excelled (in everything) he created.”
- 32: 9: “... he gave him (man) a harmonious form...”
- 38: 27: “We have not created the heavens and the earth and what is in between in vain.”
- 40: 62: “God, your Lord, creator of all things.”
- 40: 64: “God... formed you and beautified your form...”
- 54: 49: “We have created all things (and) their destiny.”
- 64: 3: “... he granted you a beautiful form...”
- 67: 3: “We do not see any disproportion in the creation of the All-Merciful...”
- 82: 6-8: “Oh you, man! What has misled you about your generous Lord,
who created you, constituted you, equilibrated you,
granted you the shape he wanted?”
- 95: 4: “we gave to man, creating him, the best proportioned physical form,”
That repetitive insistence shows Muhammad’s determination against the idea of a divine order of circumcision given to Abraham. Muhammad’s God is as jealous as that of Moses; if creation is perfect, altering it is diabolical. The hadiths affirm that Muhammad forbade tattoos. How could he not condemn excision and circumcision? The unanimity of hadiths against tattoos suggests that those in favour of sexual mutilation are not authentic. From the same perspective, the behaviour of fundamentalists who let their beards grow to remain as God made them but circumcise their sons is all the more paradoxical that, unlike the beard, the foreskin does not grow back.
Dating back thousands of years, circumcision was a custom of the polytheist that Muhammad fought. In the harems, it was the logical complement to the eviration of guards and excision. Not to clash head-on with practitioners of sexual mutilation, the Koran only implicitly disapproves of it. But it does not prescribe it, and it is possible to become a Muslim without being circumcised or excised. The pure and authentic source of Islam bans altering the creation of God.
Islamic law does not prescribe sexual mutilationeither. Only certain passages of the Sunna (the custom, of debated authenticity, reporting the prophet’s current speech, and his thoughts as an ordinary man) do so. But we quote at the end several excerpts from the Sunna and hadiths against circumcision. In any case, those are not Archangel Gabriel’s words in his ear and the Sunna and hadiths cannot supersede the Koran. Now, the Koran’s implicit condemnations of female and male sexual mutilation are so numerous that we are forced to think that the statements ascribed to Muhammad about them in the Sunna are inauthentic or purely circumstantial. When the book is insistent, the reported words are not convincing. Notably those about excision:
“It is reported that the Prophet (PBUH) said to ‘Umm’ Atiya ‘, a woman who practised female circumcision in Medina:’ O Umm ‘Atiya, cut lightly and do not overdo it because it is more pleasant for the wife and better for the husband.”
- This hadith has been reported by Al-Hakim, Bayhaqi and Abu Daoud with similar versions and with a weak chain, as indicated by Al-Hafidh Zen Al-Din Al-’Iraqi in his ana-lysis of ‘The enlivening of the Sciences of Religion’ written by Al-Ghazali (148/1),
- Abu Daoud commented on the same hadith in his collection with a different version from the previous one: that hadith was reported by Abdallah Bin ‘Amru of Abdoul-Malik with the same content and chain of transmission, but that hadith is not authentic, it is ‘mursal’ (the chain of guarantors is not reliable), and its reporter Muhamed Bin Hassaan Al-Koufi is not known, therefore that hadith is weak,...”
Dr. Mohamed Salim Al-Awwa, Secretary-General of the Muslim Ulemas
Assuming that hadith is authentic, we must think that Muhammad, knowing he was speaking to a professional exciser unable to give up her livelihood, was pragmatic, he settled for limiting the damage. That hadith shows that, even with excision, Muhammad could not fight against the mutilating compulsion of polytheists head-on.
One of the most important allusions condemning circumcision in the Koran is direct:
“When the Lord tested Abraham by certain words
and the latter had fulfilled them,
God said: ‘I will make you a guide for men.’
Abraham said: ‘what about my descendants?’
The Lord said: ‘My alliance does not concern the unjust.’” 2: 124
On the one hand, Muhammad has read the Book of Joshua and knows that the Hebrews escaped sexual mutilation thanks to Moses, who banned it his whole life long.
On the other hand, by speaking of the unjust, Muhammad likely alludes to the fallacious interpretation of verse 20: 5 of the Book of Exodus (Second Commandment).
Moreover, if God had wanted circumcision, he would have decreed the terrible punishment that the Bible imposes on the uncircumcised: exclusion from the people. On the contrary, the Koran affirms the unjust nature of exclusion on the grounds of a small organ more or less.
Finally, it is unaware ofthe idea of general circumcision; it states that circumcision was a “trial” required from Abraham alone. To generalize it would be unfair. The Koran rejects both sides of the diktat imposed on Abraham.
Professor Aldeeb2 points out that some exegetes have found that verse “equivocal” and, on the contrary, have interpreted it as a reminder of circumcision, as if, unlike the God of Abraham, the God of Muhammad would not have been able to clearly order circumcision if He had wanted to.
That verse 2: 124 alludes to chapter 17 of the Book of Genesis:
“Abram bowed down and God told him so: ‘Yes, I myself am dealing with you: you shall be the father of many nations… And I will give to you and your offspring... the whole land of Canaan… Here is the covenant that you shall keep, which is between me and you unto your last seed... You shall cut off the flesh of your outgrowth, and it shall be a symbol of covenant between me and you... And the uncircumcised male, who will not have cut the flesh of his outgrowth off, shall himself be cut off from his people for having broken my covenant.’”
Muhammad could not know that the God of Abraham was a pharaoh eager to submit his subjects by imprinting a mark of possession on them. However, the Koran gives no credit to the writers of the Bible. Respecting the logic of a monotheism that it bowdlerizes from all pagan tradition, it reduces the text to its essentials and, contrary to Genesis 17, affirms that being righteous is the only condition of the pact with God. For the Koran, circumcision was a trial inflicted on Abraham alone. Nowhere does it state that God would have imposed it on men, and it deems it unjust.
