Harvard Muslims Don’t Need to Assimilate
Filed under: American, Education, Islam, Political Correctness — marc moore on February 27, 2008 @ 6:07 am CET
Harvard University has accepted a Muslim group’s petition to close the school’s Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center to me for an hour a day so that Muslim women can work out without the presence of men in the gym.
Men have not been allowed to enter the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center during certain times since Jan. 28, after members of the Harvard Islamic Society and the Harvard Women’s Center petitioned the university for a more comfortable environment for women.
…
[Harvard Islamic Society’s Islamic Knowledge Committee officer Ola] Aljawhary said that she does not believe that the women-only gym hours discriminate against men.
"These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms not because they don’t want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way," she said.
Though the policy was in part initiated by the school’s Islamic group, Aljawhary said women-only hours are not a case of "minority rights trumping majority preference" and said women of different faiths have showed interest in the hours.
That statement is, of course, not true. It would be easy to either write this off to an overly P.C. administration at Harvard or to genuine respect for women’s rights. Both, I suspect, are true in large part. However, a casual Google search reveals a pattern of similar cases at both public and private colleges across the U.S. that is too sizable to ignore.
That pattern is one of Muslim students consistently failing to assimilate to the culture of this country. This failure should come as no surprise given similar but more overtly destructive examples of the same behavorial pattern all across Europe, most recently in Denmark.
Rather than joining in the American melting pot, some American Muslims are deliberately using the administrative weakness of our institutions of higher education to promote their agenda of separatism. For this reason it is imperative that American universities - and Americans at large - stop accepting baseless claims of discrimination from Muslim groups, start making independent judgments about what is right and wrong, and consistently refuse to give in to these minority groups’ demands for preferential treatment at the expense of others.
1 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 8:00 am CETMuslim women are exceptional. In case you haven’t figured that out on your own…
Here are two words for your 21st century vocabulary:
Haremlik: space belonging to females
Selamlik: space belonging to males
E.g., separate seating sections for women and men in a theater.
2 A. A. B.
February 27, 2008 @ 1:55 pm CETI wonder why Muslim men in Harvard don’t ask for a similar arrangement.
Oh I have seen so many Muslim men, cleanshaven, in t-shirts and jeans, but
forcingmaking sure that their wives wear traditional garb including the headscarf.I mean, hey, if women let themselves be repressed and brainwashed in third world countries or amongst uneducated immigrants in Europe, I have a certain understanding for that. Even für Hayrünisa Gül, I have a certain understanding, she is intelligent, but her husband is treating her (relatively) nicely and so she has developped an emotional attachment to him that prevents her from throwing off the türban. (Don’t get me wrong, these things are wrong and need to be changed, but I kind of understand how they come about).
But I fail to understand how Harvard students, who are supposed to belong to the most intelligent and best educated in the world, can ask for segregated sports instead of actually thinking about ways to counter oppression by Muslim males.
3 Claudia
February 27, 2008 @ 3:10 pm CETA.A.B, pardon me if this sounds a bit presumptous, because I’m far from an expert on the matter, but I don’t really think it works that way.
I think it’s a mistake to think that all Muslim women are just itching to take off the head-scarf, put on those jeans and assert themselves as equals, but don’t do so because of fear of punishment. I think they are willing participants in their own repression. Oh don’t get me wrong, they are victims, but their victimization runs so deep that it becomes a part of their psyche. They really believe that this is the best way for women to be. Remember, children in traditional households are brought up almost entirely by their mothers. It’s not men teaching girls they are lesser and should obey, it’s other women. And if you belong to a culture that teaches you to retreat from the outside world, and live in a society that tolerates that, you’ll likely take those attitudes with you wherever you go.
Some of those Harvard girls might actually be doing that because their male peers pressure them to, but many will do it because they, in their hearts, think that they are doing the right thing. Even within the confines of the US they will have learned to mistrust strange men, to feel uncomfortable in situations that are "improper".
4 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 3:45 pm CETIt’s breathtaking the lengths that some people will go to, twisting logic to explain behavior of other women which just might happen to represent a choice those women are freely making. Why is it so impossible to think that culturally, these women just reject our Western gender roles? That they don’t want to adopt either the gender blurring or the oversexualized dress codes of modern Western culture?
No, it couldn’t be that- must be repression and brainwashing and Stockholm syndrome, I guess.
Note that I’m not agreeing that the universities should accomodate their preferences; if you choose a lifestyle that doesn’t conform to the norm, you have to pay the price instead of expecting preferential treatment. The women who don’t want to work out in a coed environment should seek other exercise venues.
