Mallick: Time for someone to speak up for shy girls

I'm not a Muslim and certainly no expert on Islamic doctrine and theology but I'd caution against jumping to negative conclusions. I don't know whether they state that menstruating women are "unclean" or if that's a mis-translation from Arabic. I know that Judaism (which I practice) has "taharas mispacha" - the laws of family purity which forbids contact with your wife during her period and a time afterwards, until she immerses in the mikvah (ritual bath). The Hebrew scripture has been frequently mistranslated as the woman being "unclean" when it actually refers to a ritual impurity, a concept found throughout various tenets of Judaism. Although, there is a strong concept within Judaism that it's nobody's business when a woman is on her period and that her privacy should be respected in taht regard. Which is why married men and women are discouraged from touching in public. I don't necessrily like the idea of these students being singled out but, again, I'm not a Muslim and would rather hear from them how they feel about it rather than having people like Heather Mallick try to speak on their behalf.

I also see no problem with separating men and women during prayer. This is done in Judaism as well, where there is  "mechitza" dividing the women's section from the men's in the synagogue. As a rabbi out it to me once "When a visible woman and an invisible G-d are competing for your attention, it's hard for the invisible G-d to win." I don't see how being kept separate during a prayer service constitutes a big deal if that's how people freely choose to practice their faith.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that regard.

Here's a hypothetical that I could easily see happening: a student on her period insists on praying anyway, in contravention of Islamic belief. What happens? Will she be allowed to proceed or will someone prevent her from doing so? If the latter, you now have a case of Islamic law being enforced in a public school, which is completely unacceptable.

I don't, on the whole, have an outright objection to people's religious requirements being accomodated in schools, within reason, but it does open up a can of worms.

My advice is to do what I do and send your kids to a religious school that reflects your family's value and traditions, rahter than trying to force public institutions to bend to your needs.

It is beyond inappropriate IMV.

There should be no acommodation of any religion in any public school.

Thanks for that filling out VotD, letters should be sent to the school board asap, IMV.

Hey has it occurred to anyone that the very structure of the school week/ work week is to accommodate the religious needs of Christians and Jews?

So much for secularism, eh?

Eww, yucky!  Muslims praying!  And Islam is sexist!  (Just like other patriarchal religions, of course, but at least we don't have to see the yucky sexism in the other religions, since, TOTALLY BY COINCIDENCE, I'M SURE, the weekend falls on their religious days of rest.)

And those bad, bad Muslim kids - we give them a couple of hours off on their religious day of rest to go to their place of worship, and then the ungrateful little brats go and take the rest of their day of rest off and they don't come back to class!  Hooky-playing truants!  They should be grateful that they get anything at all from us.  They should just change their day of rest to Sundays, and then they can have the whole day off, like everyone else.

And oh my god, they're dragging Muslim girls out of their classes and forcing them to go to the gym and declare to the whole school that they have their periods!  I know, because I saw it in the paper!  It's, like, SOOOOO embarrassing!  Ewwwwww!

...er...what?

They're not forcing the kids to go?  They're just making a space available for kids to fulfill their religious duties if they want to, as a religious accommodation since they don't get the same accommodation as the other kids do of having their religious days off?  The school isn't endorsing Islam?  They're not forcing Islamic prayers on the whole school?  They're not publicly funding classes on Islam? They're not forcing every girl in the whole school to don burkhas and announce their periods over the PA system?

Oh.  Er, sorry.  I guess I overreacted.

It's an imperfect solution, to be sure.  A better solution would be to arrange classes similarly to how they do it in university, so that you can choose your classes in a way that gives you a Friday off if you need it.  That way religious Muslim kids wouldn't have to go to school on their day of rest.  Other kids would probably love to be able to arrange their classes into a four-day week as well so they have the fifth day off to study, do a part-time job, develop their skills in whatever non-academic pursuits they might have, etc.

This is about religious accommodation, not about publicly funding religious education.  I am pretty hard line about no public funding for religion, but religious accommodation is a different story.  I'm not completely comfortable with the way they're overlapping a bit in this case, but sometimes the world is imperfect. 

And there are ways of discussing this issue that don't involve the sensationalist outrage and Islamophobic button-pushing that Mallick went for in that article, and the knee-jerk reactions of (mostly) white lefties that I've been seeing since this article has been making the rounds.

Maysie wrote:

Hey has it occurred to anyone that the very structure of the school week/ work week is to accommodate the religious needs of Christians and Jews?

So much for secularism, eh?

Don't forget the method of keeping track which year it is. What solutions do you offer for this travesty?

I'm also firmly in the separation of church and publicly funded school camp. Where do the girls who do not want to participate in these religious services go to counter peer, societal and parental pressure? Considering the young women who have been killed for violating parental mores, the threat is real.

