Religion in the Workplace.

[alanschu]

"I just feel so sad," Muhammad told the Detroit Free Press for Sunday's edition. "... I didn't feel like the court recognized me as a person that needed justice. I just feel I can't trust the court."

 

Right....

[Surreptishus]

"I just feel so sad," Muhammad told the Detroit Free Press for Sunday's edition. "... I didn't feel like the court recognized me as a person that needed justice. I just feel I can't trust the court."

 

Thats cuz your face was covered! Duh!

 

This is even more clear cut than the Britsh teacher thing. <_<

[metadigital]

I am glad the precedent was set against the political agitator.

 

The veil is not meant to be abused in this way. The judge could have given her another option: her husband (or significant male family member, like eldest brother or father) could have represented her in court ...

[Walsingham]

I am glad the precedent was set against the political agitator.

 

The veil is not meant to be abused in this way. The judge could have given her another option: her husband (or significant male family member, like eldest brother or father) could have represented her in court ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Riiiight.... Go go female emancipation!

 

Actually I got set straight by an American officer on this point who'd been serving in the Gulf. For some, the veil is seen as a defence against letcherous behaviour. Although frankly I'd say the men need a swift kick in the balls as a better cure. But that's me talking as someone who's dated female speedway racers and bodyguards. :">

[metadigital]

Bellet dancers have very good muscle tone and are strong, too. "

[Colrom]

Jack Straw, Tony Blair and the Lie-Detector-Judge have a common nightmare - they are forced to have a meeting with a Sikh, a Hasidic Jew, a Muslim woman wearing a veil and a Greek Orthodox Priest. :D

[WinterSun]

I don't get it.

[metadigital]

Jack Straw, Tony Blair and the Lie-Detector-Judge have a common nightmare - they are forced to have a meeting with a Sikh, a Hasidic Jew, a Muslim woman wearing a veil and a Greek Orthodox Priest.  :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why is that a nightmare?

 

Jack Straw's (much misquoted) comments were that, if a Muslim woman felt comfortable, it would be better if she didn't wear her veil in a meeting, as it makes communication easier.

[Colrom]

I don't get it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

All their faces and heads are covered - by hair and hats or garments.

[Walsingham]

I don't get it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

All their faces and heads are covered - by hair and hats or garments.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And bees.

[Colrom]

(w00t)

[Darth Launch]

If said teacher doesn't want to remove her veil (which, btw, is NOT a requirement of Islam)...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It is actually (although, some people consider it more of a request)... and, yes, I've read the Qu'ran in the original form (yes, arabic) and understood it before people want to tell me what they think they know about my religion

 

Regardless of that, I take the side of the school and BA in both these cases... one should respect people's religions... and the terms and conditions of a company/workplace

[Colrom]

If said teacher doesn't want to remove her veil (which, btw, is NOT a requirement of Islam)...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It is actually (although, some people consider it more of a request)... and, yes, I've read the Qu'ran in the original form (yes, arabic) and understood it before people want to tell me what they think they know about my religion

 

Regardless of that, I take the side of the school and BA in both these cases... one should respect people's religions... and the terms and conditions of a company/workplace

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That's not the point.

 

The point is that humiliating someone publically and forcing them to conform to petty standards is itself not "understanding" of others.

 

Also, with regard to the teacher's aid there was no condition of dress in the job - so far as I can tell. The claim about difficulty in hearing her speak seems bogus and likely manufactured to bring out the issue of her ethnicity, religion, and dress - considering the background of the school.

 

This type of widespread public bullying of a powerless local minority is fundamentally wrong and often a forrunner to rationalizations of violence.

 

People engaging in antisemitic behaviors in the past have blamed their targets and claimed they are "different", "uncooperative" and "dangerous".

 

It is ironic that many Muslims seem eager to rationalize the abuse of this woman - perhaps to save themselves from the hostility they might otherwise experience. Not dissimilar to the behavior of certain Jews before the Holocost demonstrated that behavior was not the issue and conforming to behavioral standards was not going to be enough.

[alanschu]

It's ironic that you're continuing the press an issue that many of those to whom this would actually apply to, feel is a moot point.

 

I think you're embarassing pretty much everyone else by continuing to press this issue, even when those that are most affected aren't actually insulted, nor are they making an issue out of it. It's a typical pink response, of which people like yourself feel you should champion the rights of others, even if those other people don't feel their rights have been infringed upon, because it makes you feel better about yourself. You're just like pretty much the rest of the University population I have the pleasure of seeing every day of the year.

 

But hey, stretch things out to compare it to the Holocaust for dramatic effect.

[Colrom]

I'll say this - I don't have tolerance for abuse of others - even when the others are willing to go so far as to carry out the abuse themselves.

