Two men have been convicted for performing dangerous and medically unnecessary circumcisions on male babies and children this year. This mus
By: Dr Antony Lempert
Published: May 15, 2025
Two men have been convicted for performing dangerous and medically unnecessary circumcisions on male babies and children this year. This must prompt a rethink of circumcision which prioritises children's rights and wellbeing over religious and cultural beliefs, says Dr Antony Lempert.
On May 8th, Mohammed Alazawi became the second person in the UK this year to be convicted of serious crimes related to non-therapeutic male circumcision (NTMC) of children.
Alazawi (pictured, left) was found guilty of forty offences including multiple counts of fraud, wounding with intent, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
In January, Mohammad Siddiqui (pictured, right) was jailed for a range of similar NTMC-related offences.
Such convictions have previously been uncommon. The most recent conviction for performing NTMC before Siddiqui's case was for the manslaughter in 2010 of 28-day old Goodluck Caubergs in Oldham. Midwife Grace Adeleye was given a suspended sentence for this crime.
NTMC is an irreversible surgical procedure, which is medically unnecessary by definition, believed to be performed on thousands of UK children annually. In all cases, NTMC removes erogenous tissue which is the most sensitive part of the penis to light touch and temperature. The children affected are largely born into communities that promote NTMC as a religious or cultural tradition. Precise statistics are not available since there is no statutory regulation nor monitoring. This is the case even though non-medical practitioners regularly perform the procedure in the children's own homes and serious harm is not unusual.
The two recent convictions of Alazawi and Siddiqui share several features. Both men were found to have caused serious harm to children, some of whom required subsequent treatment due to complications. Both were found guilty of administering and supplying prescription-only medicines, and of practising in an unsafe, unsanitary environment.
Curiously, Alazawi illegally misrepresented himself as a licensed medical doctor; he needn't have done so. The regulatory authorities, including the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Crown Prosecution service assert – albeit without rationale or logic – that NTMC does not require a medical professional. This is precisely why Siddiqui, a trained paediatric surgeon, was paradoxically permitted to continue performing unregulated circumcisions despite having been struck off the medical register because he had performed unsafe circumcisions as a regulated medical professional.
This absurd anomaly in both child safeguarding and surgical practice was rightly called out by Siddiqui's sentencing judge, who called for safeguards and protections to be put in place as a matter of urgency. Alazawi's convictions demonstrate just why such protections are critical.
As with all surgical procedures, when circumcision is performed by a licensed medical professional, both a suitable clinical environment and adequate consent are required. Because of its controversial nature, the documented consent of both parents is needed for NTMC. Yet in stark contrast, when NTMC is performed by non-medics, none of these conditions are considered necessary.
Medical evidence was heard during Siddiqui's trial that performing NTMC without adequate anaesthesia amounts to child cruelty. The Royal College of Anaesthetists recommends the use of prescription-only local anaesthetics as likely to be safer than general anaesthetics. In Scotland, it is recommended that all circumcision procedures on babies are performed in hospital by a paediatric surgeon under general anaesthetic. The difference between the two positions speaks both to the inherent dangers of anaesthesia, particularly in young children, and to the lack of robust evidence-based research in this area.
These two convictions now leave non-medical practitioners in a bind. Since prescription-only medicines are seemingly required to prevent child cruelty yet can only legally be procured by a medical practitioner, how are they to proceed?
One option would be for only trained medical professionals to perform NTMC on older children, using adequate anaesthesia in a properly regulated clinical environment. This solution would likely not sit well with the mainstream Jewish community, which claims as a religious imperative that eight-day old male babies are circumcised in the traditional method. Nor would it satisfy those of us concerned with the fundamental medical ethical premise that children should be safeguarded from medically unnecessary wounding, particularly to their most intimate body parts.
The most ethically coherent route out of this impasse would simply be to follow standard good medical practice for other surgical interventions on non-consenting people. In other words, surgery should only be performed when there is a legitimate, time-sensitive, medically necessary reason to do so. Adequate protections should remain in place until such time as a person has developed the capacity to make important, irreversible decisions for themselves based on their own values. This will only become a reality for NTMC when existing standard child safeguarding and surgical norms are not circumvented in favour of unjustified religious privilege played out on children's bodies.
If these two recent convictions do represent an encouraging shift in priorities, then legal prohibitions on non-medical NTMC practitioners and an end to religious exceptionalism would be the most logical next steps. Such welcome developments would help to protect the next generation of children from serious genital wounding, regardless of the perpetrator's motive.
==
The barbaric practice of mutilating children's genitals for any reason other than urgent and imminent medical necessity must end.