person:moses

  • Rare Photos: European Refugee Camps in Syria — At The Height of World War II

    The whole world is aware that Europe is buckled under the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, with millions of people fleeing civil war and oppression in the Middle East, North Africa, and Western Asia, and landing on the continent’s shores by land and by sea. The UN estimates that more people have been displaced than at any time since the Second World War — there are close to 60 million war refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

    While there is no denying the fact that the current humanitarian crisis is the worst refugee crisis of our generation; with continuous comparison to World War II, it is imperative that we share a small yet important fact with you: at the height of World War II, the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration (MERRA) operated camps in Syria, Egypt and Palestine, where tens of thousands of people from across Europe sought refuge.

    Yes, you read it right. Refugees crossed the same passageways [which the Syrians, the Africans, and the Asians are taking to reach Europe TODAY] 70 years ago — BUT they were the Europeans (largely from Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia) trying to find solace in the Middle East.

    How The Refugees Entered The Camps:

    According to the International Social Service records, refugees from Europe had to register at one of several camps in Egypt, Palestine and Syria and obtain camp-issued identification cards, which contained their full name, gender, marital status, passport number, and their educational and work history.

    After registration, they had to undergo a refugee medical examination at makeshift hospital facilities — where they took off their clothes, their shoes and were washed until officials believed they were sufficiently disinfected. When they were declared fit enough to join the refugee camp, they were divided into living quarters for families, unaccompanied children, single men and single women.

    How They Survived:

    Refugees in MERRA camps received a half portion of Army rations each day; sometimes supplemented with foods that reflected refugees’ national customs and religious practices. ‘Rich’ refugees could buy beans, olives, oil, fruit, tea, coffee and other staples from camp canteens. On the rare occasion, during supervised visits to local shops, they could buy soap, razor blades, pencils, paper, stamps and other items. Some camps provided space for refugees to prepare meals; one camp in Aleppo reserved a room for women so they could make macaroni with flour, which they received from camp officials.

    How They Found Work & Developed Skills:

    Some, but not all, camps required refugees to work — though they were not forced to earn to make ends meet. GlobalPost reports:

    In Aleppo, refugees were encouraged, but not required, to work as cooks, cleaners and cobblers. Labor wasn’t mandatory in Nuseirat, either, but camp officials did try to create opportunities for refugees to use their skills in carpentry, painting, shoe making and wool spinning so that they could stay occupied and earn a little income from other refugees who could afford their services. At Moses Wells, all able-bodied, physically fit refugees worked as shopkeepers, cleaners, seamstresses, apprentices, masons, carpenters or plumbers, while “exceptionally qualified persons” served as school masters or labor foremen. Women performed additional domestic work like sewing, laundry, and preparing food on top of any other work they had.

    How They Acquired Knowledge:

    Margaret G. Arnstein, a prominent nurse practitioner notes that students in a few camps at El Shatt and Moses Wells were taught practical nursing, anatomy, physiology, first aid, obstetrics, pediatrics, as well as the military rules and regulations that governed wartime refugee camps.

    How They Entertained Themselves:

    In their free time, the men played handball, football and socialized over cigarettes, beer and wine in camp canteens. In their free time, children played with swings, slides and seesaws.

    How They Prepared For A Brighter Future:

    Education was a crucial part of camp routines. GlobalPost writes:

    Classrooms in Middle Eastern refugee camps had too few teachers and too many students, inadequate supplies and suffered from overcrowding. Yet not all the camps were so hard pressed. In Nuseirat, for example, a refugee who was an artist completed many paintings and posted them all over the walls of a kindergarten inside the camp, making the classrooms “bright and cheerful.” Well-to-do people in the area donated toys, games, and dolls to the kindergarten, causing a camp official to remark that it “compared favorably with many in the United States.”

    https://anonhq.com/rare-photos-european-refugee-camps-syria-height-world-war-ii

    #quand_eux_c'était_nous #réfugiés_européens #histoire #syrie #camps_de_réfugiés #WWII #seconde_guerre_mondiale #photographie #deuxième_guerre_moniale
    ping @albertocampiphoto @philippe_de_jonckheere

  • La musique de 2018
    http://www.radiopanik.org/emissions/les-promesses-de-l-aube/la-musique-de-2018

    ft. Ben LaMar gay, Cat Power, Céline Gillain, Field Music, Gruff Rhys, Jeunesse sombre et dorée, Khalab, Lucio Battisti, Mormor, Moses Boyd, Neko Case, Ravyn Lenae, Young Fathers