5 Jason
February 27, 2008 @ 5:07 pm CETHear, hear.
The assumption of many liberal elites, especially in academia, is that their value system is objectively good and that any women or minorities that don’t accept it must automatically be assumed to be the "victims" of brainwashing and "oppression".
The contradiction between those attitudes and the grand moralistic pretenses of multiculturalism are staggering.
At the school where I did grad school and was a TA, I often had students who wore headscarves. I never saw any sign that this was involuntary or that they were “victims”. Of course, the hypothesis that they are really the victims to the point of being complicit in their own victimization is convenient because it is impossible to falsify. No matter what the “victim” says, it can be interpreted by the activist as merely being evidence of their “victimhood”.
6 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 5:46 pm CETI’m glad we agree on something today, Jason.
I think I see through this because I feel I’ve been on the receiving end, when people speak of Catholicism as a misogynistic religion and they indicate that my acceptance of it (including prohibition of abortion and artificial birth control) must be due to a brainwashing effect. That may not be falsifiable, but I’d think that my postgraduate education level and the fact that I’ve actually studied the theology that the Church doctrine is based on (unlike the critics, who have no clue), might at least provide some evidence that I’m thinking for myself on these issues.
7 A. A. B.
February 27, 2008 @ 6:27 pm CET@Claudia #3
"I think they are willing participants in their own repression. Oh don’t get me wrong, they are victims, but their victimization runs so deep that it becomes a part of their psyche. They really believe that this is the best way for women to be."
I strongly agree, but as I said, this is something I can understand (though not agree with) in the case of average girls. But a Harvard student should definitely have the mental capacities to detach herself from this kind of indoctrination and be able to think on her own. If she is unable to do this, what the heck is she doing in Harvard?
@CStanley#4
" Why is it so impossible to think that culturally, these women just reject our Western gender roles?"
In fact, they partially reject them and partially they do not. If they were to completely reject them, they would become housewives and not get an Ivy league education. The point is: In the part of their brain they actively control, they do want to succeed in their professional lives, get an education and so on. But the headscarf is something they do not actively think about, it is something they have been conditioned (as BF. Skinner uses the term) to favor.
I also believe that the United States and its legal and constitutional system is built on certain values. Look at the Constitution, look at the Declaration of Independence. Didn’t Patrick Henry say "Give me liberty or give me death?" Why should the US now accomodate totalitarian interpretations of Islam? Communism was rejected, Social Democracy as in President Roosevelt’s New Deal was accepted. The same should be done with Islam. A religion seperate from the state should be accepted, interpretations that seek to impose different laws for themselves, as happening in Harvard now, should be rejected.
@Jason#5
"The assumption of many liberal elites, especially in academia, is that their value system is objectively good"
Personally, I’m always open for discussion. But I fail to see how Sharia law (a distortion of the Coran, in my personal opinion) that makes women second class human beings, who are considered guilty if they get raped, after all they arouse men etc. would be objectively just as good or bad as democracy and equality of sexes.
8 Jason
February 27, 2008 @ 7:34 pm CETThe equation of wearing headscarves with all of Sharia law and its most vile interpretations is a false equation. I seriously doubt that every woman who wears a headscarf is also endorsing rape and beating of women. Get serious.
BTW, the claim that democracy is good is a contestable opinion, not an objective fact. There are many criticisms of democracy as a form of governance.
9 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 7:54 pm CETROTFL! No, we certainly can’t conclude that you are wrong to equate wearing of headscarf with stupidity and blind submission to a repressive order- it’s the Harvard admission process that must be flawed. Phew, I’m glad we figured that one out!
10 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 8:50 pm CETOkay, on the one hand, you have a group of people professing belief in a system where women are to be segregated from strange men, and be in cover-ups outside home. On the other hand, this group comprises quite a few men who are capable of punishing rape victims, sometimes violently, for shaming their family or society, which can only mean that these victims did something wrong. (Otherwise, why be ashamed, right?).
And the challenge is proving that these are decoupled phenomena, or at least, that the second ancient custom can be eradicated while women rally for their right to be in cover-ups. Too bad that civil rights were not established by blacks’ rallying for their right to sit in the back of the bus. We’d have had an idea if they had done that.
11 A. A. B.
February 27, 2008 @ 9:09 pm CET@Jason#8
"The equation of wearing headscarves with all of Sharia law and its most vile interpretations is a false equation. "
I did not intend to make that equation. But I see asking for special rules in universities as a first step to ask for a different legislation, ie sharia law, for your community altogether. Many Muslims unfortunately harbor such ideas. I don’t have any number for the US, but in the UK it’s about 40%.
see here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/19/nsharia19.xml
"I seriously doubt that every woman who wears a headscarf is also endorsing rape and beating of women. Get serious."
