Circumcision benefits and discussions

So, look, circumcision is basically an Islamic marker that sets a Muslim apart from everyone else. As for when you actually do it? There isn't any hard evidence dictating a specific timeline. Basically, it’s perfectly fine to circumcise a boy whenever, though you shouldn't drag your feet too much. There aren't any super strict rules about the timing, even if this minor little procedure is obviously way easier on a tiny baby than some older kid. If you absolutely have to, you can push it back for practical reasons, but it really needs to happen before boys start their regular prayers to ensure they maintain bodily cleanliness.
Islamic circumcision isn't some symbol of God's covenant with man like it is in Jewish tradition. It was first practiced by the prophet Abraham A., the spiritual forefather of Muslims. It's a key part of 'tahareta'—that concept of ritual purity that Islam emphasizes so heavily.
Circumcision (from the Latin *circumcisio*) is most commonly known as the medical procedure used to remove the foreskin from the penis.
It’s a thing all over the world. In most cases, people do it for religious reasons (like Muslims and Jews), whereas American doctors tend to push for it based on medical grounds.
CIRCUMCISION: WHY AND WHEN????

Based on current theories, circumcision likely dates all the way back to the very first human cultures.

Jesus Christ was born and circumcised as a Jew. After His death, the apostles spread Christianity, and in 43 AD, Paul stated in Jerusalem that circumcision wasn't a requirement for Christian converts.
------New research shows that circumcised men have a lower risk of urinary tract infections, and according to a study by the National Cancer Institute conducted among African truck drivers (seriously?!), circumcision can protect men from STDs, including HIV. The report claims that uncircumcised men face a four times higher risk of contracting HIV, while the likelihood of getting Lymphogranuloma venereum (genital ulcers) is up to two and a half times higher. It’s not entirely clear how having a foreskin affects HIV risk; the theory is that the virus might survive and multiply longer in an uncircumcised environment. Poor hygiene also increases this

Poor hygiene just makes the whole thing worse.
----The UN has thrown its weight behind male circumcision as a way to slow down the spread of HIV. Various UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS, are backing recent studies showing that removing the foreskin can slash the risk of contracting the virus during sex with infected women by half. Following these UN guidelines, the goal is to make circumcision much more accessible to men living in parts of Africa. Both the WHO and UNAIDS claim that if we push this forward, we could prevent 5.7 million men from getting infected over the next two decades, potentially saving three million lives. "These recommendations represent a massive leap forward in HIV prevention," stated Kevin de Cock, the director of the AIDS WHO program. Out of the 40 million people worldwide living with HIV, about 25 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus spreads most aggressively through heterosexual contact. Globally, only about 30 percent of men are circumcised.
Among Jews and Muslims

In those communities, the procedure is done for religious reasons, while in other parts of the world, it's mostly about hygiene. But research shows that uncircumcised men face a significantly higher risk of catching AIDS from female partners.

According to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO), being circumcised reduces the risk of a woman passing AIDS to a man by roughly 60 percent.

However, globally, only 30 percent of the male population is circumcised, mainly in places where it's driven by religious tradition or sanitary concerns.

Robert Bailey, an epidemiology professor at the University of Illinois, points out that studies in the hardest-hit regions of Africa show that uncircumcised men are 2.5 times more likely to contract the disease through sexual contact with women compared to those who are circumcised.

Circumcision significantly lowers a man's vulnerability to HIV because the foreskin—which gets removed during the procedure—is particularly susceptible to the virus.

(Associated Press)

Circumcision doesn't kill your sensation
It turns out uncircumcised guys don't actually have more intense sexual sensation than circumcised ones, according to a new study from researchers in Canada that flies right in the face of what most people believe.