    + special xmas : Pocket Gods : Exit brexit for Xmas + Shonen Knife : Space Christmas

    http://www.radiopanik.org/media/sounds/les-promesses-de-l-aube/la-musique-de-2018_05885__1.mp3

  • How the Lebanese Became White? | Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies | NC State University
    https://lebanesestudies.news.chass.ncsu.edu/2014/11/20/how-the-lebanese-became-white

    2014, via @humanprovince sur twitter,

    In the charged environment of racial politics of the South, Alabama’s congressman John L. Burnett argued in 1907 that the Lebanese “belong to a distinct race other than the White race.” In 1914 North Carolina Senator, F. M. Simmons went further proclaiming: “These [Lebanese] immigrants are nothing more than the degenerate progeny…the spawn of the Phoenician curse.”

    [...]

    ... the larger Lebanese-American community in the United States did not formulate a coherent and coordinated response until the naturalization case of George Dow, a “Syrian” immigrant living in South Carolina. George Dow, who was born in Batroun (north Lebanon) in 1862, immigrated to the United States in 1889 through Philadelphia and eventually settled in Summerton, South Carolina where he ran a dry-goods store. In 1913 he filed for citizenship which was denied by the court because he was not a “free white person” as stipulated in the 1790 US naturalization law.

    For the “Syrian” community this case was crucial because it could mean the end of their ability to become US citizens, and thus maintain their residence and livelihoods in “Amirka.” Moreover, it was a matter of equality in rights. The community’s struggle with the fluid concept of “free white person” began before George Dow, with Costa Najjour who was denied naturalization in 1909 by an Atlanta lower court because he was too “dark.” In 1913 Faris Shahid’s application was also denied by a South Carolina court, because “he was somewhat darker than is the usual mulatto of one-half mixed blood between and the white and the negro races.” In rendering his decision in the Dow case, Judge Henry Smith argued that although Dow may be a “free white person,” the legislators from 1790 meant white Europeans when they wrote “free white person.”

    The “Syrian” community decided to challenge this exclusionary interpretation. Setting aside their differences, all Arab- American newspapers dedicated at least one whole page to the coverage of this case and its successful appeal to the Fourth Circuit court. Al-Huda led the charge with one headline “To Battle, O Syrians.” Proclaiming that Judge Smith’s decision was a “humiliation” of “Syrians,” the community poured money into the legal defense of George Dow. Najib al-Sarghani, who helped establish the Syrian Society for National Defense in 1914 in Charleston, South Carolina, wrote in al-Huda, “we have found ourselves at the center of an attack on the Syrian honor,” and such ruling would render the Syrian “no better than blacks and Mongolians . Rather blacks will have rights that the Syrian does not have.” The community premised its right to naturalization on a series of arguments that would “prove” that “free white person” meant all Caucasians, thus establishing precedent in the American legal system and shaping the meaning of “whiteness” in America. Joseph Ferris summarized these arguments a decade later in The Syrian World magazine as follows: the term “white” referred to all Caucasians; George Dow was Semite and therefore Caucasian; since European Jews (who were Semites) were deemed worthy of naturalization, therefore “Syrians” should be given that right as well; and finally, as Christians, “Syrians” must have been included in the statute of 1790. The success of these arguments at the Court of Appeals level secured the legal demarcation of “Syrians” as “white.”

    What makes this particular story more remarkable is that similar ones were unfolding around the same time in South Africa and Australia, both of which had racially-based definitions of citizenship and concomitant rights. For example, in 1913 Moses Gandur challenged the classification of “Syrians” as “Colored Asiatics” before the Supreme Court of South Africa and won by arguing that although “Syrians” resided in Asia they still were white or Caucasian, and thus not subject to the exclusionary clauses of the 1885 Law. In all of these cases, the arguments were also quite similar to the one summarized by Joseph Ferris above.

    These decisions meant that the “Syrians” (and by extension today all Arabs) are considered white in the US. This entry into mainstream society–where whiteness bestowed political and economic power–meant different things for different members of the Lebanese community. Some were satisfied to leave the racial system of the South unchallenged as long as they were considered white.

    For others, the experience of fighting racial discrimination convinced them that the system is inherently unjust and must be changed. Thus, many NC Lebanese (like Ralph Johns who encouraged his black clients at his clothier store on East Merchant Street to start the sit-ins in Greensboro) participated in the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s to end the era of the #Jim_Crow South.

