It’s not often we have a kind word for the State Department. But we find ourselves cheering a new initiative regarding a key threat to religious liberty in Europe.
Ira Forman, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, is now challenging the growing clamor in Europe to ban circumcision, a core ritual for both Jews and Muslims.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that Forman has been warning European governments that such a ban — along with mounting attacks on kosher slaughter — endangers the survival of their Jewish communities. That’s particularly true in northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, where circumcision is under siege from a bizarre alliance of the anti-religious left and far-rightists opposed to Muslim immigration.
To date, no country has banned circumcision (unlike kosher slaughter, which has been outlawed in some countries). But there have been local bans, hostile court rulings and imposed restrictions.
Last year, for example, the Council of Europe — the continent’s largest human-rights group — passed a resolution calling circumcision a “violation of the physical integrity of children” and likened it to female genital mutilation and corporal punishment. The national ombudsmen of six Nordic counties have similarly labeled the rite a violation of medical ethics and suggested the United Nations take up the issue.
That State has undertaken this campaign is encouraging. If only it could persuade the administration to be as protective of religious practices at home as it is abroad.