T. Belman. I had another reaction. I don’t want to be a minority among Muslims. As the world changes, I want to hold on to what was. Does that make me a racist? Probably so. I don’t like the idea of shopping in a store where half the people serving me are wearing hijabs. I don’t want to accommodate to that. I don’t want to be constantly reminded that they are Muslims.
In Israel, at least in Jerusalem most Arab women wear them. I can tolerate that because they are a minority and we live in two different worlds.
In America twenty years ago in most schools you weren’t allowed to be tribal, i.e., wear your gang’s or tribe’s insignia. I think this is what Europe is trying to enforce. In other words, it is in the interests of peaceful relations that our differences be minimized rather than accentuated.
I believe that Israel and America should keep their numbers to a minimum in order to preserve what is. Part of the problem, as I see it is that, Islam is an enemy of my world be it secular or Jewish. I don’t buy into the idea of multiculturalism. I believe in the melting pot for America and a strong Jewish majority in Israel. I believe that it is the other who should be forced to accommodate to us, not the other way around.
I don’t care if that is racism, nor do I care if the world considers Zionism as racism. I reject the idea that all religions are equal. I reject the idea that we must diminish ourselves to accommodate the other. We have no obligation to allow others, the progressives, to decide what is good or bad behavior.
I believe that the majority are on my side of the argument. Why should this majority have to accommodate to the minority rather than requiring the minority to accommodate to the majority.
If Islam or a majority of Muslims want to dominate us, we are entitled to defend ourselves. This means less accommodation and less emigration. There I said it and I am glad.
Hijab on the job. How will this play out?
On June 1st, the Supreme Court “reversed and remanded” Samantha Elauf’s high profile lawsuit concerning her right to wear a hijab at work back to the Tenth Circuit’s appeals court for further proceedings.
Elauf, represented by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had been awarded $20,000 by a jury at the trial level; that award was vacated by the appeals court. Now, when the appeals court revisits the case, they may reinstate that jury award.
The Supreme Court decision states that a private employer must “accommodate” an employee’s religious rights on the job:
“An employer may not make an applicant’s religious practice, confirmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions…Title VII gives favored treatment to religious practices, rather than demanding that religious practices be treated as no worse than other practices.”
On the one hand, this decision is a superb example of how American law protects religious freedom. Unlike French law, in which a neutral, secular state is envisioned as the best way to level the playing field among private religious differences, American law is grounded in “accommodating” the religious differences among immigrants and their descendants who wish to enjoy the American dream of freedom from tyranny and the right to exercise religious beliefs without coercion or punishment.
The decision explicitly rejects a “neutral” policy: “Title VII requires otherwise-neutral policies to give way to the need for an accommodation.”
Thus, Sikhs wearing turbans, nuns wearing habits, Muslims wearing beards, prayer caps, and headscarves (hijab), Jews wearing kippahs, side-locks, and other head coverings, have now trumped private enterprise dress codes such as the one previously enacted by Abercrombie and Fitch—the employer whom the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued on Elauf’s behalf.
The Qur’an mandates “modesty” for both men and women. This has, variously, come to mean headscarves, face veils (niqab) and full body bags (burqas) for women and beards and skull caps for men.
On the other hand, one wonders if religious “accommodation” might next be claimed for the Islamic face mask. The decision states that “Samantha Elauf is a practicing Muslim who, consistent with her understanding of her religion’s requirements, wears a headscarf.”
Somewhere, surely, there must be a Muslim woman who believes that face-masking is also, “in her understanding,” a religious requirement. What then? Will courts rule that such an “understanding” must be “accommodated” or that it is trumped by an American definition of human and women’s rights—and by the public’s need for security?
I have one other gnawing fear. It is to America’s credit that we believe in “accommodating” religious freedom.
However, when we extend such blessed tolerance to a religion such as Islam—many of whose followers are religious supremacists, religiously intolerant, and some who convert via the sword, and execute infidels and apostates—what sort of whirlwind may we be unleashing?
Also appeared on Bretibart.
@ Ted Belman:
“I entered the minefield to open the conversation. I don’t have a problem being out numbered by orthodox Jews but I do with Muslims. So what is the difference?”
It is the difference between civilization and barbarism.
I don’t have a problem with Orthodox/Hasidic Jews as I do with Muslims, since the former are not going to exterminate me.
However, a lot of Jewish women I know (and probably same with those you know, Ted, even in Israel), short of being exterminated, fear the same loss of liberty and political rights with the Hasidim that they do with Islam.
On this, there is a big difference between “Orthodox” (say, a Naftali Bennett, for example), and the Haredim – and the Haredim are much higher birth rates, and women have a much more restricted role in the Hasidic world.
I entered the minefield to open the conversation. I don’t have a problem being out numbered by orthodox Jews but I do with Muslims. So what is the difference? Perhaps its because the Muslims represent a threat to me and my freedoms. Orthodox Jews don’t. In addition we are part of the same family. Were orthodox Jews to grow in numbers and strength and want to impose their values on me they would become a threat to me but not in the fundamental way Sharia is a threat to me. They both want modesty and separation of sexes but Sharia is way more draconian in the penalties it proscribes.
I don’t want to hear goiyim talk like this about my fellow Orthodox, esp Chasidic, Jews, so I don’t like to talk like this about members of other religions.
But I am for strictly controlling immigration of Muslims into the West because they have many children and are becoming a strong minority here, demographically and politically, and will soon start bullying and intimidating the rest of us here.
It’s very politically incorrect to mention this issue; accusations of racism follow. But this blithe naiveté will bring about our destruction here.