Researchers at McGill University found that circumcised men were just as sensitive to touch and pain at various levels of arousal as those who still have their foreskin. "This study suggests that the assumptions regarding differences in penile sensitivity between circumcised and uncircumcised men might be totally unfounded," noted the lead author, Kimberley Payne. This research, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, looked at forty men, half of whom were circumcised. Using sensory equipment, they monitored the men at
two points—on the penis and the forearm—while they watched erotic films, using thermal imaging to track sexual arousal. People have been arguing about how circumcision affects sensitivity for ages, and the authors are hoping these findings kickstart more serious research into the matter. In Canada, the practice of removing the foreskin has been dropping every year; back in 2005, only 9.2 percent of men were circumcised. http://index.com/bin/article.php?article_id=22129
The World Health Organization (WHO) views the issue of circumcision as incredibly significant, not just for a man's sex life, but also in the fight against spreading AIDS

_________________Given the growing mountain of medical evidence pointing toward the benefits of circumcising male infants, the American Academy of Pediatrics formulated and adopted a new stance on this in May 1996 (2). That document essentially urges doctors to give parents a full rundown of the health advantages of infant circumcision. The trend toward leaving newborns uncircumcised really started picking up about 20 years ago.

---Dr. Edgar Schoen, head of the working group on circumcision at the American Academy of Pediatrics, stated that the perks of routine newborn circumcision as a preventive health measure far outweigh the risks of the procedure itself.

These benefits include: a lower risk of phimosis (narrowing of the foreskin) (36), less balanitis (inflammation of the glans) (17), fewer urinary tract infections, fewer issues with erections during puberty, a reduction in sexually transmitted diseases, and even prevention of penile cancer. Urinary tract infections in infants

---According to a Wiswell study covering 400,000 newborns between 1975 and 1984, it was proven that uncircumcised babies were 11 times more likely to suffer from UTIs (58). During that timeframe, the percentage of circumcised children dropped from 84% to 74%, a decline directly linked to a noticeable spike in urinary tract infections (61). UTIs were simply much rarer in circumcised kids. Studies conducted in 1982 showed that 95% of all infant urinary tract complications occurred in uncircumcised children (60). These and other studies highlight why circumcision is done: to reduce the incidence of urinary tract diseases.
Penile cancer in the USA occurs in about 1 in 100,000 men (roughly 750-1,000 cases annually), with a mortality rate sitting between 25-33% (27, 31). Penile cancer accounts for 1% of all cancers among Americans. It’s important to note here that a huge percentage of men in the USA are circumcised.
-------Cervical cancer in women whose partners are uncircumcised

Plenty of studies point to an increased rate of cervical cancer in women who have had one or more sexual partners who were not circumcised. One study involving 5,000 cervical cancer cases and 300 penile cancer cases, conducted in the Indian city of Madras between 1982 and 1990, showed that cervical cancer was extremely rare among Muslim women compared to Christian and Hindu women, and not a single Muslim man was among those with penile cancer (22). Another study of 1,107 Indian women suffering from cervical cancer, carried out in 1993, found that sex with uncircumcised men—or men who were only circumcised after their first year of life—was linked to a fourfold increase in the risk of cervical cancer, even after controlling for other factors like HIV.

In parts of Africa, depending on which country you're looking at, up to 10% of the population is living with HIV. Take Nairobi, for example—one study involving 340 men being treated for STIs found that the odds of being HIV-positive were three times higher if they weren't circumcised or if they had genital sores (50). Later on, an investigation covering 409 different ethnic groups across 37 countries showed a clear link between a lack of circumcision and high AIDS rates (7). Writing in the "International Journal of Epidemiology," Dr. Moses points out that a massive study of 700 tribes across 140 locations in 41 African nations showed a significantly lower occurrence of HIV in places where male circumcision is standard practice (33, 34). Even among truck drivers—who naturally have more frequent contact with sex workers—the infection rates for HIV were noticeably higher in uncircumcised men. There was also this interesting finding from West Africa: men who were only partially circumcised, leaving some foreskin behind, actually caught HIV-2 more often than those who had the entire foreskin removed (40). Because of all this data, scientists Moses and Caldwell actually proposed using circumcision as a major strategy to help reduce the spread of AIDS (9, 19, 23, 26, 32-34).

