Muslim girl suspended for head scarf

Craven - you know, I believe, perfectly well that taking the headscarf from a Muslim woman who believes in such stuff is far more significant than that! Or the turban from a Sikh.


That is a most unfair way to make a cat nice. What are you DOING putting scarves on the poor thing?

People believe all kinds of things. while in school I considered it a grave affront to my religion to read Jack London. His rantings about how life was cheap was something I took offense to and I wrote the school and they made my teacher exempt me from reading it.

She gave me bad grades for the rest of the year and I realize now that I was just being an ass. I disagree with Jack London but I had no real problem with the book.

Like I said, many people place inordinate import on silly things. I know that to the Muslim woman taking her headscarg is a grave offense but there are always grave offenses.

If precluding grave offenses is all that matters let's just put it this way. I am sure that there is someone in that school who thinks it's a grave offense to make exceptions to the headwear rule for the Muslim girl.

Stalemate.

Now hopefully it is apparent that the criteria simply can't be what offends people. People will always take offense for silly things.

You compare it to a Sikh's turban, I find that relevant. Should society not take identifying photographs of people who claim that photos would take away their soul?

Probably not. So I don't see why the degree to which someone would be offended is an argument you use. You know perfectly well that there are plenty of frivolous offense taken.

What it boils down to is the method through which a school enforces its rules. A headscarf is not an inexorable part of the Muslim religion. As such no exceptions are being made. Whether it should be an exception or not is debatable. But individuals taking offense is, by itself, a meaningless argument. Someone will always take offense at every rule.

The argument should be whether the cost/benefit of the rule is worth it. Not how offended the girl is. Every rule offends someone.

re au's link


The leader of the conservative opposition Christian Democrats (CDU), Angela Merkel, has sharply criticized this decision made by the country's highest court over the wearing of a headscarf by a Muslim teacher. The decision, which was made about a fortnight, ruled that school authorities in Stuttgart were wrong to bar a female Muslim teacher from taking up a teaching job because she insisted on wearing her headscarf in the classroom. The court also left it up to the federal states to enact legislation, if they wanted, to expressly forbid religious symbols in the classroom. The headscarf "stood for an image that is difficult to reconcile with individual dignity and our Christian-Jewish influenced heritage and enlightenment." Merkel told the conservative/protestant weekly Rheinischer Merkur. "I don't want a teacher who wears a cross around his neck to be treated in the same way as a woman with a headscarf," she said.

I will wear the part of your argument thast says it is not an essential part of the Muslim religion to cover your head if you are a woman.

For the rest, I could run you an argument about how it is possible, although difficult, to weigh the relative importance of various offences - but I have to keep writing elsewhere.

You WERE being an ass - but the teacher shouldn't have marked you down - you musta been some cat to herd! LOL.

Oh she didn't give me a hard time just for that. She had issued with class control and I was consistently an ass. She got me back by barring my entry into honors English for the next grade. I apologized to her for being an ass and she apologized to me for preventing me from being in honors English.

It worked out well, my next teacher was about 22 and she knew less about English than I did so she sent me to the library every day. I spent the next grade of English reading the sports paper.

American schools are some of the finest institutions on earth. American kids manage to make them horrible.

This is why I support the school rules that I despised back then. It's amazing how much power to disrupt education that America grants its students.

Hmmmm - sounds badder....than here, I mean.

And now a word from the French:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/979081.asp?0cv=CB20

So it's not just an American rube school in Muskogee, (btw that's NOT where Oral Roberts University is, that's in Tulsa), but also Germany and now France who are spending valuable school time on the symbols of superstition.

There is always a tradeoff of rights when an individual lives in a society. Receiving a public (free) education may require only some reduction of freedom for one person and a great deal more for another. If a person, or their parents, do not want to want the tradeoff, they must find other means of gaining the same education.

Sophia: regarding the examples you gave about the inhaler and the knife. In the first case, the school is a twit, if you can call an institution a twit.
Inhalers are clearly not what is intended for stricture by the rules.
In the second, the MOTHER is a twit and so is the son who upon seeing the knife in his lunch ought to have taken it to the nearest teacher instead of waiting to be outed.

I agree that the school was a "twit" but inhalers ARE the type of drug covered by the rule. The rule in question is not about narcotics but is a prohibition of sharing prescription drugs. The rule is essential for protecting schools from lawsuits. I think an exception is in order for such an extreme situation but the act was a breach of a reasonable rule.

Inhalers are specific to a condition and contain nothing that would make anyone to want to share, no happy effects if you will. Their inclusion, even if they are prescription, makes no sense, medical or otherwise.