 

I frankly don't care about whether you are embarrased - I won't join the mob you represent.

 

Please spare me your name calling.

[Pop]

I didn't read any epiphets stereotyping, maybe, but not name-calling.

 

There's a nice, well thought-out editorial in Slate about this issue. To paraphrase, it argues that in the West, obscuring one's face is associated with being dishonest. It has to do with the idea that someone who's honest will present their whole self openly, and someone who has something to hide will hide himself.

 

The last paragraph says it all, really.

 

"Still, freedom to practice religion in the West shouldn't imply freedom to hold jobs that impinge on that practice. An Orthodox Jew should not have an absolute right to work in a restaurant that is open only on Saturdays. A Quaker cannot join the Army and then state that his religion prohibits him from fighting. By the same token, a Muslim woman who wants to cover her face has no absolute right to work in a school or an office where face-to-face conversations are part of the job. It isn't religious discrimination or anti-Muslim bias to tell her that she must be polite to the natives, respect the local customs, try to speak some of the local patois

[Colrom]

Here is another view, taken from the article "Long Black Veil: Tony Blair's Dangerous Game of Muslim-Bashing" By Chris Floyd, TO UK Correspondent

 

The whole article can be found at Long Black Veil

 

"For centuries in Britain, each sentence of death was accompanied by a strange ritual. Before handing down the verdict, the judge would first take a piece of black silk cloth and put it on his head. With this rather bizarre and ancient drapery covering his powdered wig - itself a relic, a cultural fossil carried into modern times - he would then render the prisoner into the hangman's care.

 

In such a guise, the black cloth once represented the full, dread measure of state power. Today, however, a cloth of similar size, shape and color - worn across the faces of a small number of some of the most vulnerable members of British society - has become a target of that same dread power, after Britain's high and mighty unleashed a sudden, thunderous sneak attack on the nation's Muslim minority, centering the campaign around the tabloid-ready symbol of the veil.

 

But although the carefully orchestrated furor over this seldom-seen scrap of material has been so ludicrously disproportionate that even the Blair-fawning New York Times cried foul in a recent editorial, the campaign - and its disturbing implications - go far beyond the issue of religious vestments. Indeed, the veil row is just a covering for what appears to be a deliberate, wide-ranging program of diversion and division, aimed at creating a scapegoat - "strangers in our midst," "the enemy within" - to bear the blame for the sins of the Blair government: the fear, repression, guilt, lies and rancor produced by the abomination in Iraq.

 

The anti-Muslim campaign is not merely rhetorical - although the heated rhetoric from Tony Blair and many of his ministers has certainly been bad enough, giving a patina of respectability to more extremist viewpoints, now seen as a legitimate part of the "national debate. (Much as the button-pushing imbroglio over immigration in the United States has transformed fringe white-power advocates into respectable media figures, lauded by the likes of Lou Dobbs and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and welcomed in the halls of Congress.) No, Blair's Islamophobia-fest has bite with its bark: not only the on-going evisceration of civil liberties, which has fallen almost entirely on British Muslims, but new measures as well - such as the Stasi-like plan to induce university professors and staff to spy on Muslim students and report all "suspicious" behavior to the security organs.

 

The plan, uncovered by the Guardian on October 16, has already been sent to "selected official bodies for consultation" and will be foisted on Britain's universities in December. It acknowledges the fact that the program will make academics feel they are "collaborating with the 'secret police,'" but still urges university staff to be pro-active in their spying and informing on the activities of "Asian-looking students." (In British parlance, "Asian" usually denotes someone of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent.)

 

Far from being abashed by this revelation, the Blair government has openly embraced the program. To be sure, Education Minister Ruth Kelly - a member of the zealous religious order, Opus Dei - says it's not really spying; it's just "monitoring" the activities of certain students in order to "protect" them from extremists. But for some reason, Kelly's maternal concern has failed to allay the fears of those captured in the state's benevolent, all-seeing eye.

 

The program is "potentially the widest infringement of the rights of Muslim students that there ever has been in this country," Wakkas Khan, president of a national Islamic student group, told the Guardian. "It is clearly targeting Muslim students and treating them to a higher level of suspicion and scrutiny. It sounds like you're guilty until you're proven innocent."

 

Here, of course, Khan has defined the organizing principle of the Bush-Blair "War on Terror," where thousands have disappeared into prisons and torture rooms without charges, without defense, and very often without any evidence whatsoever, beyond perhaps the word of a paid snitch, a bounty hunter, a personal enemy or an over-zealous security op looking to make his bones. Blair, like Bush with his warrantless surveillance program (to cite just one of many tyrannical examples), is simply bringing the Terror War home."

Edited October 25, 2006 by Colrom

[Colrom]

Chris Floyd is much more well spoken than I am. Here is the second section of his article which deals more concretely with the issues we have been discussing here. I was impressed with his presentation.