I am not saying they do, but the obligation to wear a headscarf and the permission for a husband to beat his wife, as well as many other things, are part of the same sharia law. These girls mostly don’t actively favor that, but if you show them some old style sheikhs who "prove" them that this is part of Islam and Sharia, how many of them would actively oppose that? Using which arguments?
My claim simply is that they haven’t thought enough about all this. I know quite headscarve wearing university (non-elite European universities though) girls, they tend to be incredibly naive about all this.
And honestly, the way is not far from "I must cover my head because God wants it" to "I must accept being beaten by my husband because God wants it".
@C Stanley#9
Instead of laughing, you should actually explain why you think "to equate wearing of headscarf with stupidity and blind submission to a repressive order" is wrong.
12 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 9:11 pm CETSpeaking of fallacies, one is the idea that this is essentially a matter of individual choice or interest. Well, so are gay marriage, having an abortion, being in a polygamous relation, wanting to be put to sleep before aging beyond all dignity, etc. Why is the society at large bending backwards on pretty much all of these?
I’ve grown sick in my stomach from all that intellectualizing about this. I am with Michael and AAB: I am passing my value judgment, and calling it shit, not poo. However, when it comes to what to do about it, especially re: Turkey, I am with Christine. She has been pointing to the futility of bans and the like. And she’s right. IMHO, in 2002 and 2007 elections, Turkey opened it mouth wide to the coming bullet, now she has to bite it. Closing the mouth now (by some extrajudicial intervention) will certainly cause a lot of injury to the lips, teeth, etc.
13 Jason
February 27, 2008 @ 9:24 pm CETSee this is where your argument goes off the reality rails. The universities are not making rules that obligate the wearing of a headscarf, they are passing prohibitions. If someone was trying to force students to wear headscarves, I would join your outrage. But since they are prohibiting what is in many cases a CHOICE, the universities are essentially being just as repressive as if they obligated it. But for some reason, you think this direction is ok.
14 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 9:25 pm CETI already have, actually (comment #4 is where I posit other explanations for the women’s choices, and comment #6 is where I explain that I personally have experience with making an educated choice that other people who aren’t religious- and who haven’t bothered to read about or understand the informed religious viewpoint on issues- mistake my adherence to certain tenets of my faith for some kind of blind obedience.)
But regardless, the burden of proof is on you for your own assumption/assertion. Since you’re arguing that these women couldn’t possibly be making the choice of their own free will based on intelligent thought, it’s your turn to back up that argument.
Anyway, Edited by MvdG: Christine. No need for laughing at other commenters. This is a warning.:
My guess is that you make these ridiculous leaps past logic because your basic assumption is that no religious belief or practice can be consistent with logic and reason, and you’re simply wrong about that (and again, if you want to argue otherwise you’ll have to provide the steps that lead to that conclusion- and not proving that SOME religious believers don’t use logic, but try proving that NONE of them do.)
15 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 9:28 pm CETThe individual liberty arguments just don’t apply equally on all of these issues. In every case that you listed, some people see a societal interest in regulating the behavior (agree or disagree with them on that, but I’d hope you’d at least see that this is their point.) But what societal interest is harmed by a woman covering her hair??
16 Michael van der Galien
February 27, 2008 @ 9:30 pm CETI disagree Nihat. We see precious liberal democracy, checks and balances and all that, at work right now. The effort to stop this isn’t ‘illegal’ or undemocratic. The opposite even. It are other branches and citizens who oppose the ban.
Democracy in its essence means majority rule, but we’ve learned in the West that this is not the best way to do things (the majority can decide to kill the minority for instance). Therefore, we have checks and balances (to protect minorities). Of course checks and balances are also there to make sure that the winning / elected parties don’t do more than they’re allowed to do by voters.
Many of those who voted AKP may not necessarily agree with allowing the türban on campuses.
A.A.B: it never ceases to amaze me to see Westerners defend ludicrous demands like wearing a headscarf as "freedom" or "culture" and therefore acceptable. It’s a sign they either don’t understand the true nature of it, or don’t care. Especially considering that it has been explained time and again to them.
17 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 9:42 pm CETWell, Christine, I implied that societal interest in #10. AAB has been trying to express it himself. Whether you agree or disagree, that’s that.
