Muslims Making Fools of Themselves
Ali Eteraz reports: ‘Among the many gyms at Harvard University, there is now one which for six out of the seventy hours its open, becomes “women’s only” in order to make it easy for conservative Muslim women to work out. Andrew Sullivan opposes it, calling it Sharia at Harvard. Mathew Yglesias isn’t particularly threatened.’
First of all, Volokh doesn’t think it violates Massachusetts anti-discrimination law. Muslims are going to say: well that seals it. Its legal, we can do it. Sure, but just because something is legal doesn’t mean its right: it is legal to sentence a drug-addict to a longer term than a murderer. Legal? Yes. Is the law wrong? Yes. Therefore, do not wave “the law” in my face.
I oppose this measure to the extent that it engages in religious favoritism, because the intention of the rule is to benefit Muslim women…
Muslims play a dangerous and stupid game when they start demanding things based on their Islam. Even the most conservative reading of classical Sharia reveals that Eunuchs were allowed to wander freely through the harem. In other words, a known homosexual man who has never had sex with a woman and never will, can make a powerful case under Sharia that he cannot be excluded from the gym hours. (Someone should try this just for fun — lets see if Harvard sets up an Islamic law tribunal!). If you really want to play this absurdist Islamic Law game further, then you have to ask about Lesbians. In most readings of Islamic Law it would be forbidden — haram — impermissible — unacceptable in toto — for a Muslim woman to take her clothes off in front of a known lesbian. But, do you think my good sisters are Harvard are banning known Lesbians, though? No, even though technically, they should be (and who knows, given some of the homophobia in our community, maybe down the road they will try). Do these examples seem extreme? What if a Christian men’s group wanted to block off a few hours at a gym every week where only certifiably straight men could work out?
This is why the founders of this country hoped that we could keep religion out of the public sphere, because religion opens up to an endless series of interpretations that ultimately just engender divisiveness.
I think it’s safe to assume that those who requested this are Arab Muslimas. These Muslimas are making Islam as a whole look bad, that’s one. They make all Muslims look like religious conservatives and backwards.
Two is that they live in a Western country, not in an Arab country. When you live in a country, you integrate. You adapt.
You don’t export your medieval customs to a modern country, you leave your medieval customs behind and adopt modern customs.
Furthermore, they are playing a very dangerous game. Muslims constantly charge that they should be treated equally – and they should – but some demand special treatment based on their religion nonetheless. That’s not how it works. If you demand special treatment in one way, you’re going to be specially treated in another way. In a way you don’t like.
Bad move.
Much ado over nothing, IMO. If the reports are true that a large number of students are complaining about the policy, then Harvard made the wrong decision. However, it remains a decision that is between the Harvard administration and the students that it serves. It’s not as though this group of women demanded that the laws of the state be changed so that all universities must offer women’s only hours or facilities. They petitioned the university for the accommodation, the university made a decision (perhaps the wrong one, but still- no one is asking for or being granted a legal protection for their religious practices that would step on the rights of others- they asked for and were granted that accommodation as a matter of school policy, not a matter of law.)
It’s like dietary matters- if a private company chooses to accommodate those who eat kosher or whatever, that’s a decision between that company and it’s customers. If kosher adherents asked for a law forcing all companies to do that, I’d oppose it. But the decisions in these cases are being made by a service provider, in an attempt to serve the needs of the greatest number of customers. If there are more ‘customers’ who are inconvenienced by the accommodation than there are ‘customers’ who appreciate it, then they’ve probably made the wrong decision, but that’s all it amounts to.
C. Stanley, almost, but not quite. The argument being made is that accomodating these customs lends them a credibility they do not have, and encourages the perpetuation of traditions that have no place in a modern society.
Think of it this way. What if Harvard were setting aside a special part of the cafeteria, or special hours at the gym, that were white-only, so that confirmed racists could comfortably eat or work out without the presence of non-whites. Let’s assume for a moment that this were legal (nevermind I would wonder about the legality of the real story, since it’s discrimination based on gender, males being excluded), would you argue it were anything but wrong?
She wouldn’t Claudia, because that’s not based on religion. Religious people deserve special treatment you know.
They don’t of course (and I’m not trying to harp on Christine), and I think it’s very wrong and stupid to give religious people the impression that they, somehow, are allowed to discriminate, etc. just because they can defend this based on their religion.
That’s not what it should be about: religion or not, you’re not allowed to make a distinction between people like this. Or you shouldn’t be.
And remember, this debate is actually not about whether it’s legal or not (it probably is). It’s about whether Muslims should do this and whether Westerners should accomadate it.
Claudia, as I just responded to another commenter, the comparisons to racial segregation just don’t hold up here. There are reasons- sometimes religious, but also sometimes nonreligious- that people sometimes prefer to engage in certain activities in facilities that exclude people of the opposite gender. Bathrooms, for example, and lockerooms. There is nothing wrong or discriminatory about that type of segregation.
There is NO legitimate reason to say that the races should be segregated. Anyone who feels that way is simply a bigot. There are reasons that women don’t want to exercise in gyms with men. For some of those women the reasons relate to their religion, for other women, religion has nothing to do with it.