The allusion to sexual mutilationin verse 4: 119 deserves to be commented on:
“I will lead them astray, I will make them empty promises, I will order them to cut the ears of cattle, to alter God’s creation.”
Literally, the Koran’s position against cruelty to animals is surprisingly mo-dern. It foreruns the struggle of animal-protection societies. By forbidding the marking of cattle, he excludes a fortiori that of the human body.
Below the surface, the Koran speaks in an oriental way, using colourful and veiled images. It considers anew its interpretation of chapter 17 of the Book of Genesis (cf. verse 2: 124 here above):
– comparing man to animal, it condemns treating one’s children like “servants” (slaves) or worse like “cattle”,
– it condemns sexual mutilation by equating the expressions: “cut the ears of cattle” and “alter the creation of God”; if mutilating animals is forbidden, it can only be the same for humans,
– it condemns the “vain promises” made by the devil to Abraham: the gift of Canaan. That hint to Genesis 17 leaves no doubt that the Koran condemns sexual mutilation as diabolical.
According to Boubakeur, by using an idea close to that of circumcision, verses 2: 87-88 and 4: 155 (a new clue of its loathing for the thing, the Koran again refuses to quote the word) likely refer to Moses’ circumcision of the heart. The Koran cannot allude to the circumcision of the heart without condemning circumcision of the flesh.
Muhammad was an exceptional man. A hadith attributes the following affirmation to him:
“No one has ever seen my foreskin.”
Born without a foreskin, Muhammad affirms not to have been circumcised. Some consider that affirmation as an incentive to circumcision. Ascribing that intention to the prophet in contradiction with all we have just stated is misleading. On the contrary, we can think that Muhammad thanks the creator for having spared him circumcision and discreetly holds himself up as an example to try to save the child from a terrible torture. But his disability did not allow him to experience the pleasures of the possession of the specific organ for autosexuality. That could explain his absence of explicit condemnation of sexual mutilation.
Unlike Moses, Muhammad did not know the pleasures provided by the foreskin. Informed of the murder of his two great predecessors by supporters of circumcision, he did not impose its abolition. He preferred to treat his brothers tactfully and rely on a relatively discreet disavowal. That was unsuccessful; humans need clear guidance from their leaders. The modernity of Muhammad’s message, tinged with Christianity, was carefully silenced in countries dominated by feudal aristocracies.
Several authors of the Sunna or hadiths rose up against circumcision:
Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 780-855 reports in his collection that Uthman Ibn Abu-al-As (d. 671) was invited to a circumcision. As he did not go, he was reproached. He replied: “In the time of Prophet Muhammad, we did not practise circumcision and we were not invited to it.”
Al-Nawawi 1233- 1277 reports that Ibn-al-Mundhir (d. 931) writes that in the matter of circumcision there is no prohibition, no specific date, no Sunna to follow and that things remain in the realm of the permitted. That means that we were free to circumcise or not.
Al-Tabari 838-923 says that Caliph Umar ibn Abd Al-Azīz, (d. 720) wrote to his army general Al-Jarrah Ibn Abd-Allah (d. 730) after conquering the Kharassan region: “Whoever prays in front of you towards Mecca, exempt them from paying tribute.” Then, people hurried to convert to Islam. The general was then told that people were conver-ting in order not to pay the tribute and that he had to submit them to the trial of circumcision. The general consulted the Caliph. The latter answered: ‘God sent Muhammad to call people to Islam and not to circumcise them.’”
“The prophet said: ‘The same way an animal gives birth to a perfectly constituted baby, do you see it mutilated?’” Sahih Al-Bukhari 1359
Professor Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh writes (p. 147-48) that the Egyptian psychiatrist and author Nawal Al-Saadawi and various other Muslim authors and academics speak out against sexual mutilation. He quotes Jamal al-Banna, Hasan Al-Banna’s brother:
“The Koranic verse 95: 4: ‘Yes, we have created man in the most perfect form.’ refutes the claim that circumcision corrects an imperfection in human nature because such a claim contradicts the Koranic text. God intended men and women to be ‘in the most perfect form.’… I firmly believe that it is the right of men and women to live as God crea-ted them and that God made each organ ‘in the most perfect form’, included the sexual organs of man and woman.”
He also mentions that the retired Libyan judge Mustafa Kamal Al-Mahdawi states in his book3 that the Koran rejects circumcision, quoting verses 3: 191 and 86: 14 to argue that God cannot indulge in such trivialities. Accused of apostasy and threatened with a fatwa if he did not retract, Al-Madahwi was prosecuted before an Islamic court. Although he did not retract, the court of appeal of Benghazi dismissed the charge of apostasy (death penalty); his scrupulous reading of the Koran did not allow condemning him. Nevertheless, his book was banned.
The QuranicPath website goes in the same direction:
http://www.quranicpath.com/misconceptions/circumcision.html.
That cluster of concordant elements shows that the Koran multiplied the incitements to respect the human body and opposes feminine and masculine se-xual mutilation as contrary to the will of God. It does it in a gender-neutral way, without distinguishing excision and circumcision.
1 Le Coran. Paris: Fayard; 1972. French translation by Rector Hamza Boubakeur.
2 Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh S. Male circumcision and female circumcision. Warren center: Shangri-la publications; 2001.
3 Al-Mahdawi M. Al-Bayan bil-Qur’an, 2 volúmenes, Al-dar al-gamahiriyyah, Misratah y Dar al-afaq al-gadidah, Casablanca, 1990, vol. II, pp. 348-350.
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