 

I'm not going to post the last part. You can find that if you care to by following the link

 

"What is surprising, however, is the suddenness of the current campaign, and its blunt, even coarse nature. It exploded out of nowhere with an article in a small regional paper, an October 6 column written by the local MP, Jack Straw - leader of the House of Commons and former foreign secretary. In the latter capacity he was one of the prime enablers of the illegal invasion of Iraq, serving as a key conduit between Blair and Bush as they connived to manipulate their nations into war - a deceitful process well-documented by the Downing Street Memos.

 

In his column, this paragon of moral rectitude complained about veiled women coming to his office seeking constituent services. The fact that he couldn't see their faces made him feel all wiggly, Straw said (in so many words), and he found it hard to communicate with them. They should all just stop it. In fact, UK Muslims in general should stop being so strange and separate, and try much harder to assimilate further into British society.

 

As was no doubt intended, Straw's comments instantly ricocheted around the national media, where they conveniently knocked the frenzy of violence and chaos in Iraq off the front pages. The article also dovetailed, again most conveniently, with another minor story, about a young teaching assistant who had been fired for refusing to remove her veil in front of male colleagues, although she didn't wear it in front of students. Another Blair cabinet minister leapt showily into this strictly local matter, backing the school's action - even as yet another Blair minister publicly denounced British Airways for demanding that a Christian flight attendant remove her cross while on duty. BA actually prohibits the wearing of all jewellery on chains by attendants, not just crosses, but this point of fact was lost in the fine media frothing about the airline's "religious discrimination" against Christians - jeremiads that appeared alongside angry calls for "banning the veil."

 

As the days went by, more Blair ministers joined the fray, which spread from attacks on the veil to stern lectures on the Muslim community's stubborn refusal to integrate properly and its collective failure to denounce terrorism with sufficient self-abasing rigor. These grievous shortcomings were leading to "dangerous divisions" in British society, the Blairites said, and fuelling the alarming rise of hard-right factions like the British National Party.

 

Here was an echo of old hate-mongering campaigns. Who was responsible for Germans' hatred of the Jews, according to the Nazis? Why, the Jews themselves, of course, swanning around with their weird get-ups and strange rituals and their terrorist conspiracies. As Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland noted this week, "I try to imagine how I would feel if this rainstorm of headlines substituted the word 'Jew' for 'Muslim' - I wouldn't just feel frightened. I would be looking for my passport."

 

Tory leaders - sensing that Blair was, once again, outflanking them from the right - leapt into the breach. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, berated Muslims for fostering an "involuntary apartheid," adding that their intransigence was breeding national division that "could corrode our society." The security organs also got in on the act, with a leak to the Times about an unnamed "terrorist suspect" who avoided capture for a few days "by allegedly disguising" himself in a burka.

 

Meanwhile, Tony Blair - the most ostentatiously Christian prime minister in Britain since William Gladstone prowled the streets in his off-hours looking for prostitutes to save - kept quiet for days as the official furor grew and eventually, inevitably, spilled into the streets. Attacks on Muslims sharply increased, the Independent noted. One mosque was set on fire, another was battered by a brick- throwing mob, who then stabbed a Muslim teenager. Several Muslim women had veils torn from their faces in the street, while verbal assaults and threats escalated.

 

Finally, Blair broke his silence in order to ... calm the storm? call for unity and tolerance? urge the nation to move on to more important matters? No, of course not. Instead, he heaped more coals on the fire, at one point even refusing point-blank to say that a Muslim woman in a veil could make a contribution to society. "That's a very difficult question," he said. Having thus segregated these women from the rest of society, relegating them to the status of useless parasites, he went on to denounce the veil as a "mark of separation."

 

Blair's hypocrisy here is compounded by the fact that he is probably more responsible that any other individual for fostering religious divisions in British society today. He has lavished state funding on a vast expansion of "faith-based" schools, each under the rule of single religion - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Greek Orthodox, Seventh Day Adventist - excluding most children of other faiths. Yet it is a 24-year-old teaching assistant in a veil - not Blair - who is fostering religious "separatism."

 

At every turn, it seemed, the British Establishment - an overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, closely-knit network drawn almost entirely from a tiny group of elite schools and universities, and ensconced in unassailable sway and privilege, including the full, dread power of the state - was condemning a tiny, overwhelmingly powerless minority for the social and political ills of the nation."

Edited October 25, 2006 by Colrom

[Dark Moth]

It is actually (although, some people consider it more of a request)... and, yes, I've read the Qu'ran in the original form (yes, arabic) and understood it before people want to tell me what they think they know about my religion

 

Regardless of that, I take the side of the school and BA in both these cases... one should respect people's religions... and the terms and conditions of a company/workplace

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Holy crap - it's Launch!