Again, if the women were demanding that the university must accommodate them because their religion forbids them to use the gym with men, that would be wrong. As far as I’ve seen, what they did was ask whether the university might be able to accommodate them- and the administration felt that the accommodation could be reasonably made (and apparently they took into consideration that this wasn’t just for Muslim women, but other women favored this policy too.)
It may be worth keeping in mind during this discussion that Harvard is not a public university. Prominent though it is, it is technically just another private college. As such, it can make pretty much whatever policies it likes on this matter. (Just as it could, legally, mandate that only kosher food would be served in its cafeterias.)
Which means that Harvard’s policy is, in fact, not a matter of religion coming into the public sphere. It’s religion in the private sphere. You may think it’s a bad policy. I might agree with you. But it’s no more our call than the decision of the Catholic church that only Catholics will be given communion.
Actually, Michael, my argument is based on gender, not religion, and I’m pointing out that we allow segregated facilities based on gender all of the time, when there’s a modesty issue that would make it uncomfortable for the genders to perform certain activities in mixed company.
Exactly, wj.
Should do what, exactly? Is there a conflict with Western values if a woman doesn’t want to have strange men leering at her sweaty thighs and breasts?
"Which means that Harvard’s policy is, in fact, not a matter of religion coming into the public sphere. It’s religion in the private sphere. You may think it’s a bad policy. I might agree with you. But it’s no more our call than the decision of the Catholic church that only Catholics will be given communion."
Unless I’m mistaken, Harvard is a public college that takes public money. That puts them in the public sphere. I’m fairly sure this is settled law as far as anti-discrimination law goes.
"Should do what, exactly? Is there a conflict with Western values if a woman doesn’t want to have strange men leering at her sweaty thighs and breasts?"
That’s not the issue. If it were, there’d be no problem since the Muslim women could simply go during the already-established "no leering" time. It’s not the thighs and breasts that’s a concern but the elbow and the wrist and the ankle.
Jimmie: what already established ‘no leering’ time? Am I missing something here?
As to the ADA laws, I don’t know how a court would decide this but it seems to me that the student activity fees represent a contract between the university and its students- and the two parties should be free to negotiate how to best serve the most students with those funds.
I don’t see how this policy is discriminatory if (as I believe I’ve read) six other gym facilities are open to men during the period that this one is closed (not to mention this one being open the rest of the day to all.) A wheelchair bound student isn’t discriminated against just because he has to use the door next to the handicapped entrance or go around a corner to use an elevator instead of stairs. Seems to me that everyone is still accommodated by the new policy- but in any case, I still maintain that it’s between Harvard admin and students to decide if that’s so.
Jimmie, Harvard is a private college, as opposed to a state college or university such as the Unviersity of Massachusettes. That is, it is a private corporation engaged in education, neither an institution of the state government nor even a public (i.e. with stock owned by the public) corporation.
Yes, it takes money from the Federal (and probably state) governments. Just as any business may have contracts with the government. And those contracts come with strings attached. But it still doesn’t make it a government institution in any sense that the founders would have recognized.
My school didn’t have women only gym hours (probably because we had only one gym), but we did have some women only exercise classes. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decent number of non-Muslim women went simply because they don’t like be oggled by frat boys when they work out. I think the fact that this time was arranged by a religious organization is missing the point. We already accept some forms of gender discrimination with things such as public restrooms. There is no categorical distinction between the two, it is just a matter of degree.
So the question is, where do we draw the line. This is certainly less drastic than building separate gyms for men and women, as we do with restrooms, and the basic concern is the same: that a member of the opposite sex will see a body part we don’t wish displayed. We are not just talking about wrists and ankles, but tight fitting spandex.
Can someone give me a logical distinction I’m not seeing here?
Kevin: on PoliGazette Radio Ali Eteraz made a very good point today. Namely, that they could’ve said that it was out of secular reasons (not comfortable, etc.) but that their mistake was to strictly give religious reasons. I agree with that completely.
I agree somewhat with Ali on that, but not completely.
Would have been better for the group to have phrased their request that way (and to have found a broader coalition of students who perhaps wanted the change in policy as well, for gender based reasons and not strictly religious ones.) And I agree with Ali that in our secular political system, it’s important for religious people to make that distinction (I felt that way about Huckabee, for example, when he made his statement about changing the Constitution- phrase it differently and I would have agreed with him, but the way he said it was as though the basic idea was to have the Constitution changed to MAKE it agree with God’s law, and that’s not the right concept at all.)
But this is a bit different because no one was asking for any law to give preferences based on religion; they were asking for a university policy that would accommodate them. Those policies should be decided on the basis of accommodating as many students as possible, and if the change could be made to assist these students with their needs (whether based on gender or religion or both) without putting any real inconvenience on the rest of the student body, then there’s nothing wrong with that. As I understand it, it certainly seems the case that the university considered it that way, because this was only one of six similar facilities, it was the one that was in the most remote location, and access to men is only for a few of the many hours that it is open for use.
This decision is just so far removed from any legal preferential treatment that I find it hard to understand why people are making such a big deal over it. It would be far different if groups of Muslims were petitioning to the state for laws that would require gender only facilities on the basis of their religion.