You know what would be really really cool?

If there were real live Muslim women to talk about these issues from, you know, their perspective. You know, folks who actually have to live this reality. You know, everyday.

Rather than a bunch of no-nothings (and I include myself and especially include Mallick) yammering out their pie holes.

Just sayin.

Maysie wrote:

You know what would be really really cool?

If there were real live Muslim women to talk about these issues from, you know, their perspective. You know, folks who actually have to live this reality. You know, everyday.

Rather than a bunch of no-nothings (and I include myself and especially include Mallick) yammering out their pie holes.

Just sayin.

I agree with you which is why I prefaced many of my statements by saying that I'm not a Muslim or expert on their faith and cautioning against jumping to conclusions, particularly by people who don;t know what they're talking about. I thought Mallick was a great example of someone trying to speak on behalf of others...the great white liberal saviour who just KNOWS that anyone who practices a religion or doesn't share her trendy modern lefty feminist views must be soooo oppressed.

People do the same in talking about my backround and faith all the time, assuming they know my experience or feelings (or those of other members of my family) when they have no clue. The left is supposed to be tolerant and welcoming but there's a lot of hostility to people who don't fit the expected mold, particularly people of faith or people who adhere to traditional cultures, whose ideas of feminism may not including branding oneself a "slut" and marching in a "slut walk".

I agree with Maysie and said in my first post that I'd rather hear what Muslim women actually have to say about this but I haven't seen any of them posting and don't know how many there are on this board and wonder whether they'd consider it a particularly welcoming environment where they could speak openly about their faith and traditions without people labelling them as "opressed" or having their religion insulted by people who don't actually understand it.

Maysie wrote:

You know what would be really really cool?

If there were real live Muslim women to talk about these issues from, you know, their perspective. You know, folks who actually have to live this reality. You know, everyday.

Rather than a bunch of no-nothings (and I include myself and especially include Mallick) yammering out their pie holes.

Just sayin.

That would be good. As for me, all I can say was segregation on the basis of presumed and presented, (though if I'd had it in my head to present female then, I probably would've spent time in the ICU) sex made Junior High a living hell. That and having a jock-coddling gym coach teach math and science. (It's a strange experience to hate a class you're acing.) There's nothing good about reducing students to their biology instead of creating an environment where a student feels free to ask for dispensation or otherwise express themselves. I don't think parents should be allowed to put children in that sort of institution. It may work out well for many, but it can be an abusive practice and the accreditation of any kind of segregated education ought to have no place in a secular society. I'd be equally offended if they forced children to disclose their erectile status, which, at that age, is a matter of bloodflow more than anything.

As an aside my girlfriend now works for a company that requires her to wear a bra, despite the fact she is also wearing an apron, and requires the male-presenting to cover their beards... I'm well-and-truly tired of the kind of pervasive and reductionist sexism that desperately tries to turn the clock back to a fictionalized and idealized social order that never really existed... it's just so right-wing and unconservative.

Anyway, as Maysie says, I can't speak to that issue directly with great authority, only to mention superficially similar issues. There is a point where cultural relativism ends and a regime of human rights begins, but without input from the women who live this issue, it's not easy to say with absolute surety that this is one of those places. It would be for me, but I'm a very secular girl who stayed in Catholic school partly because they had less funding cuts in the 90's in Alberta and partly because my dad thought it'd toughen me up.

An excellent rebuttal by a Muslim woman:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1023918--secular...

Quote:

Because the way we pray involves bowing and prostrating ourselves, I trust most women would not want to lie prostrate with men right behind them, since this would be distracting, immodest and uncomfortable — especially as we have to stand very close together and in straight lines with no gaps in between.

Second, perhaps in a secular, Western context those who are placed in front are somehow considered special or superior, but in the Muslim frame of reference this symbolizes women’s role as the backbone of family, community and society, holding it up and allowing the community to rest on our strength.

Furthermore, this also allows mothers with babies to tend to them without disrupting the entire congregation. As for women being excused from the five daily prayers during the menstruation cycle, this is a compassionate accommodation that is very much appreciated by Muslim women. By the way, we are also exempt from fasting during the cycle and can make it up later. What a relief for those of us with PMS issues.

It is also important to note that of the five daily prayers that Muslims must perform after reaching puberty, the Friday afternoon prayer is the only one that is mandatory to be performed in a congregation and the only one that has a sermon.

Unfortunately, the inquisitors are going after the most vulnerable of society — our children — and they cannot go unchallenged. The opponents of accommodation are radicals who are bent on imposing their version of “secularism” on us and aim to destroy the centuries of effort to create a just, diverse and inclusive Canada.

