By Georgina Prodhan
VIENNA, July 25 (Reuters) - Jewish religious leaders in Europe will fight a creeping movement to ban the circumcision of infant boys that has spread to Austria and Switzerland after a regional court in Germany banned the procedure as physical abuse.
The governor of a second Austrian province called on Wednesday for the federal government to ban the practice, fuelling a religiously charged debate after another regional chief advised state-run hospitals to stop circumcisions.
At least one Swiss hospital also banned religious circumcision of infant boys, which is important in both Judaism and Islam, and others were considering it, local media said.
According to the CIRCS organisation, which collects global data on circumcision, 37 percent of all males are circumcised.
The Conference of European Rabbis (CER), which unites leaders of Europe's mainstream synagogue communities, said, "Our fears that the court ruling in Cologne, Germany, could have a knock-on effect across Europe are now being realised."
Germany's lower house of parliament passed a resolution to protect the religious circumcision of infant boys last week after the court ruling, which Chancellor Angela Merkel said put Germany in danger of becoming a laughing stock.
The CER said, "The CER will be seeking meetings with parliamentarians across Europe to press for a similar response to that which has been achieved in Germany, obtaining specific support for religious circumcision, directly from parliament."
The governor of Austria's Vorarlberg province had suggested suspending circumcisions until Austria could formulate a uniform approach to the practice.
And the far-right governor of the country's Carinthia province called for a federal ban.
A spokesman for Austria's Justice Ministry said on Wednesday the ministry was "astonished" at the Vorarlberg governor's suggestion, and said that there were no grounds in Austrian law for punishing those who carried out male circumcisions.
Austria is home to about half a million Muslims, most of whom are migrant workers from Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and about 9,000 Jews, down from about 200,000 before the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938.
Fuat Sanac, head of the Islamic Faith Communites of Austria, called the moves to suspend or ban the circumcision of infant boys "a setback for religious freedom".
Austria last month celebrated the centenary of the Austrian Islamic Law, which made Islam a recognised religion and is seen as a symbol of tolerance.
"I hope we can talk about the issue factually and sensibly and then this debate will end," Sanac told Reuters. (Addional reporting by Emma Thomasson in Zurich; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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