Customary practices

Well. I have opened up a big topic for myself. 

I wondered about circumcision.

In the Biblical book of Genesis, we read that God told Abraham that all his descendants must be circumcised. I had thought only the Jewish people were required to observe this custom. I asked myself, is this also part of the Muslim culture? 

So I looked it up and discovered that it wasn't something new that God told Abraham to do. Arabs (and many other cultures, notably Egyptians) had been doing it for thousands of years, and the practice is said to have come to the "Promised Land" through Moses. 

It is interesting to see some statistics about this (sorry I don't have the reference here): Each year 100,000 Jewish and 10 million Muslim circumcisions are performed. It seems it is a prerequisite of both the Jewish and Muslim religions. (Interestingly though, it is not mentioned in the Koran.)

A titbit of information: The Greek mathematician Pythagoras had to be circumcised before he was allowed to study in the library of the University of Alexandria (the world's oldest documented University). This was long before Christ or Mohammed. Since Greeks did not approve of circumcision it shows how great Pythagoras' thirst for knowledge must have been. (See http://www.circinfo.net/who_in_the_world_gets_circumcised.html.) (Ed. Readers may wish to do their own research on Pythagoras. My brief research suggests that he may indeed have travelled to Egypt, but the reference to "the University of Alexandria" is not corroborated anywhere else.)

Of course, it is from Abraham's son Ishmael (son of Hagar) that the Arabs are said to have descended. Abraham said he was to beget 12 princes (Gen. 17:20); however, God seemed to make Ishmael's people inferior to Isaac's (son of Sarah). I notice that Isaac was named by Abraham before he was conceived and the time of birth was set down by God too - “at this set time next year.”

Joyce Voysey