 

 

I'm a little divided on this issue. A person should be able to conform to a company's standards if they want to work there. However, I think companies should be considerate to the needs of their employees. Did the article ever state why they weren't allowed? Is it because the articles go against company dress policy (i.e. they don't allow jewelry), or because they just don't allow the display of religious symbols.

Edited October 25, 2006 by Dark Moth

[tarna]

The point is that humiliating someone publically and forcing them to conform to petty standards is itself not "understanding" of others.

'Humiliating someone publically and forcing them' my dying ass. She knew the working conditions when she interviewed and chose to continue working there even though the school officials' requirements came into conflict with her religious views. That being the case, she chose to try to make the school conform to her standards. This doesn't sound a little stupid to you?

Also, with regard to the teacher's aid there was no condition of dress in the job - so far as I can tell. The claim about difficulty in hearing her speak seems bogus and likely manufactured to bring out the issue of her ethnicity, religion, and dress - considering the background of the school.

Possibly so but she chose to make a public stand by seeking notoriety in this issue, possibly even hoping some simple smucks would cry that she was being a poor abused Muslim woman. Bulls**t!

This type of widespread public bullying of a powerless local minority is fundamentally wrong and often a forrunner to rationalizations of violence.

Been out of the loop for a while? Does Paris ring a bell? London maybe?

It is ironic that many Muslims seem eager to rationalize the abuse of this woman - perhaps to save themselves from the hostility they might otherwise experience.

This from a people who's fanatics 'circumsize' their women?

Not dissimilar to the behavior of certain Jews before the Holocost demonstrated that behavior was not the issue and conforming to behavioral standards was not going to be enough.

Just wouldn't have been right if you couldn't bring the Nazis into this discussion somehow would it?

[Gorgon]

I wonder if we should be so eager to perpetuate a cultural practice which views women as less than men.

 

The women might very well want to wear the viel, but what one should consider is what their daughters would really wan't if they didn't have peer pressure to conform to the custum.

 

Although there is no real comparision, take female genital mutilation, the practice is typically performed by women who have been subjected to it themselves. Just goes to show just how powerful these pressures can be if a woman is prepared to do something so abhorable to her own daughter just in order to conform.

Edited October 25, 2006 by Gorgon

[Pop]

I wonder if we should be so eager to perpetuate a cultural practice which views women as less than men.

That's, uh, most practices of just about every culture, ever.

 

The women might very well want to wear the viel, but what one should consider is what their daughters would really wan't if they didn't have peer pressure to conform to the custum.

 

Although there is no real  comparision, take female genital mutilation, the practice is typically performed by women who have been subjected to it themselves. Just goes to show just how powerful these pressures can be if a woman is prepared to do something so abhorable to her own daughter just to conform.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To my knowledge, women generally perform genital mutilation on younger women, but they don't usually do it to themselves. Which is the difference. We have to distinguish that which a society coercively imposes upon women, and that which women impose upon themselves, at society's behest. Mutilation belongs in the former category, and this particular incident of veil-wearing belongs in the latter category (although in many places and situations, it would fall into the former)

 

Despite the fact that the practice effectively commodifies women, it would not sit well with many people to deny them their right to choose for themselves whether or not to wear the veil, which is the case here.

[Tigranes]

Question, DL: Why is it then the wearing of the Veil was not a widespread practice as it is now, before the 19th century?

[Gorgon]

Well, it's impossible to circumcise yourself, but I suppose if the women had any kind of choice in the matter the custum would eventually die out. The concept that bears comparison is that women who have been subjected to it themselves turn around and do it to the next generation, knowing full and well how painful and destructive it is.

 

Wearing a veil is neither painful or destructive, but the pressure to conform means that we don't hear from those young muslim women who don't want to wear the weil but do it anyway.

 

And yes, the practice is also a political manifiestation connected to Islamism. Which is fine if you are of that political persuation, but not if it means that it becomes defacto involountary.

Edited October 25, 2006 by Gorgon

[alanschu]

I'll say this - I don't have tolerance for abuse of others - even when the others are willing to go so far as to carry out the abuse themselves.

 

And I don't have tolerance for those that state unequivically on behalf of a group that they don't belong to, and have the audacity to state that opinions from the "insulted" group are wrong.

 

I frankly don't care about whether you are embarrased - I won't join the mob you represent.

 

I'm not the one embarrassed. As for my "mob," you've already joined the mob of people that feel that their opinion is higher than that of others, and are willing to speak on their behalf because they are incorrect. I am reminded of the White Man's Burden.

 

Please spare me your name calling.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I did.

 

 

The really awesome part is that you don't seem to care that despite her hardcore religious conviction to covering her face, she had no problems not covering it during interviews.