The Interior Frontiers of Germany: On Recursive History and Ritual Male Circumcision
In: Journal of Muslims in Europe, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 22-44
ISSN: 2211-7954
Abstract
In 2012, the regional court of the city of Cologne ruled that ritual male circumcision constituted unjustified bodily harm. This prompted a nationwide debate culminating in the enactment of legislation guaranteeing male circumcision without medical justification under certain preconditions. This article proposes to approach the 'circumcision debate' as a discursive strand of the systematic problematisation of Muslims as 'Muslims', which I analyse through the analytic of the 'Muslim Question'. In addition, I refer to the concepts of recursive history and of the interior frontier to contextualise the 2012 circumcision debate and the political purpose it has served, namely, to establish racial distinctions and interior frontiers between Germans, Jews and Muslims.