Q. Recently, a certain trend in Western society has taken on activist proportions, where there are even organizations (some of which may actually receive public funding) that are promoting it as an “important” cause, namely: the push to denounce male circumcision, and to actually urge men to reverse their circumcisions. One of the claims they make to defend their rationale is that a circumcised male organ is no less susceptible to sexual diseases than one that is not circumcised?
A. I received the following answer on the aove question from a Muslim with a background in medical studies, for which I thank him and ask Allah to reward him:
“The assertion that circumcision does not play a role in the control of std’s [sexually transmitted diseases] is quite false. My field of study in my MSc. was microbial pathogenesis, and I had the opportunity to associate with two world experts on this issue, who based their findings on their studies in Kenya. What they found was that circumcision was a factor in controlling the spead of AIDS and other non-std transferred microbes that are nevertheless quite harmful. In fact, a great part of my research was based on a previously-demonstrated property that some std’s do bind quite nicely to foreskin cells, and the foreskin is actually a portal of entry for some of these diseases, namely chancroid and AIDS.
“This may not be of total relevance to those who were raised in a safe Muslim household, but it is quite relevant for people who came back to Islam in their later lives, or from those who came back to Islam from other faiths, having lived a completely different lifestyle.”
