first cut

you know you have been in a country long enough when you run out of normal conversation items.  language, food, weather, politics; these are all subjects that have been discussed and discussed.  naturally, you move onto other things.  you are accepted a bit in the community, and people understand you are interested in knowing the differences between your home community and the community in your adopted home.  then, without even trying you stumble over something that you realize has opened up your view of the cultural differences in ways you never expected.

this happened to me recently, and the enlightenment is both interesting and disturbing.  i was talking to a malay and asked about the twelve year old nephew's "bar mitzvah".  this, of course, was meant to be a joke.  i assumed the malay community would have a ceremony for welcoming an adolescent male into adulthood; but using the jewish word for the transition was meant to be funny.  i actually should have expected the person to not have known the word, or to mistake the meaning, but the conversation that followed was really not what i meant to discuss.

to understand, you need to grasp the dynamic of a open and direct westerner talking to a shy and reserved malay (muslim).  over time, living in a different culture, you learn to avoid some subjects, or to talk about subjects without talking about the subjects.  but this one, it one just came pouring out like breaking the front of a fish tank.  there was no way ignore the soggy floor with fish flopping around once the misunderstood word broke the barrier.

when i said, "bar mitzvah", the answer was, "well, you have seen the malay boys walking around holding their sarong in front of them like a tent".  i had seen them walking and holding the skirt-like material out at arms length.  it had never bubbled to the top of the list for me to ask about.  a few beats passed, we were both confused and considering what the other was talking about.  we had clearly stumbled into an area of danger in the conversation.  during the semi-awkward silence, the wheels where spinning.  what was the relationship between passage into adulthood, a tented sarong and a jewish word used as a joke.  then it hit me...

i asked, "do you mean they are having a bris at 12"?  

there was certainly no way bris was a word that would be understood, but i could simply not say the word circumcision.  besides the cultural discomfort, the consideration of the trauma (physical if not emotional) resulting from having the most sensitive part of male anatomy cut when he is old enough to remember it for the rest of his life is... well, i just had to retreat into a word what would give me a moment to process the idea.

circumcision is common in the US, it is less common world-wide.  a bit of research following this conversation found that 30% of the global male population has been de-skinned; of those 68% of them are muslim.  i was told that it was obligatory and that it is required at this age.  as usual the research does not match the local understanding.  circumcision is not within the quran, it is haddith.  it is also not a rule, but a suggestion, one that is based on suddah (the trodden path).  the most interesting element of this is that the tradition is not arabic, but jewish.  the muslims follow the practice based on the early islam communities time in medina where they picked up many of the jewish traditions.

i came to terms with circumcision a "long time ago" following a question i asked my mother.  she sat me down and explained a few things.  things which influenced my own decision to include my son in the ranks of the clean-cut male community.  but there are those that are not as supportive of the procedure.  some people feel making the decision for an infant is equal to torture of the child.  torture that can scar them emotionally, the physical scars are assumed, for life.  they also worry that the elimination of sensitivity in that area will reduce the enjoyment of use at a later point in life.  read the wikipedia article on circumcision, its very interesting.

but, waiting until puberty?  why would anyone allow their child to wait until a time when they will remember it?  worse, to do it at a time where the body part in question has begun to find reasons of its own to become active.  boys this age tend to react largely to random thoughts and by simply waking up in the morning.  what is the rationale?  i was told by one person that they were supposed to wait because they were muslims; not true it is purely a malay cultural tradition, one that follows other polynesian (read pre-islamic) standards.  someone else told me young men do this so they are clean for their future partners, confirming my assessment of the practice.

a cynical western view on this steps into clear view.  the evidence, go research if you don't agree, says the following:  

rather than conducting the procedure in the first days of life as done in the west, as the jews and other muslims do, malays wait until the male begins to mature and show signs of sexual development.  his family tells him his penis is dirty and needs to be partially removed.  they then publicly, this used to be done as an open ceremony in middle of the kampung, and now is marked by tented sarong, perform the act.  for the next few weeks anytime he as a thought which would cause him to grow, there is severe pain.  the lesson beyond needing to accept that he was dirty, is that sexual thoughts will bring pain and suffering.  some in the west consider it torture at 7 days of age, a time that we do not remember, how do they feel about this delayed practice that is remembered.

i can't seem to stop thinking about this.  it's like pulling up to a car accident and slowing down to look.  i know it's wrong, but we rationalize slowing down as being done to see if you can help.  helping here would be to say, if your child will have this done, do it at a time when there is no lasting memory.  let him believe his private part was always clean and to have no memory of anything else.

otherwise the lesson is he is dirty, sex is bad and this pain is all related to the jews.  maybe i do understand malaysia better.