The logic here is pretty straightforward: uncircumcised men face a higher risk of HIV because the area under the foreskin acts like a perfect little petri dish, trapping vaginal fluids that carry the virus. It’s basically an inviting environment for infection. On the flip side, when a man is circumcised, the skin on the glans is drier and tougher, which makes it much harder for the virus to take hold.
Then you have variables like age, how early someone first has sex, and general education levels
-----Not being circumcised

1) stands as the single biggest risk factor for HIV infection in men;

2) is why there's a 12-fold increase in the risk of urinary tract infections—issues that can actually be fatal for newborns.

3) Every year, somewhere between 600 and 900 uncircumcised men die from penile cancer or have to undergo partial amputations because of it. To put that in perspective: men who were circumcised right after birth essentially don't deal with penile cancer at all.

4) Lack of circumcision is the direct cause of balanitis (inflammation of the head) and phimosis (narrowing of the foreskin). Up to 18% of uncircumcised boys deal with these issues by the time they hit eight years old—problems that just don't exist in circumcised boys.

5) Furthermore, women whose husbands aren't circumcised end up facing higher rates of cervical cancer.
Source: Benefits of circumcision
Best,

Congrats on the religious, half-true, and highly biased little rave about circumcision.
Just a quick heads-up for everyone reading: the "facts" presented above are pretty questionable, and the downsides of being circumcised were conveniently left out of the conversation.

Summary: From a strictly medical standpoint, there isn't a clear-cut advantage to being circumcised or not. People have plenty of opinions on this, but neither side offers any definitive, scientifically proven benefit.

This isn't even about some religious agenda or whatever you think it is.
Do your homework before you start lecturing me. Stick to what you actually know, and leave the stuff you're clueless about to people who actually have a clue...
You have the entire internet at your fingertips, so go use it. What I've shared here isn't even a third of what actual doctors—who are clearly smarter than "some" people—have said regarding circumcision. And just so we’re clear, they aren't even Muslim.
There’s plenty more where that came from, way more...
Cheers, but I'm done arguing this with you.

Then why did you start this thread in the first place?🤷

When I sat down to ask a practicing Muslim about this, he explained that it really comes down to hygiene, noting how frequently children can develop inflammation, which eventually leads to all sorts of complications if left unaddressed.🤷

I mean, why even bother starting this whole thread? I’m sorry, but as much as people claim it's better for hygiene, I'm definitely not letting my guy get circumcised... it just seems a little twisted to me... and if it were actually that great, I guess every man would be doing it, regardless of what they believe in...

If you want it, go for it; if you don't, then don't... it's your life.
Honestly, I couldn't care less about you or your boyfriend...

I know a guy who had some kind of inflammation issue when he was about 10 years old. His doctor actually told his mom they should just remove part of the foreskin—basically perform a circumcision. I have to admit, when he first mentioned it, my mind immediately went to the other reasons people get circumcised, you know? But honestly, looking at it from another angle, I still feel like that skin is there for a reason. If nature designed us this way, maybe we shouldn't be messing with it. 🤷

Jack Adams4 said:The logic here is pretty straightforward: uncircumcised men face a higher risk of HIV because the area under the foreskin acts like a perfect little petri dish, trapping vaginal fluids that carry the virus. It’s basically an inviting environment for infection. On the flip side, when a man is circumcised, the skin on the glans is drier and tougher, which makes it much harder for the virus to take hold.
Then you have variables like age, how early someone first has sex, and general education levels
-----Not being circumcised

1) stands as the single biggest risk factor for HIV infection in men;

2) is why there's a 12-fold increase in the risk of urinary tract infections—issues that can actually be fatal for newborns.

3) Every year, somewhere between 600 and 900 uncircumcised men die from penile cancer or have to undergo partial amputations because of it. To put that in perspective: men who were circumcised right after birth essentially don't deal with penile cancer at all.

4) Lack of circumcision is the direct cause of balanitis (inflammation of the head) and phimosis (narrowing of the foreskin). Up to 18% of uncircumcised boys deal with these issues by the time they hit eight years old—problems that just don't exist in circumcised boys.

