Senior figures from Britain’s religious communities have met Icelandic MPs and officials in Reykjavik to lobby the island’s government to oppose a proposed ban on religious circumcision.
A bill has been put forward in Iceland’s parliament to criminalise non-medical circumcisions, which if passed would make Iceland the first European country to ban circumcision.
Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies, said after last week’s meeting he was “cautiously” hopeful that Iceland would not press ahead with the ban, but might simply insist on tighter regulations around the practice.
He told the JC: “In Scandinavia they have often taken a very simplistic view that circumcision has got to be wrong.