    #blanchité#Libanais #Arabes #Etats-Unis #racisme

  • BBC - Future - The hidden healing power of sugar
    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180328-how-sugar-could-help-heal-wounds

    Doctors are finding one way that sugar can benefit your health: it may help heal wounds resistant to antibiotics.

    By Clara Wiggins

    30 March 2018

    As a child growing up in poverty in the rural Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, Moses Murandu was used to having salt literally rubbed in his wounds when he fell and cut himself. On lucky days, though, his father had enough money to buy something which stung the boy much less than salt: sugar.

    #sucre #santé #médicaments #et je soupçonne un peu de lobbying derrièr ce papier donc #the_corporation

  • Friday 15 February 2008 12.08 GMT

    BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade

    Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

    Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

    Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

    He was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

    The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.

    Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have “rolled over” after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was “just as if a gun had been held to the head” of the government.

    The SFO investigation began in 2004, when Robert Wardle, its director, studied evidence unearthed by the Guardian. This revealed that massive secret payments were going from BAE to Saudi Arabian princes, to promote arms deals.

  • How a small group of Israelis made the Western Wall Jewish again
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.792857

    On Saturday, June 10, 1967, the fifth day of the Six-Day War, Yosef Schwartz, a contractor, entered the bomb shelter in the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood in western Jerusalem and found his daughter and grandchildren. “It was quite normal to see us and bring bread and milk,” says his daughter Zehava Fuchs. “But this time he was very tense, he hugged me and the children and he looked different than usual.”

    Schwartz, who was wearing the uniform of the old Haganah police force, left without saying where he was going. “I went up to the apartment to call my mother, she told me he didn’t want to say where he wast going,” said Fuchs.

    “The next day he came back crying. My brother was a pilot then and I was very worried something had happened, but then he told me that he had been in the Old City and touched the Kotel. He told how at night they demolished all the Mughrabi neighborhood. He was completely secular, but he said that when they worked there was a mystical feeling, they felt they were on a mission,” she added.

    Schwartz was one of 15 older contractors from the Jeruslaem contractors association who were called on by then Mayor Teddy Kollek that night to come to the Western Wall, which had just been captured. The task was to demolish the houses in the Mughrabi (Moroccan) Quarter that was built right next to the Kotel and create the Western Wall Plaza.

    Sasson Levy, one of the two contractors who is still alive, remembers the excitement very well: “I was sky-high, it was a pleasure.”

    Kollek enlisted the contractors for the work, but to this day it is still not clear who made the decision about the demolition. It is clear Kollek was involved, as well as Shlomo Lahat, who was the new military governor of East Jerusalem (and later mayor of Tel Aviv), and the head of the IDF’s Central Command, Maj. Gen. Uzi Narkiss. It is clear they intentionally made the decision without asking for – or receiving permission. No written documents remain concerning the decision, except for a hand-drawn map on a piece of paper that marked the boundaries of the area to be demolished.

    The contractors association was the most readily available source of manpower, but that was not the only reason that Kollek turned to them. The fear of an international protest made it necessary to use an unofficial civilian body to take on the job. The demolition work was given to the Jerusalem contractors and builders organization to distance any involvement of official bodies in the demolition as much as possible, wrote Uzi Benziman in Haaretz Magazine last week (in Hebrew).

    Kollek explained the urgency of clearing the plaza stemmed from the Shavuot holiday in a few days, when tens of thousands of Israelis were expected to flock to the Kotel. Leaving the old buildings standing could be dangerous, said Kollek. But the contractors, who were not called up to the reserves because of their age, saw it as much more than just another engineering project: That night remained engraved in their memories as a historic moment. So much so that after the war they established the “Order of the Kotel,” a sort of imitation of an order of knights for those who “purified the Kotel plaza for the people of Israel,” as they wrote about themselves.

    A coincidence led researchers from Yad Ben Zvi, the Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem named after former President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, to study the Order of the Kotel story. Next week an exhibition will go on display at the Institute about the Order and the creation of the Western Wall Plaza.

    The work began about 11 P.M. The first job was to demolish a toilet that was built up against the Western Wall. A day earlier, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion visited the Kotel and reprimanded Yaakov Yannai, the head of the National Parks Authority, about the bathroom. “You come to place like this and you see a stench in the wall, we were surprised by it,” Levy remembers. “It made us angry in all the joy. At first we worked with hoes, pickaxes, cultivators and hammers. After that Zalman [Broshi, one of the largest builders in Jerusalem] brought in the tractor.”