5) Furthermore, women whose husbands aren't circumcised end up facing higher rates of cervical cancer.
Source: Benefits of circumcision
Best,

I’m honestly dying to know where that number comes from—this idea that uncircumcised men are dropping like flies from penile cancer (claiming 600 to 900 deaths annually). According to Wikipedia, the global incidence of penile cancer is about 1 in 100,000 (and in developed nations, roughly 70% of those diagnosed either recover or at least survive past the five-year mark). Even the American National Cancer Institute reported that in 2007, only 290 men in the entire USA died from penile cancer or other male genital tract issues. That is a tiny number when you consider there are about 150 million men here, and at least half of them aren't circumcised. Then look at the male population in Denmark, where less than 1.5% of men are circumcised; their penile cancer rates have been steadily dropping for 50 years and sit well below the global average. Experts attribute this to general improvements in socioeconomic conditions and hygiene habits (http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/frisch/).

Look, I don't care if people choose to be circumcised or not—that's their business. But trying to scare people by exaggerating the "horrific dangers" of having a foreskin by fudging the statistics is a pretty stupid tactic these days, especially when anyone can just jump online and fact-check multiple sources.

There’s this medical condition called phimosis, and when that happens, circumcision becomes a necessity. It's not just some religious thing, either—it happens to kids regardless of whether they are Muslim or Jewish. Look, doctors aren't suggesting this just to be difficult or out of spite; they do it because it's actually needed for health reasons.

Ryan Bailey6 said:I’m honestly dying to know where that number comes from—this idea that uncircumcised men are dropping like flies from penile cancer (claiming 600 to 900 deaths annually). According to Wikipedia, the global incidence of penile cancer is about 1 in 100,000 (and in developed nations, roughly 70% of those diagnosed either recover or at least survive past the five-year mark). Even the American National Cancer Institute reported that in 2007, only 290 men in the entire USA died from penile cancer or other male genital tract issues. That is a tiny number when you consider there are about 150 million men here, and at least half of them aren't circumcised. Then look at the male population in Denmark, where less than 1.5% of men are circumcised; their penile cancer rates have been steadily dropping for 50 years and sit well below the global average. Experts attribute this to general improvements in socioeconomic conditions and hygiene habits (http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/frisch/).

Look, I don't care if people choose to be circumcised or not—that's their business. But trying to scare people by exaggerating the "horrific dangers" of having a foreskin by fudging the statistics is a pretty stupid tactic these days, especially when anyone can just jump online and fact-check multiple sources.

Nobody is fudging the numbers. Here's the link, go read it yourself if you actually want to know the truth. Source: Benefits of circumcision, assuming, of course, that you can understand English. Heaven forbid Muslims were the ones conducting these studies and proving the facts—what would you even have to say then??
I don't care what you have to say. We are talking about health and the benefits of circumcision. If you want it, get it; if you don't, don't. Don't come at me with stupid comments. This topic was originally brought up under religion, but they said it belonged here. So, if you want to read, go ahead; if not, beat it...
Cheers

The numbers don't lie. I'm not the one making this up—if you think I am, go ahead and find me a source. Since you all claim to be so brilliant and have high-speed internet at your fingertips, why don't you actually use it? Source: Benefits of circumcision. And heaven forbid it were Muslims performing these experiments; then I'm sure you'd all have plenty to say about that, wouldn't you?
Nobody cares whether you're circumcised or not, so I don't know why you're even bothering to chime in with these moronic comments. If you want to read, be my guest. If not, stay out of it!

Kevin Smith30 said:There’s this medical condition called phimosis, and when that happens, circumcision becomes a necessity. It's not just some religious thing, either—it happens to kids regardless of whether they are Muslim or Jewish. Look, doctors aren't suggesting this just to be difficult or out of spite; they do it because it's actually needed for health reasons.

It’s just like how you get a cavity filled when a tooth starts acting up, rather than just ripping the whole thing out proactively to prevent trouble.

