"Circumcision began as a tribal custom which later became associated with religion. Mutilation of the genitals was quite common across North Africa and the Middle East, it is not a practice that began with Joshua or Abraham. Of course the Jews (outside of Ethiopia) were relatively fortunate, they only mutilated the genitals of their males. The infinitely more barbarous practices of female genital mutilation were also carried out by other tribes and still continue to this day, often under the quite specious argument that it is sanctioned or even required by Islam. This is not true, it exists across north eastern Africa including in Christian Kenya and Ethiopia. I hardly need mention that surgical removal of the clitoris is hardly comparable to male circumcision, apart from the fact that both are culturally sanctioned genital mutilations with no justification."

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