People (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001); Arab Cin-
ema: Walter Armbrust, Mass Culture and Modernism in
Egypt, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
Ibrahim Fawal, Youssef Chahine (London: BFI Publica-
tions, 2001); Viola Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and
Cultural Identity (Cairo: American University in Cairo
Press, 1998); Iranian Cinema: Hamid Dabashi. Close
Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future (New York:
Verso, 2001); Richard Tapper, ed., The New Iranian
Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity (London:
I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2002); Indian Cinema: Akbar
S. Ahmed, “Bombay Films: The Cinema for Indian
Society and Politics.” Modern Asian Studies 26 (1992):
289–320; Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: A Guidebook to
Popular Hindi Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004);
Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, Encyclopedia
of Indian Cinema, 2d ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
circumcision (Arabic: khitan for males;
khafd for females; tahara for both males
and females)
Male circumcision is a surgical procedure that
involves removing the foreskin of the penis. It
has been widely practiced among indigenous
tribal peoples of Africa and aUstralia and among
members of specific religious communities, espe-
cially Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Today many
people think it is done for purposes of hygiene,
but this explanation is disputed, and it does not
withstand empirical scrutiny in most instances.
Ethnographic evidence suggests that, in fact, it
is performed for various reasons, depending on
context. In many tribal societies, it is done at
puberty as a male rite of passage into adulthood.
In biblical tradition, circumcision is the sign of
a covenant (contract) between God, abraham,
and his descendants, the Hebrews. In Islam, male
circumcision is almost universally practiced as a
form of bodily purification. Only in some Mus-
lim cultures is it a rite of passage to adulthood.
Also, in contrast to the Judaic form, it is never
mentioned in the Muslim holy book, the qUran,
nor is it considered to be the sign of a covenantal
relationship between God and Muslims.
Scholars have found evidence that Arabs prac-
ticed circumcision before Islam’s appearance and
think that it later continued as an accepted practice
in the early Muslim community. This explanation
by itself does not account for the persistence of the
custom nor its acceptance by non-Arab Muslims,
who now constitute perhaps 80 percent of the
world’s Muslim population. Although circumcision
is not mentioned in the Quran, it is mentioned in
the hadith, oral reports about what mUhammad and
his companions said and did that were transmitted,
collected, and studied by pious Muslims in order
help regulate Muslim affairs in the newly emerg-
ing Islamic empire. What the hadith do is establish
male circumcision as an acceptable Muslim prac-
tice. According to one hadith, circumcision is one
of five acts (along with trimming the mustache,
shaving pubic hair, plucking hair from the arm
pits, and clipping fingernails) for which humans
have a natural predisposition (fitra). Other hadiths
report that Abraham, the sacred ancestor of Jews,
Christians, and Muslims, had circumcised him-
self. In the context of the sharia, Muslim jurists
have ruled that it is either a required (wajib) or a
recommended practice (sUnna). In legal manuals,
it is treated as a form of ritual purification, called
tahara, that puts the body of the individual into the
proper condition for worship.
Circumcision is performed by doctors at birth
in hospitals and clinics today, but in many Mus-
lim cultures a barber traditionally performs it at
some time between the seventh day after birth and
puberty, depending on local practice. In tUrkey,
there are clinics where circumcisers are trained
in the appropriate surgical techniques, and boys
are circumcised at the age of six or seven. Large
family celebrations with feasting, mUsic, Quran
recitation, and visits to nearby saint shrines often
accompany the event. In cases in which the family
has a limited income, the circumcision celebration
may be combined with a marriage ceremony so
as to minimize expenses. The circumcision maycircumcision 149 J