Jack Adams4 said:Nobody is fudging the numbers. Here's the link, go read it yourself if you actually want to know the truth. Source: Benefits of circumcision, assuming, of course, that you can understand English. Heaven forbid Muslims were the ones conducting these studies and proving the facts—what would you even have to say then??
I don't care what you have to say. We are talking about health and the benefits of circumcision. If you want it, get it; if you don't, don't. Don't come at me with stupid comments. This topic was originally brought up under religion, but they said it belonged here. So, if you want to read, go ahead; if not, beat it...
Cheers

I don't see the link, but I did find the page (assuming it's the same one you're looking at), and from a quick glance—since I don't have much time to dig through everything—it seems to downplay the risks quite a bit. Plus, the numbers it lists are a little different from other sources I've found online. On top of that, I couldn't find the specific text you used to start this whole thread.

Don't worry, my English is perfectly fine.

I'm not denying that circumcision can have certain benefits, or that it's sometimes necessary. But, suggesting we should strip every newborn boy of his foreskin just to prevent something that most likely won't even happen to him feels a bit extreme to me.

One thing the text you quoted completely ignores is the actual risks involved (things that *could* happen, just like a man with a foreskin *could* get penile cancer, but doesn't necessarily). So, here's a little bit of info from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical...f_circumcision:

"The American Medical Association cites a complication rate of 0.2%–0.6% based on studies by Gee and Harkavyi. These same studies are also cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Academy of Family Physicians reports a range from 0.1% to 35%. The American Academy of Pediatrics mentions similar results while adding other statistics ranging from 0.06% to 55%, noting that Williams and Kapila suggested a 2-10% range as a more objective estimate. The AAP also notes that one in 1,000,000 patients may lose their penis due to circumcision."

The literature also mentions fatalities. The American Academy of Family Physicians states that deaths are rare, estimating that one in 500,000 circumcised newborns dies due to the procedure.

Possible complications range from minor bleeding and small local infections to severe systemic infections, loss of part or all of the penis, or surgical errors that jeopardize function. They aren't common, but then again, penile cancer isn't common either. I think we should at least consider and mention the risks before declaring circumcision to be a perfect, purely positive thing in every single way.

Since this is a forum, it feels like it exists specifically for discussion. You know, forums are meant for debating, and debate involves hearing opinions that are different from your own.

Ryan Bailey6, I gotta hand it to you... hats off.👋

Jack Adams4 said:The logic here is pretty straightforward: uncircumcised men face a higher risk of HIV because the area under the foreskin acts like a perfect little petri dish, trapping vaginal fluids that carry the virus. It’s basically an inviting environment for infection. On the flip side, when a man is circumcised, the skin on the glans is drier and tougher, which makes it much harder for the virus to take hold.
Then you have variables like age, how early someone first has sex, and general education levels
-----Not being circumcised

1) stands as the single biggest risk factor for HIV infection in men;

2) is why there's a 12-fold increase in the risk of urinary tract infections—issues that can actually be fatal for newborns.

3) Every year, somewhere between 600 and 900 uncircumcised men die from penile cancer or have to undergo partial amputations because of it. To put that in perspective: men who were circumcised right after birth essentially don't deal with penile cancer at all.

4) Lack of circumcision is the direct cause of balanitis (inflammation of the head) and phimosis (narrowing of the foreskin). Up to 18% of uncircumcised boys deal with these issues by the time they hit eight years old—problems that just don't exist in circumcised boys.

5) Furthermore, women whose husbands aren't circumcised end up facing higher rates of cervical cancer.
Source: Benefits of circumcision
Best,

Honestly, this has to be one of the most ridiculous, nonsensical, and downright pathetic lies ever to crawl across the internet... 🤣

And this comes from someone who spends their whole day telling everyone else how they should go out and do their own research... 🙏

And that’s supposedly to prevent penile cancer, which is one of the rarest types of cancer out there anyway... 😁

"""The American Academy of Pediatrics claims that one in a million patients ends up losing their penis due to circumcision."""
HA! Give me a break... seriously?
Well, at least they aren't claiming ten out of a million lose theirs...