18 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 9:48 pm CETNihat: proof that those phenomena are decoupled includes the multitudes of women in the US who wear headgear but don’t subject themselves to the kind of harassment that you mention, as well as other religious groups living in Western nations (where the men couldn’t get away with the kind of repressive behavior that we’re concerned with) who also practice segregation of women and modest dress (Hasiddic Jews and Quakers, for example.) I take that as proof that the phenomenon of women following religious customs regarding their clothing isn’t necessarily linked to an acceptance that they are to blame for rapes.
19 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 9:52 pm CETMichael, there is no opposition from me to Turkey’s having better checks and balances in place. I oppose extrajudicial methods, and even questionable judicial methods. And the reason is I think these would be imprudent. Bite the bullet. It won’t get better before it gets worse.
20 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 10:07 pm CETC, thanks for your proof by examples and generalities. I was however pretty specific in #10, where I pointed to a culture not a religion. But maybe that disctinction is besides the point; let’s say cultures that Islam has to deal with. I contest that those phenomena are strongly coupled in that specific context. And, it goes without saying, I am very doubtful that we’ll be better off while blacks keep insisting in sitting in the back of the bus.
21 A. A. B.
February 27, 2008 @ 10:07 pm CETC Stanley,
Sharia Islam teaches that everything that is said in the Coran and Sunna as traditionally understood by your legal school, or in the case of Wahhabis, as understood by their own religious leaders, is obligatory on the believer to accept. This includes the teaching that women have to cover up, and also the teaching that husbands are allowed to beat their wives. It also says that covering up must be done in order to prevent men from getting aroused, and if they actually get aroused and abuse the woman, it is because she was not properly covered. The whole thing is one legal system, and you cannot separate covering up from the rest.
Hassidic, or any Orthodox Jews, also believe that everything Torah, Talmud, Shulchan Aruch and the poskim, religious decisors of the community say, is obligatory. And because dress rules are part of that, they are followed. These people don’t dress up because it’s fun or tradition, but because they believe God wants it.
As for Quakers, they don’t have fixed rules, probably you meant the Amish?
22 phin
February 27, 2008 @ 10:13 pm CETBut regardless, the burden of proof is on you for your own assumption/assertion. Since you’re arguing that these women couldn’t possibly be making the choice of their own free will based on intelligent thought, it’s your turn to back up that argument.
Unfortunately, you’re absolutely wrong. I’d say about 1400 years of Muslim history and virtually every single Muslim society on the planet, including a great many in Western societies prove you wrong. The burden of proof regarding the "freedom" to wear the veil and all that other misygonistic nonsense based, hysterically, on "intelligent" and/or "rational" thought, is on Muslims, especially the douchebags who "choose" to submit.
It’s a false choice btw. It’s not so much a choice as a different mentality, in which a female is considered fundemantally inferior to the male. It also assumes that males have so little self-control over their own urges and desires that simply seeing the flesh of a woman or God forbid her magical hair (I suppose also that Muslim women’s pheromones simply become much more potent that an infidel western whore) will unleash the animal within. Frankly, as a male, I find that deeply insulting and disgusting. Although, I suppose it would be a fabulous excuse to abuse women at will–na’h that would never happen, because ya know, they say it’s because they "respect" the women…riiiiiight, "respect". Also, God or Allah comes off as a superficial, uptight asshole who cares more about appearances that actual behaviour. It’s a barbaric mentality and it should be "tolerated" as little as possible. Actually, it should be ridiculed as much as possible, as often as possible for the nonsense that it is.
23 Michael van der Galien
February 27, 2008 @ 10:21 pm CETHallelujah. Well said Phin (although I strongly disagree about the date).
The only way for people to argue that point is by ignoring history and the history of oppression of women in certain countries.
Good, and correct, explanation. That’s also why women are abused more often in families that (Force them to) wear headscarves.
Interesting that you put the "necessarily" in there. Necessarily? Perhaps not necessarily. Often? Yes.
I frequently wonder whether you have often visited those parts of the world and talked with people there (no,not an attack, merely wondering; I get the idea you’re talking about it all in theory).
People thought that in other times. It didn’t work out that well though.
24 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 10:27 pm CETNihat- the problem with your analogy to blacks sitting at the back of the bus is that there’s no other reason that they’d choose to sit exclusively there if they had a choice, while I’ve already shown that there are other reasons that women would choose the modesty of the traditional Muslim garments. You want them to reject it because you believe it’s coupled to these other noxious practices, but they don’t see it that way. If in your analogy, the back of the bus actually had some advantage that black people wanted, then it would have followed that some black people would have exercised their choice to move to other portions of the bus while some would exercise a choice to sit at the back, once the prohibitions were lifted.
