Mark Steyn's latest article in The Spectator, on the western liberal idiocy of celebrating the sociopathologies of foreign cultures, reminds me of a recent Seattle incident I've been meaning to blog about: government-funded Islamic apartheid. Steyn:
By pretending that all cultures are equal, multiculturalism doesn’t ‘preserve’ traditional cultures so much as sustain them in an artificial state that ensures they’ll develop bizarre pathologies and mutate into some freakish hybrid of the worst of both worlds.Last month there was an article in the Seattle Times on a program where city public swimming pools have regularly scheduled hours for the exclusive use of Muslims: "Preserving modesty, in the pool"
It's Saturday evening, the end of a hot day, and a group of women and children have gathered at North Seattle's Meadowbrook Pool for their monthly swim ... The women and children — all Muslims — have been swimming in private once a month at Meadowbrook as part of a program organized by the North Seattle Family Center.I made some calls and learned that the program, called "Muslim Sister Swim", is treated by the city's Meadowbrook Pool as any other private rental, which would be exempt from the city non-discrimination policy. However, the outfit that organizes and pays for the Muslim Sister Swim is the North Seattle Family Center, a unit of the Children's Home Society, a non-profit that gets most of its money from various government sources. As such, it should strictly comply with non-discrimination guidelines. Nevertheless, the Muslim Sister Swim is open exclusively to Muslims, no infidel women need apply. I asked a representative of the North Seattle Family Center to explain this, and she told me that it was to respect these immigrant women's culture.
But if there's ever a reason for taxpayer dollars to be used to support an immigrant's culture, it should be to support them in learning to shed whatever aspects of their culture are incompatible with American culture. The last thing we need to teach immigrants is to expect publicly-subsidized religious apartheid.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 14, 2005 10:59 AM | Email ThisIf we accommodated every single cultural custom of everyone who comes here, there'd never be public swims.
Posted by: Realist on August 14, 2005 11:28 AMWhy the city of Seattle is deliberately supporting religious discrimination is beyond me. This slippery slope down the path of dhimmitude must be stopped.
Posted by: jimg on August 14, 2005 11:58 AMhttp://sixthcolumn.blogspot.com/2004/11/is-sharia-law-being-put-in-place-in.html
Posted by: timman on August 14, 2005 01:03 PM[sarcasm]
Oh, but wait...I forgot! This isn't religion, it is merely *culture!* After all, we are multi-cultural, and we have to respect everybody's culture as equal. Oh, well, that's all right then. Carry on!
[/sarcasm]
This amounts- quite literally- to taxpayers funding the continued religious bigotry of Mulims.
Under that logic, a Klan group could accept taxpayer dollars and sponsor a "whites-only" swim, because that group holds that poolside mixed-race towel-snapping is equally "unclean."
Second, use of public facilities (particularly schools) by religious groups is quite common (e.g. the Antioch Baptist Church at Lake Washington High School, from which Ken Hutcherson spews his homophobic venom). You were notably silent about the fact that the Rainier Beach pool sets aside time for Orthodox Jewish women. Are they OK for such nominal public subsidies, but Muslim women are not?
Finally, consider this gem: "But if there's ever a reason for taxpayer dollars to be used to support an immigrant's culture, it should be to support them in learning to shed whatever aspects of their culture are incompatible with American culture."
Are you going French on us now, Stefan? Do you propose to be the arbiter of customs and practices that are "compatible with American culture"? Where do we need to apply for approval?
AND...do not leave until the thing has blown up into a full-on news media circus.
anyway that's what I'D do.
Seattle's best, get on it!!
Posted by: cali white bear on August 14, 2005 03:59 PMAND...do not leave until the thing has blown up into a full-on news media circus.
anyway that's what I'D do.
Seattle's best, get on it!!
Posted by: cali white bear on August 14, 2005 03:59 PMJesse, Al. Step up!
Posted by: Yanke Diver on August 14, 2005 04:01 PMJesse, Al. Step up!
