Circumcision, the last refuge of scoundrels in political season

Behold, I Paul say to you, that if you be circumcised,

Christ shall profit you nothing. (Galatians 5:2)

At the dawn of Christianity, the then known world was the Roman Empire. Its culture was either Roman or Greek or a confluence of both. Rome and Greece gave the world the western civilisation as we know today.

To Romans and Greeks, the human body was perfect and no mutiliation whatsoever was allowed on it. The Statue of King David by Michelangelo in Florence, Italy, is the ultimate sign of male beauty. David, a Jew, is sculpted in all beauty with a full penis. A Jew without circumcision.

Yet in Kenya, in every general election year, we have politicians who are hellbent on wedge issues, using circumcision as qualification for leadership. We must once and for all consign this argument to the dustbins of history. The male sexual organ can never be a parameter of leadership. It has never been and never will be in any country and across all civilisations except in primitive pockets of Kenya’s society.

Psychology studies tell us that people who suffer from low esteem or from narcistic personality disorder project their inadequacies and failures on others. In Kenya, such people use cultural differences to uplift their sorry intellectual and pecuniary state. When a politician runs out of ideas, money and support, he appeals to the most base, the most atavistic and the most visceral of human instincts.

To tell an illiterate and poor circumcised Kenyan that he is superior to an uncircumcised PhD holder, gives him a pseudo sense of importance. It is this that Kenyan politicians especially from Mt Kenya exploit. It must be ended.

Circumcision is practised by less than 37 per cent of the world’s males and they do it for religious, cultural or for prophylactic health intervention. 77 per cent of the world, including but not limited to Europe, India, China, Japan, Southern Africa and South America don’t practise it. Can male circumcision purists stand in the same podium in Kiambu and say they will never respect the leaderships of the above-named countries who don’t circumcise? Will they trade with them? Will they export their coffee and tea to uncircumcised nations?

Sheer hypocrisy

If such purists want to fall back on cultural superiority, the evidence shows beyond peradventure that world civilisation is underpinned on Roman and Greek culture. We are yet to see what those who circumcise have added to the body of human knowledge and civilisation.

And if the purists fall on Christian knowledge, we are here to call them out for sheer hypocrisy. To seal His covenant with Abraham, God decreed that Abraham’s male descendants be circumcised on their eighth day. If you aren’t circumcised on the eighth day, then your circumcision has no divine imprimatur. It has no halo of holiness around it.

In the Council of Jerusalem of 50 AD, the Founding Fathers of Christianity, many of whom knew Jesus personally, decreed that male circumcision isn’t a requirement for Christianity. In fact, Apostle Paul went as far as saying that getting circumcised barred one from Christianity. The Apostles preached the circumcision of the heart and spirit and discouraged physical circumcision.

In civilised democracies, political leaders sell their policies and programmes to win elective posts. In Kenya, due to dearth of ideology, politicians sink to the gutter to get votes. Political rallies become venues to compete for the most ridiculous clarion call. Leaders become the average of the crowd before them in a marketplace. The culture and intelligence of the crowd is appropriated by the speakers.

It is incumbent upon all to push back this primitive cultural narrative. Leadership has never been about the existence or non-existence of penile prepuce. If it were, the circumcised would lord over the world. But because it has never been, global leadership has been based on leadership traits only. Circumcision is of infinitesimal value. To paraphrase that great English essayist and moralist Samuel Johnson, circumcision is the last refuge of scoundrels.

The Kenyan political landscape is littered with illiterates, conmen, fraudsters, money launderers, rapists and thieves. No wonder, speaking about sexual anatomy excites them. Discussing abstract ideologies is beyond their grasp. To hide their intellectual and pecuniary inadequacy, circumcision becomes the default setting.

Albert Einstein, the polymath, said that “only two things are infinite, the universe and stupidity ..”. Only Kenyan voters will end this political impecunity hidden in false cultural practices. If we are a Christian nation (Kenya is 80 per cent Christian) as we claim to be, we must like Jesus shout at such false prophets of culture:

Get thee behind me Satan: thou art an offence unto me:

For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but

Those that be of men. Matthew 16:23.

Mr Kipkorir is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. [email protected]