AAB- yes, I stand corrected- I meant the Amish not the Quakers.
All of you who are arguing culture vs. religion are correct- it is indeed a problem in many or most Muslim cultures today that people don’t have the ability to choose to practice a more rational version of their religion (or free to choose not to practice it at all.) This is where the focus should be- on promoting freedom of religion, not banning the more extremist forms of it except to have safeguards against the things that really do violate human rights.
25 C Stanley
February 27, 2008 @ 10:30 pm CETBut it matters whether the two things are necessarily linked or often linked, because you can undo the problem in different ways depending on which it is. That’s why I’m pointing out that when these religious groups exist within a wider culture that safeguards against the use of religion for oppression, we don’t see the problem. Therefore the fix is to promote those kinds of societal changes rather than banning the one practice which isn’t really even harmful to anyone as long as its done by choice and not by force.
26 Nihat
February 27, 2008 @ 10:41 pm CETYes, C, that’s why I say ‘bite the bullet.’ I am afraid you might not agree that it’s a bullet, but so be it.
27 A. A. B.
February 28, 2008 @ 12:17 am CET@C Stanley #24
"it is indeed a problem in many or most Muslim cultures today that people don’t have the ability to choose to practice a more rational version of their religion (or free to choose not to practice it at all.) This is where the focus should be- on promoting freedom of religion, not banning the more extremist forms of it except to have safeguards against the things that really do violate human rights."
I see, but isn’t Harvard located in the US? From a legal perspective, the women there do have the ability to practice non-Sharia Islam, another religion or nothing at all. But instead, they insist on gym segregation. In your opinion, how should Americans (and also Europeans) react to these cultural problems, as you call it, in our own countries?
28 Obbop
March 5, 2008 @ 5:31 am CETJust accept it.
The general American culture is doomed.
Obey your new Muslim overlords.
29 Mark_Bee
March 5, 2008 @ 9:02 pm CETadmin: bigotry = ban
30 MEL
March 7, 2008 @ 7:15 am CETI need to ask why do we try to make them happy, when we can’t have a bible or pork even a beer in there country. Maybe it’s time for these women to rethink who is being wronged here. Just try to read a bible and drink a beer in thier country. YOU COULD BE IN JAIL FOR LIFE….
31 Steve
March 7, 2008 @ 4:38 pm CETDidnt we just go through an entire Civil Rights struggle in this country so things like segregation arent allowed?
If you, the small minority, dont like something, why not raise some funds and set up your own private gym. From what I can tell, everyone’s student funds go into these Gyms and now those contributors are denied service? Ridiculous. There is no Muslim law that is being violated here, they just feel "uncomfortable". Where in the Constitution, the so-called law of the land, is there any guarantee that you wont feel uncomfortable.
This is wrong on so many levels.
32 C Stanley
March 7, 2008 @ 4:51 pm CETYeah, Steve, can you imagine if we still had separate bathroom facilities for men and women in public places? Oh, wait.
Silly analogy. The only issue here is that it happened to be the Muslim women who petitioned for this, and people are being hypersensitive to the idea that the request for gender separation came about because it is a religious issue for these women. Ali Eratz points out that it wouldn’t have been a problem if they’d found support among non-Muslim women on campus (we know that many women prefer to exercise in women only facilities, because private facilities have arisen to meet this demand too- certainly women’s gyms aren’t springing up around the country just to serve Muslim women.)
So pragmatically, Ali is probably right, there’d have been less backlash against this if the request was made on a secular basis- yet I still think that’s only because a lot of people are overreacting. One of six student athletic facilities is being reserved for women during a few hours of the day, and some are calling this the first step toward Sharia law. Yeah, OK, whatever.
33 Bret
March 26, 2008 @ 2:37 am CETFear of the lack of assimilation of ethnic groups in recent history, drove the placement of the American flags in public classrooms, and the pledge of allegiance.
I fear that we will create laws that are Wahabi based. I feel that the Muslim religion fears western traditions based more on a fear of losing their patriarchal control than any true sense of what their deity may require.
To be Muslim=the Subjugation of women! The degree of which only varies by individual comfort level. Some more extreme than others.
Muslims in this country will try to make their religious beliefs law. It is their belief that the Koran is the law.
The question remains will our American melting pot eventually water down some of their beliefs to the point where they do not impede on the belief systems of others?
Freedom of religion is a delicate balance driven and propogated by separation of church and state. If any faith removes this balance our country will be headed toward civil war!