    Two bulldozers worked to demolish the houses. They ran into difficulties when the rooms underground collapsed suddenly under the bulldozers, but the collapse also provided them with space to bury the rubble and flatten the ground. 135 houses were demolished, and in the end the demolition exceeded the area drawn on the map.

    Levy does not remember the residents of the houses or whether anyone was evacuated from them. Fuchs says that when she asked her father about them, “he said they went with a megaphone and asked the people to gather, and they went out through the Zion Gate, because through this gat they took out the refugees of the Jewish Quarter [in 1948].”

    Bruria Shiloni, the daughter of Yosef Zaban, and who was there that night, does not remember the residents. “I didn’t have the impression that people lived there, that there was life,” says Shiloni. “Later I heard that they smuggled them out of there. The feeling was that they were demolishing empty and piled up huts, I didn’t see movement of people.”

    Benziman tells how in one case the residents refused to leave the house and left only after the bulldozer rammed the wall. In one house, an elderly woman named Haja Ali Taba’aki was found dead in her bed. In one of the pictures a bulldozer can be seen demolishing a house with furniture, curtains and a vase with flowers inside.

    Zaban was the father of Yair Tsaban, who became a member of Knesset for the left-wing Mapam party. Shiloni went to the Kotel with her father and remembers the trip and Kollek standing on a crate or step, speaking to those present. During the demolition she was not there, after two officers accompanied her to find her husband, a platoon commander who had been wounded in the fighting.

    The Order of the Western Wall was founded that same night and the members continued to meet regularly until the 1990s, when most of them passed away. In 1967 they enlisted in another task from Kollek and built the structure near the windmill in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood of the capital that housed the original carriage used by Moses Montefiore in his travels. In 1983 they published album with almost prophetic predictions by Itamar Ben-Avi, a journalist and son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, about the creation of the Kotel Plaza. Ben-Avi died in 1943. In 1987 the members of the Oder attended a ceremony in their honor in the Knesset, and received the “Defender of the Kotel” decoration.

    The founder of the order was Baruch Barkai, who became the secretary of the group and a rather unusual figure. Barkai was born in Latvia, studied law, was a journalist, art collector and a member of the Lehi pre-state underground, also known as the Stern Gang. He was even arrested on suspicions of being involved in the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff. Barkai later wrote a number of books, two of which are etiquette guides, and founded the most polite Knesset member competition.

    “It was a difficult day for him,” says Barkai’s son Itamar, who was named after Ben-Avi, who his father admired. The 1983 album says the Order was founded on Sunday, the third day of the Hebrew month of Sivan, June 11, 1967 at 3 A.M. in the Kotel Plaza, with the 15 members who had answered the call of the engineering officer, Capt. Eitan Ben Moshe, to purify the Kotel Plaza. “In doing so they fulfilled the vision of Itamar Ben-Avi: ‘The Kotel with space on the right and space on the left too, the Kotel with a broad courtyard in front of it.”

    The Yad Ben- Zvi researchers discovered the story by accident, through a person who participated in the demolition, but not a member of the Order.

    Ze’ev Ben Gal was born to a Samaritan family, fled his parent’s home, enlisted in the Palmah and lived on Kibbuts Rosh Hanikra. During the Six-Day War he served as a bulldozer driver in the reserves and was called to the Mughrabi neighborhood. During his work he noticed a large iron lock, it seems the lock on the gate to the neighborhood, and kept it. After he died last year, the lock made its way to the kibbutz archive, where they decided to give it, and the story behind it, to Yad Ben-Zvi.

    Fuchs was photographed for the movie that was part of the “50 Faces, 50 years” project created by the Tower of David Museum in the Old City. She said about her father, Schwartz, that he was so proud of every house he built, and suddenly he was proud of demolishing houses, “but he felt that he was carrying out a great mission for the Jewish people.”

    Anyone who knew the Kotel before the demolition was amazed by the plaza that was born overnight. “I read in the newspaper that they demolished the houses and straightened the plaza in front of the Kotel, but I didn’t imagine they made a stadium,” an “elderly Yemenite” Jew was quoted in the Davar newspaper. The quote appears in an article that appeared recently by Shmuel Bahat in the journal Et-mol, published by Yad Ben Zvi. Kollek too is quoted justifying the demolitions: “It ws the greatest thing we could do and it is good we did it immediately.”