Mr Tea wrote:

 I agree with Maysie and said in my first post that I'd rather hear what Muslim women actually have to say about this but I haven't seen any of them posting and don't know how many there are on this board and wonder whether they'd consider it a particularly welcoming environment where they could speak openly about their faith and traditions without people labelling them as "opressed" or having their religion insulted by people who don't actually understand it.

What do you think? This thread has been extremely insulting to all Muslims, and Muslim women in particular. Why the hell should progressive Muslims hang around babble?

Maysie wrote:

Mr Tea wrote:

 I agree with Maysie and said in my first post that I'd rather hear what Muslim women actually have to say about this but I haven't seen any of them posting and don't know how many there are on this board and wonder whether they'd consider it a particularly welcoming environment where they could speak openly about their faith and traditions without people labelling them as "opressed" or having their religion insulted by people who don't actually understand it.

What do you think? This thread has been extremely insulting to all Muslims, and Muslim women in particular. Why the hell should progressive Muslims hang around babble?

Actually, I think this is one of the better threads on Muslim practises and where they intersect with feminism.  It's a complex issue, and a variety of POVs are represented here.  What's bothering me here is the suggestion that Islam is some kind of monolithic thing - you're either for it or against it - and that isn't an accurate view of a subtle and complex society of religious belief.

Rituals of observance in any religion vary widely.  When I was working in computer science, the lack of women in the field was an issue, but interestingly enough many women in CS are Muslim.  One particularly brilliant woman - a professor and leading researcher in systems - was casual about her faith.  She observed the important holidays, fasted when necessary, but didn't offer prayers at any proscribed time.  At the other end of the spectrum was a woman, a PhD candidate, who was very observant and chose to wear the fully covering burqa.  She and I talked about our kids, our families, but I never saw anything of her but her eyes.  There was a great deal of gossip and controversy in the department around her wearing of the burqa, and the professor mentioned above, a very liberal Palestinian woman, was the most vocally offended.

I cannot think of a mainstream religion, at its most conservative and orthodox end of the spectrum, that isn't sexist.  But there are so many contradictions.  In Saudi Arabia a woman can't have a driver's license, but she can study abroad to be an engineer.  In rural India women are frequently viewed as worthless chattel, progenitors of the next male in the family, but in the educated class of privileged Indians women enjoy more freedom, and have had more political power than anything we've seen in the West.

Like I said, it's complicated, and a knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of a much-maligned religion fails in that it doesn't take into consideration the complexity of religious thought, observance, and real life values.  I'd really like to see a more nuanced criticism of Mallick's article, and the view on gender equity in Islam in general.

Why not ask the women who actually practice these religions whether THEY feel that they're sexist, rather than trying to speak on behalf of women you don't know and will likely never meet?

Well, you know, if that's your criteria, than almost any religion can be demonstrated to be non-sexist, since very few women, if any, are going to say "Yes, I'm practicing a sexist religion". I'm sure the women at REAL Women don't say that their beliefs are sexist.

My own view is that, in determining one's views of a religion, consultation with practitioners is indispensable. But their statements should still be analyzed through a partially critical lens, and not taken as the be-all-and-end-all.  Another good idea is to consult dissidents who have left the religion, keeping in mind that they too have an agenda.

I've studied catholicism very well, they tried to bring me into the priestHOOD. It's a VERY sexist religion.

Like TP said, it's either sexist or it ain't.

To a secular country for me, Please.

Ghislaine, you were wondering what I felt was Islamophobic about the opening article.

The whole premise of it was - the premise that someone's got to speak for those poor oppressed Muslim girls, someone has to look after them, to save them.  It assumes that they can't speak for themselves, that their mothers and fathers can't speak for them.  Did the girls in that picture look particularly abused, defeated, unhappy?  I didn't think they did.  Did anyone ask how they felt about the service they were attending, how they felt about sitting where they were?  Doesn't appear that they were - they were simply used as a prop so that the author could be framed as the liberal feminist saviour who was "speaking" for those "shy" girls.  How does she know they're "shy"?

I think this line, describing the girls in the picture, is also Islamophobic:

Quote:

Stigmatized, bleeding mysteriously and bewildered by maternal instructions

First of all, I think that publishing that picture of them in the most widely-read newspaper in Canada alongside an inflammatory caption and opinion piece that they didn't seem to be consulted on at all is probably way more stigmatizing than what they were experiencing in that cafeteria.

Secondly, "bleeding mysteriously"?  What does that mean?  Why would their period be any more of a mystery to them than was to the rest of us at that age?  Was your period "mysterious" to you?  Mine wasn't.  Why assume that those girls have any less information about their periods than we did at their age?

