Circumcision Plays a Big Role in African Religion

20). Although boys in some African goals may be circumcised during infancy, this is less oftentimes true of girls. Nonetheless, the cognitive process is not always left until the onset of puberty. In Alice baby-walker and Pratibha Parmar's study of female circumcision in Africa, the youngest child in a group of girls being circumcised was only four years old, whereas the new(prenominal) girls in the group ranged from boards eight to eleven (Walker & Parmar, 1993, p. 43).

Regardless of the age at which circumcision is carried out, installing rites of this type be usually a group event, where boys or girls of the same age range allow the ceremonies together. This creates a very well-set bond between those who are initiated together. Such a bond is also beneficial for the culture as whole. In numerous African ethnic groups, such(prenominal) as the Masai and the Kikuyu, every person belongs to an age-set, and the members of these groups will undergo initiation rites together. For example, "each Kikuyu is born into a particular age-set within which strong bonds are developed, particularly at the stage of circumcision" (Peoples, 1978, p. 118). Among the Masai people, circumcision of boys, which occurs at somewhat the age of sixteen, marks their passage into an age-set called moran, in which they remain for sevensome to fourteen years. At the end of this time "all the subsisting moran are si

Lamb, David. (1982). The Africans. crude York: random House.

Walker, Alice, and Pratibha Parmar. (1993). Warrior marks: Female genital mutilation and the sexual blinding of women. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.

It is interesting to note that in many African cultures, men may marry to a greater extent than one wife. temper has found that as many as "half the marriages in West Africa are polygamous, while in East Africa the parity is around 30 percent" (Harden, 1990, p. 107). Because each wife must have her own home, a man must be fairly prosperous if he is going to marry more than one woman. The reason for multiple marriages relates to the traditional African furiousness on the importance of the family.

Mazrui has stated that "African men are polygamous less because they love women than because they love children. More significant than the status of having several wives is the status of having many children" (Mazrui, 1986, p. 252). Having children is the single nigh important aspect of life in traditional African cultures. Lamb notes that "few concepts are as deeply natural in the African psyche as the need and the inclination to produce. In many cultures an infertile man is an outcast; a barren woman is shunned and scorned" (Lamb, 1982, p. 18). There are many reasons why children are so important in African religion. Having children is the only way to ensure the continuity of lineage and of society. Furthermore, "the unconditional purpose of marriage according to African peoples is to bear children, to image a family, to extend life, and to hand down the living torch of human existence" (Mbiti, 1975, p. 110).

The circumcision ceremonies of most societies feature singing, dancing and feasting. In many ethnic groups, after the initiates are cut, they are often "taken into seclusion in the woods for periods lasting from a few days to several months, or even nightlong in some cases" (Mbiti, 1975, p. 98). The period of seclusion is one in which the initiates
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