Who’s asking for special treatment?
Jon Gaunt, BBC London‘s notorious morning talk show presenter, had a feature today about two issues affecting Muslims in the UK. One was about a shopping centre in Birmingham supposedly banning Santa Claus in order to avoid offending non-Christians (and let’s face it, we can assume they were not talking about Hindus). The other is about three schoolgirls in east London, who have refused to go to school because they are not being allowed to wear the jilbab.
What links these two stories, of course, is the purported desire for “special treatment” by Muslims. As for the first story, the authenticity of which is in much doubt anyway (but which, surprise, surprise, Robert Spencer has seen fit to feature, complete with an extract from the Sun newspaper), Muslims do not demand that non-Muslims refrain from practising any aspect of their religion in their own country. I despise the Santa myths – the lie commonly fed to children that presents from their parents are actually from Santa, for instance, and the red and white gear is said to trace back to a Coca-Cola promotion between the wars – but it’s not us that demand not to see him in public.
As for the jilbab, this is a perfectly legitimate demand, since Muslims pay taxes like everyone else, and so have the right to demand that their children are educated in a manner which does not offend their religion. (Or you can look at it another way: school is compulsory, and we pay for it later in our taxes, so we have the right not to be forced to break our religious laws.) The Islamic dress code for women is quite clear: it must be long and flowing, covering all of the body except for the face and hands.
What always makes these affairs worse for religious Muslims is the tendency of some Muslims to jump in against their brothers and sisters, talking of “dispensations” which are in fact wholly false. The demand for women to cover is not an unspecific “modesty” requirement; it is pretty specific, and we arrive at the specifics by consulting the works of those familiar with the Qur’an, the Hadeeth, and how the Salaf interpreted them. People who aren’t willing to do this for themselves have no right to tell non-believers that their fellow believers are extremists. The fact is that moral responsibility in Islam starts at puberty, not at some age picked out of the air, and it may well be a source of distress for a young woman to be forced to dress inappropriately.
As for the persistent “integration” talk, situations like that currently affecting Holland are usually the result of harrassment, and of social causes which are actually unrelated to religion (such as poor ghetto housing and unemployment, which had much to do with the riots in the north of England a few years ago). Baiting people about their religion, whatever that religion may be, is a very easy way to start riots and other trouble – as happened in England in the late 19th century, when anti-Catholic agitators went round publically lampooning Catholics and their religion. Religion isn’t a socially acceptable topic of conversation, except when all those present are of the same persuasion.
Muslims have made what are relatively moderate demands – to be allowed to wear their religiously-mandated clothing, to have spaces set aside for prayers, and not to be forced to eat forbidden foods. Perfectly reasonable requests. This is at the same time as other parts of society have pushed the bounds in the opposite direction: tolerance of publically-displayed homosexuality, unabashed promiscuity, indecency and worse. Leaving aside the question of whether these girls are not better off out of the system altogether, I don’t see the jilbab as a reason why these girls should be denied the education their parents have paid for.