But the worst part: "bewildered by maternal instructions".  Why would the author assume that those girls are being "bewildered" by their mothers' "instructions" about their periods?  For all she knows, maybe their mothers have talked kindly and wisely to them about their periods.  Maybe they discuss this aspect of their religion together, the way families of other religions discuss things.  Or maybe not.  Just as some white western mothers and daughters discuss menstruation openly and others don't.

It's also pretty western-centric to assume that every culture has the same attitudes towards menstruation as our white-dominated western culture does.  I don't assume that because I grew up with the whole bashful embarrassment in my culture around periods, with maxi-pad and tampon commercials aimed at girls telling them that the most important thing in the world is that no one ever know you're having your period, that all girls from all cultures, religions, and areas of the world are raised to feel that way about their periods.  It seems to me that if you're raised in a religion that accommodates you during your period and relieves you from religious duties and work, that it's likely that periods are MORE acknowledged and discussed and treated matter-of-factly.

Of course, I don't know that for sure, not being Muslim and not having any particular insights into the inner workings of Muslim families, or norms within Muslim religious communities.  But then, I'm not throwing a bunch of those assumptions around and then presuming to speak for a bunch of people I know nothing about in the most widely-cirulated paper in Canada, either.

Ghislaine wrote:

 The reasoning given for separation of menstruating girls is that they are "unclean". Not that they are uncomfortable, etc.

No it isn't. Read the link at post 29.

Ghislaine wrote:

 Do you think a 13 year from a conservative religious family whose public school space is under the control of an Imam is going to feel comfortable speaking up? Are any feminist values even being exposed to her? Has she ever thought to consider that she is not "unclean" during her period?

Wow, condescend much? So Muslim girls can't understand their lives and have a critique until the Western white feminist shows them the way? Yikes.

And minors are, like it or not, legally their parents' or guardians' responsibility. 

Ghislaine wrote:

Children have and deserve special rights in our society and under our legal system. They are not the property of their parents.

Maysie wrote:

And minors are, like it or not, legally their parents' or guardians' responsibility.

I normally stay out of the feminism forum. However, this point needs discussion.

The rights of minors are seldom codified. One place they are is the Ontario Child and Family Services Act. In child protection cases, a child 12 years or over has the right to be present in court and, if she has a lawyer through the Office of the Children's Lawyer as is commonly the case in serious cases, the child has the right to have her lawyer serve Notices of Motion and generally participate as though she was a party. Judges who sit in Family Court or know those rules generally recognize that a student 12 or over has an intermediate status, not a simple minor.

Teens are their parents' or guardians' responsibility, but are not without rights of their own.

When a teen reaches age 14 she has the right to move to the home of the other parent (if they are separated) with no repercussions for that parent since the offence of parental abduction or harbouring applies only to children under 14. In practice she can do so at age 12 since I have never seen a judge refuse to allow a 12-year-old to move.

Under the Education Act, a student of any age has the right to be present and speak at a suspension or expulsion hearing.

In practice, the schools extend some rights to other students. For example, once the student is 16 they will not release her report card or other information to a parent (typically an access parent) without the student's consent.

The rights of these 12-year-olds are in a grey zone, but they should not be written off as irrelevant.

Thanks for that Wilf. I am actually amazed at the denigration of minors freedom of conscience in this thread. I agree with the earlier poster who commented that this was essentially the school performing the role of the parents in coercing kids to participate in religious activities to which at least some of the kids have displayed indifference. The school's involvement is not accommodation, but constitutes active endorsement of religious training that almost certainly violates the Charter.

As far as the defence of "accommodation" of girls during their period, I am frigging appalled. Sven's question is exactly the right one, and frankly I have little doubt of the answer. There was mention earlier of girls using their periods to get out of gym class. I'm sorry - does this not ring a bit of ironic sexism? in any event, I doubt there would be the "wink and nudge" attitude if it was the school keeping girls out of gym class instead. Which is pretty much what this amounts to.

pookie wrote:

The point is that in a society that mandates separation of church and state, the concern in public schools must always be for the student who feels FORCED to participate in religious activity rather than the student who WANTS to. Saying, oh but it's their choice whether to participate or not simply is not adequate, and hasn't been for a really long time.

But we don't have that. I went to a publicly funded, co-religious, Catholic-run, school. (Which, in retrospect... but you do a lot of dumb things when you're a teen, like fail to take spironolactone.) We don't have the same anti-establismentarianism in our laws that the Americans do. We do have non-discrimination laws, so our school certainly wasn't monolithically Catholic. Lots of people stayed because when the Klein cuts of the early nineties happened, they eliminated the same proportion of funding from each system, so 15% from the Public system and 4% from the Catholic system.