Posted by: Yanke Diver on August 14, 2005 04:01 PMJust a couple things....those groups pay for the use of the public place, not the public paying as is the case with the swimfest and these same women have no right to vote or have an education by Islamic law...I guess americans are too liberal.
Posted by: Dengle on August 14, 2005 04:23 PM"Xenophobia denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown and comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "foreigner," "stranger," and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear.""
The Muslims are a well known culture that can hardly be referenced a 'Unknown' or 'strangers'. The fear is we do know what is going to happen unless they as a religion, acquiesce.
Open you eyes and see the truth!
Posted by: timman on August 14, 2005 04:44 PMI live in a community with a large number of Orthodox Jews. Indeed the local public swimming facilities do accomodate Jewish concerns about sexual modesty, so they schedule separate single sex swim sessions for males and females. The sessions are not restricted to members of one religion, as is the case with the Muslim Sister Swim. Nothing in the Seatle Times article indicates that the Rainer Beach Pool sessions are restricted to Jews.
As a matter of fact, the Times article mentioned "Orthodox Jewish women, who observe their own dress customs". The only Jewish dress customs relevant to swimwear is that even the most modest one-piece woman's swimsuit would be considered immodest clothing when worn around men, hence the need for single sex sessions. A women only session would satisfy that "custom" without having to restrict it to Jewish women only.
Posted by: ronnie schreiber on August 14, 2005 05:45 PMThe liberal lawyers for the ACLU will be surprised to see their own throats cut if sharia law is ever finally recognized as the law of the land in the (once and former) land of the free and the home of the brave.
In essence, the ACLU types by their own actions may actually be expediting their own deaths at the hands of the Jihadists.
Life is full of delicious ironies.
Posted by: gunjam on August 14, 2005 06:00 PMAny takers?
Posted by: ERNurse on August 14, 2005 06:09 PMPrivate funds, from informed, willing donors, could legally fund this activity.
The problem then, is the partially public funding of the organization sponsoring the activity.
Public funding of a "muslims only" activity is clearly inappropriate under the current state of the law. The only thing that may need to be done to make this activity legal, however, is for the Children's Home Society to segregate its public funds and activities from its privately funded activities.
As described the funding comes from a sub-unit of a private organization that receives partly public and partly private funding. Presumably, there is some public function that this organization performs that justifies the expenditure of tax money.
I don't believe that the acceptance of public funds for public purposes should subject a private organization to public control in all aspects of its life. For example, a church that accepts public resources to help feed the hungry shouldn't be subject non-discrimination hiring rules, etc.
Posted by: Bin2Baghdad on August 14, 2005 06:10 PMWhenever I see a woman with a scarf on her head, I have to wonder if she is displaying her own sense of modesty, or if she is afraid of ostricism from her community if she doesn't.
We can't afford to let Sharia law get a foothold in this country. Everyone here is covered by US law, not by some perversion of someone's moral standard.
Posted by: Janet S on August 14, 2005 06:34 PMYou nailed this one right on the head. The issue is not one of religion, but of multiculturalism. The false idea that all cultures are equal.
There's a reason why Western Civ has flourished and Eastern Civ is still in the dark ages. Ideas matter. Reason matters. Any culture that doesn't embrace reason as we do here in our Western culture, is doomed to fail.
Multiculturalism is subsidy for failed cultures.
These people should not be allowed to swim on racist grounds on the public dime.
But these are recent immigrants. Can't we at least give them a little space for comfort?
Maybe they will assimilate faster if they don't feel threatened.
Posted by: Just passing through on August 14, 2005 07:25 PMAs Phyllis Schlafly says: "Don't ever expect that a feminist will be consistent."
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on August 14, 2005 08:37 PMThey just got here, dipsh*t... Don't you think a litle adjustment lag is understandable?
Posted by: Just Passing Thru on August 14, 2005 08:45 PMhttp://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/08/visitors_from_a.php#comments
Posted by: Jay Pierpont Flathead on August 14, 2005 09:27 PMSomething else I have wondered about: Muslim women swimming separated like this also could hide signs of abuse from the public...