Here's a lawsuit scenario: the girl, struggling to breathe, signals to her boyfriend to give her his inhaler, he refuses knowing that it is a violation.
She dies. Who's liable?

Well, I've already agreed that in that situation the saving of a life clearly renders moot any school policy. But the rules generally aren't intended just for "happy" drugs either, and the rule can't possibly name which drugs are exempt. But like I said, in the case of a medical emergency exceptions to the rules are, IMO, the only sane policy. I'd equate it to how abulances are exempt from certain traffic laws.

I agree with cravens view entirely, consider this, in britain it is illegal to ride a motorcycle without a crash helmet, unless you are a sikh, it was decided years ago that they should be exempt from british law, religious reasons forbids them to remove their turbans. I never did work out why they just weren't banned from riding motorbikes.

If I have sex with a twelve year old girl I am quite rightly branded a paedophile, jailed, and put on the paedophile register for life.

A few years ago an Iranian man in Salford Lancashire was accused of this crime but his defence was "I am entitled to take a girl of this age for my wife, this is how it is where I come from"

My argument has always been "when in rome you do as the romans do" and in the free spirit of world cooperation I'm off to open a bar in riyhad, wish me luck.

Completely agreed!
And that means, obeying the ('Roman') local law: British law says, it's illegal to ride a motorcycle without helmet. other you are a Sikh.

Opening a bar in Riyadh wiil most certainly get trouble with the local jurisdiction, since it might well be forbidden by Saudi-Arabina laws.



So he wasn't sentenced by Manchester Crown Court? Or are you just quoting (from where???) a usual defense, as said by any accused?

Take the argument to an extreme .... had the scarf been an actual halo, would the same action be taken?

While I am not versed in Islamic law the Christian answer lies in this passage.

Matthew 22:15-22

15. Then the Pharisees went away, and took counsel how they might entrap him in his words. 16. And they send to him their disciples, with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, and carest not for any man; for thou regardest not the person of men. 17. Tell us then, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? 18. But Jesus, perceiving their wickedness, saith, Why do you tempt me, hypocrites? 19. Show me the tribute money. And they presented to him a denarius. 20. And he saith to them, Whose is this image and inscription? 21. They say to him, Caesar's. Then said he to them, Render therefore to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's. 22. And having heard these things, they wondered, and left him, and went away.

Walter, it was decided that since having a twelve year old girl for a wife was legal where the man came from, that it was not unreasonable for him to think that he had the same "rights" in Britain, and he was exonerated of criminal charges.

My problem with this is that it only works one way, as I lightheartedly said, try opening a bar in saudi arabia and claiming "hey this is our way"

Could you please give me the source for that (would be the same, from where you got the other quotation, I suppose).



Well, not only you have this problem: laws in different countries are different, and Rom is neither York (even in Eboracum the law was different) nor Medina.

(So it could be for example in some time that a Muslim teacher is allowed to wear a scarf in my state, but not in Bavaria.)

De Kere is correct. Schools cannot function if they have to bow to every demand.

Sometimes people forget that schools have LOCAL boards. In many large city school systems, Hispanic Parents on the Local School boards have set up stringent rules about dress codes- E. g. Blue pants and skirts and white shirts and blouses.

The objective is not to allow the "gangbangers" to bring their turf wars to the school.

If the Muslim girl's parents feel that it is unconstitutional for the girl not to be allowed to wear a head covering, they should go to the courts.

Walter, is the Church a strong presence in education in Bayern?

Might be that they run some more private schools than elsewhere in Germany.

(I guessed correctly: more than 14% of Bavarian higschools ("Gymnasium" in German) are private=mostly catholic.)

In all German schools -besides in some of the "new states" (=former GDR) religious education is compulsory subject (although pupils can drop it, when 14). This religious education is partly done by clergy - as teacher (civil servant, with another subject) or part time (being a parish priest).

But definately the influence of the (catholic) church in Bavaria is the same as in times of the "Königreich Bayern". (Exception: Munich. Even stronger: rural districts. The strongest: Wolratshausen [hometown of Prime Minister Stoiber.)

Hmmmm, Kev - perhaps I might become rich dsigning special motor-cycle helmets for safety-conscious Sikhs? It seems a brutal form of natural selection is operating amongst them in Britain!

dlowan,

truth is I've never seen a sikh gentleman riding a motorbike, and without protective headgear its to be hoped none of them do.

The point is that the rules, and the laws should apply to all citizens, it should not be for different groups to decide which laws they think suit them and which don't.