  • Refugee demo on 19.09.15 in karlsruhe | r4r
    https://refugees4refugees.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/refugee-protest-against-racist-discrimination-in-german

    https://refugees4refugees.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/flyer-fr.pdf

    STOP DEPORTATION ET DISCRIMINATION DES REFUGIES !
    Montre ta solidarité et participe à la manifestation qu‘organise la communauté des réfugiés de Karlsruhe le Samedi 19 Septembre 2015 à partir de 12 h à Kronenplatz Karlsruhe.

    La vie des réfugiés se définit par des actes racistes et discriminatoires suivants :

    – Constante déportation la nuit sans avertissement
    – Mauvais état des logements de transit
    – Peu ou pas du tout de cours d‘Allemand
    – Assistance sanitaire presque rare
    – Surveillance permanente des mouvements des réfugiés
    – Criminalisation
    – Difficile accès au travail décent
    – Répressions et violences policières

    Personne ne fuit son pays sans causes.

    Voici nos demandes :
    – Décentraliser les logements pour un minimum de confort
    – Abolir la limitation de la libre circulation des réfugiés en Allemagne
    – Arrêter la vidéo-surveillance et la criminalisation des réfugiés
    – Accès à l‘éducation pour tout réfugiés sans exception
    – Vrai accès au marché de l‘emploi
    – Assistance médicale gratuite et obligatoire pour tout réfugié

    Combattre FRONTEX Europe

    – Même droits pour tout le monde
    – Arrêter les déportations

    Nous vous invitons chaleureusement à montrer votre solidarité en vous joignant à la manifestation.
    La solidarité est la clé qui ouvre et brise la chaîne de déportation et la discrimination des réfugiés en Allemagne

    ENSEMBLE NOUS POUVONS LE FAIRE !

    facebook.Karlsruhe refugees community
    V.i.S.d.P. : Moses Oyinde, Kutschenweg, Rheinstetien

    STOP DEPORTATION ET DISCRIMINATION DES REFUGIES !

    Nous demandons la fermeture des camps conteneurs pour des logements dignes et l‘abolition pure et simple pour tout réfugiés du Residentpflicht (la loi qui limite la libre circulation au sein de l‘Allemagne de certains réfugiés), libre accès à l‘éducation pour tout réfugié et un accès digne au marché de l‘emploi . Aide médicale obligatoire. Arrêter d‘envoyer des réfugiés au milieu de nulle part où il y a ni supermarché, école et hôpital. Arrêter de mettre des caméras partout où vivent les réfugiés parce que nous ne sommes pas des criminels ou prisonniers . Nous sommes contre la brutalité policière envers les réfugiés parce que nous sommes des êtres humains comme tout autre. Combattre, FRONTEX car les droits de l‘homme sont systématiquement violés et la discrimination perpétrée par les instruments gouvernementaux et l‘attitude cruelle depuis 1993 envers des dizaines de milliers de personnes violentées et déportées vers leurs pays d‘origine ou d‘autres. FRONTEX établit depuis 2005 est responsable de la mort de plus de 20.000 personnes dans la Mer Méditerranée. Certains parmi le peu qui arrivent à mettre le pied en Europe meurent par suicide ou par dépression par peur d‘être
    déportés et des centaines sont tués par la torture policière ou fasciste. Comme OURY JALLO et autres nous demandons d‘arrêter la discrimination, l‘isolation des camps, la fermeture des camps conteneurs et d‘arrêter des déportations.

    Avec Solidarité nous pouvons le faire ; la clé de la solidarité venant du cœur, Nul n‘est illégal

    #réfugiés #allemagne #The_VOICE_Refugee_Forum
    http://thevoiceforum.org/node/3986

  • La croissance de l’économie n’arrive pas à créer des emplois
    http://ipsinternational.org/fr/_note.asp?idnews=7806

    Des données et statistiques sur l’emploi au #Ghana sont rares.

    En 2012, le ministre de l’Emploi et de la Protection sociale d’alors, Moses Asaga, avait admis que le gouvernement n’avait pas de données actualisées ou fiables sur le marché du travail.

    Les informations disponibles auprès de l’Institut de la recherche statistique, sociale, et économique (ISSER) à l’Université du Ghana à Legon estiment qu’environ 250.000 jeunes entrent sur le marché du travail chaque année, dont deux pour cent, soit environ 5.000, trouvent du travail dans le secteur formel.

