http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18833145

I'd have been quite pissed off in later life, I know that much

I ask out of ignorance, why exactly is it carried out? I mean I'm aware of the supposed hygiene benefit...

Religion. Next question.

In RE, I recall it being a marker of a covenant between man and God or something.

I also recall an article about reduced transmission of HIV in those who were circumcised.

Sometimes religion, sometimes habit, sometimes aesthetics.

That all strikes me as 'decisions to be made later'

Sometimes medical necessity. My nephew's was too small and didn't slide back properly leading to lots of pain and infection. My sister tried to keep it clean, tried the stretching exercises she was given by the doctor, but in the end it was affecting his ability to potty train so they had it removed and my little neffy-poo is now a happy boy.

And sometimes medical emergency.

Those reasons are not in question though.

Taking a baby and ripping part of his skin off, causing severe pain. That's brutality, That's assault, That's child abuse.

Oh sorry, a bit of his penis you say? God said do it? Oh well then, carry on, in fact, do me next, it sounds like such a rational and beautiful act now you describe it like that.

No sarcasm involved there then

I was circumcised voluntarily as an adult (Phimosis) and I am glad I had it done. However, I am glad that I was able to make that decision myself, rather than have it made for me.

I am aware of the religious requirements (especially Judaism), but what if the child doesn't want to be a Jew? To me that's a bad case of forcing your religious beliefs upon another person, and sadly in this case that involves an irreversible physical change to the child's body.

Same as LU and I had a friend who put it off for years, because he was afraid. It transformed his life after I talked to him about it and reassured him that he would still be a man afterwards.

I think, like a lot of things, the original reason for why Jews and Muslims do certain things had really good reasons originally, but were turned into religious belief, to make them easier to administer, when you were living in a hot region with little or no sanitation and no refrigerators. In a modern world, they are a relic of religious belief and are carried out by rote, whether they are necessary or not.

For things like the practices in food production, they may not make any real problems in modern society, apart from the availability of the correct food being more limited in non-Jewish or Muslim regions. Although the Halal slaughter is very cruel and a slaughter house has to get a special certificate from the government here in order to perform Halal slaughter and only a trained Halal-slaughterer can perform the slaughter itself.

For the circumcision and even worse the mutilation of female genitalia, I don't think there is any excuse for it in modern society as a preventative surgery for every child - especially without anesthetic. On the other hand there is the need to show tolerance to other customs - we complain about Muslim countries ignoring the rights of non-Muslims and harassing them, we would be hypocrites if we do exactly the same to non-Christian religions. It is a very fine balance to tread.

I think the circumcision of a child that can't decide for itself should be illegal, unless it is a medical necessity and the child should be able to decide, when it is old enough, whether it wants to have the surgery performed for cosmetic-religious grounds. But I don't think you will be able to convince the religious leaders that due to modern science, that circumcision and female circumcision aren't still a necessity for every child.

That's the nature of things though. All parents "force" their views on their children (at least at a youngish age). Not just religious views, but their opinions on and attitudes towards everything. They do that by just being themselves and the children see that day in day out. Intentional or not, it happens.

Yes but the views we force on our children are the right views...

Views and attitudes don't represent an irreversible physical change to the child's body.

Speaking as the owner of a prepuce, I have to say I haven't noticed it doing all that much, and I am unconvinced that having it removed as a baby would have made any difference. It's not like the ritual involves having it chewed off by rats, or being flayed about the privates with a weed whacker. So one open question here is to what extent does it constitute a harmful act?
Sorry, but just changing the shape of the body isn't a good enough point; it is either a harmful change or a harmless one, and that is significant.

I think Levick was trying to say that we are cultural animals, we learn our culture, and our parents are the first people to start instilling us with this essential training for life. That's a duty that all parents have. When you see the rude offspring of chavs blatantly misbehaving in front of their equally unpleasant parents, do you congratulate those morally-absent mothers for rearing such free thinking youngsters? Probably not, you would likely prefer it if the parents instilled discipline in the fruit of their diseased loins. This is because you view it as a duty of parenthood to make choices on behalf of our children which we perceive to be in their interests.

It is no small matter for outsiders to condemn or actively limit those choices. You have to be able to show that the act of circumcision does real harm. And if you are interfering with religious rites, you must show that this doesn't cause them harm through cultural exclusion.

And you have to try and do all that objectively. Which I can tell you up front is going to be impossible, because this thread was full of subjective judgments already, and I've just rigged it to be worse.