If Jews are allowed to circumcise their male babies, should they also be allowed to perform other acts as ordained in the Bible and which are otherwise illegal in all modern societies? Should they

  1. be allowed to kill people who try to convert them to another religion as ordained in Deuteronomy 13, 6-10?
  2. be allowed to kill disobedient sons as instructed in Deuteronomy 21, 18-21?

It is of course easy to find many other examples of people of any religion not upholding all the tenets of their faith. I am not suggesting that Jews are specially hypocritical. I am merely asking that since they ignore certain requirements of their religion, why not this one?

(The question of whether circumcision of infants is required is also moot. Since the practice is about making a covenant with God, I would argue that the covenant cannot be properly made by a newborn infant. for any such covenant to be valid, it has to be made by free, adult consent.)

I also fear that some some Jews, by demanding the continued right to commit this abuse on their male children are setting their whole community up for abuse from non-Jews, something the world has already suffered far too much of. There are Jews in favour of the move in San Francisco to ban infant ritual circumcision. I very much hope that they will make their voices heard and prevail.