    Selon une recherche en cours de réalisation par l’ISSER, 23 pour cent des jeunes âgés de 15 à 24 ans et 28,8 pour cent des diplômés âgés de 25 à 35 ans attendent deux ans ou plus avant d’être employés.

    Dr William Baah-Boateng, l’un des chercheurs de l’étude d’ISSER, affirme qu’au cours des 20 dernières années, la croissance du Ghana a été de 5,1 pour cent en moyenne, et que cela ne s’est pas traduit par une hausse des emplois.

    Selon la Banque africaine de développement, ce pays d’Afrique de l’ouest a enregistré une croissance de 7,1 pour cent en 2012, grâce aux recettes provenant de la production de pétrole, du secteur des services et de l’exportation de l’or et de cacao. C’était une baisse par rapport aux 14,4 pour cent de croissance enregistrée en 2011, qui a été attribuée au démarrage de la production de pétrole dans le pays.

    Un autre rapport de l’Organisation internationale du travail indique que le secteur public représente six pour cent des emplois au Ghana, tandis que le secteur privé informel renferme 86 pour cent.

  • Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard—A Story About #Cape_Town’s Tanzanian #stowaways—Summer 2012
    http://africasacountry.com/under-nelson-mandela-boulevard-a-story-about-cape-towns-tanzanian-s

    Towards the end of 2012 Moses was arrested and charged under the Immigration Act for being in the country illegally. He called to say he was being held in Pollsmoor Prison, then weeks went by in which I heard nothing. Moses was the last of my good contacts in the beach boy community. In the […]

    #PHOTOGRAPHY #David_Southwood #Sean_Christie #South_Africa #Tanzania

  • Une décision de tribunal allemand qui définit la circumcision mâle comme étant une atteinte au droit fondémental à l’intégrité corporelle sanctionnée par la loi vient de provoquer des appels pour la création de lois autorisant explicitement la circumcision si elle est exécutée pour des raisons religieuses.
    Les auteurs de ces initiatives négligent le fait qu’in n’y a pas d’unanimité sur la question au sein des groupes religieuses même. Les parlementaires et membres du gouvernement allemand prennent donc position pour certaines personnes au sein des groupement religieux et contre d’autres qui ne partagent pas les positions des premiers.

    Au lieu de donner mon opinion sur le sujet, je vous propose quelques liens vers des articles scientifiques et prises de position juves et muselmanes.

    Foreskin Sexual Function/Circumcision Sexual Dysfunction http://www.cirp.org/library/sex_function
    L’introduction précédant la liste explique :

    The foreskin protects the glans penis from friction and from dryness. The glans penis is covered with mucosa, not skin, so the wetness is essential for optimum health.

    Circumcision has long been associated with an increased incidence of impotence.

    The most recent study finds that the intact penis is about four times more sensitive than the circumcised penis.


    Beschneidung Jesu, Brabanter Flügelretabel, um 1480

    Le dogme religieux n’est pas partagé part tous les juifs, ni par tous les muselmans :

    Jews against Circumcision http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.com

    We are a group of educated and enlightened Jews who realize that the barbaric, primitive, torturous, and mutilating practice of circumcision has no place in modern Judaism.

    Rabbi Moses Maimonides himself acknowledged that circumcision is done to desensitize the penis and curb masturbation.

    Jews are some of the smartest people in the world. We are 1/3rd of 1% of the population, yet we hold 33% of Nobel prizes. We are smart enough to understand that mutilating a little boys’ penis is not an acceptable practice in modern times.

    QuranicPath.com http://www.quranicpath.com/misconceptions/circumcision.html

    In numerous Verses of the Qur’an, Allah tells us that He has created everything, including human beings, in the most perfect form. In the following verse, Allah explicitly states this with regards to the human creation: “We have indeed created man in the ’best of moulds’.” (Qur’an 95:4) This means when a baby leaves the mother’s womb, he or she is in the most perfect of shape down to the finest detail. Nothing needs alteration.


    ...
    All these verses tell us that Allah creates human beings, male and female, perfectly in the mother’s womb. The design of the foreskin on the male is an intentional act of creation. Allah did not make a ’mistake’ in designing the foreskin of the male. He does not need mankind to take a knife and start cutting off a part of the penis on males, as if though it is a ’corrective procedure’ to a design flaw.

    L’article sur quranicpath.com continue en expliquant comment la circumcision modifie le tissu nerveux et en conséquence l’acte sexuel.

    Après la lecture des articles cités l’opposition à la circumcision masculine et féminine me semble dépasser le cadre d’une question de principe.