Posted by: Lew on August 14, 2005 10:16 PMBut, funding with public or taxpayer dollars is a problem. How many times have Washington lawmakers squashed any hope of School Vouchers, because taxpayer dollars cannot be used to fund anything that crosses the "religion" line? If this money cannot fund education because it might be religious, why can it fund religious swimming?
If the swim time is privately funded, who cares, as long as their reservations are given the same consideration as all other customers.
Posted by: dl on August 14, 2005 10:25 PMHow do you know that? There are many American born Muslims. Is someone checking Green Cards?
Posted by: Michael on August 14, 2005 10:28 PMNow it was a cool, overcast day so maybe they weren't hot or uncomfortable in their clothes. But what struck me was that the men they were with were had no special dress at all. They looked just like the rest of the crowd and there was no way you could have told what religion they were or what country they were from.
What this said to me was that this "modest" dress for Muslim women is not about religion, or "culture". It's about control.
Posted by: Gary Rosen on August 14, 2005 10:41 PMThat should be a *no-brainer* requirement.
The Liberals simply can't have it both ways. They can't condemn the use of tax dollars for one culture/religion and condone the use of tax dollars for another. They created a law against this practice!
Posted by: Deborah on August 14, 2005 10:51 PMThis country was much better off when we had Ellis Island in full operation. So, you just got here? Whoop dee do, so did everyone else. Get in line for your privledge to enter America, and then once you get in the door, fine share some of your traditions with us, but become a part of our tradition too.
The whole "I'm going to continue life in the Bhurka in the US" is really laughable. The Bhurka represents the oppression and relegation that Muslim woman have suffered under for thousands of years. Nothing could be a bigger slap to the greatness that is the US, than for Muslim women to outwardly display the symbols of oppression, all the while living in the one place that has truly liberated people from this kind of oppression.
Posted by: Jeff B. on August 14, 2005 10:53 PMAnyway, on a more serious note.
My take on this is simply that these are women and children, using a public pool and not being exposed to the lookie lous.
I don't care if they are Muslim, Jewish, WASP's or any other ethnicity.
I happen to think that if the pool is public, they should pay for private usage but I don't see anything wrong in wanting to let women and children be away from learing eyes.
100 years ago,in this country, you didn't see a woman expose her ankle.
I am not suggesting that we should become prudes and revert to the turn of the century styles any more than I am saying the Islamic culture should drag us back to the 8th century. What I am saying is our society has degraded to the point that women wear butt floss in public and it doesn't phase some people.
There was a time here when woman didn't swim with men in this country too. If this is about modesty and not unclean infidels, then let the pay and use the pool privately.
As far as mulitculturalism, I feel that when America stopped being a melting pot and became a salad bowl, we lost all hope of ever being a truly united states.
I for one say english only, study and swear allegience to our constitution and become an "American" ( no disclaimers such as African, Mexican, Arab or Asian )
This is our country, it isn't the liberals, it isn't the conservatives, it is yours and mine. Why ? We were born here or we swore and oath to defend it and the constitution against all threats, foreign or domestic ( insert McDermott,Palosi,Kennedy,Kerry,Answer, Moore, and a host of others we need to defend it against domestically)
If we allow those who refuse to melt in, to preach/teach hatred and jihad, we deserve what we get. If people are stupid enough to allow the ACLU and other advocates to strip us of our culture, religion and heritage while defending the rights of people that have no better sense than to teach their young to blow themselves to pieces,once again,there is no one to blame but us.
The day is coming in this country where we will either wake up,close our borders and define our real enemies, then remove them by force if neccessary, or we will be like Israel and be dealing with bomb belts and homicide bombers daily.
PS: If you are wondering why we weren't screaming about other groups getting the pool privleges, it's probably because we didn't know.
A "study" showing that Muslim women have lower skin cancer rates than infidel females would be helpful. Environmental consciousness, holistic health, solidarity with oppressed nonWestern cultures...who could resist? And as with secondhand smoke, there's a pretext to impose restrictions on everybody else.
Maybe the cultural breakthrough will be a poster of Gaia in a burka, protecting herself from the oppressive radiation of the patriarchal Sun. On sale first in Burkaley California.
As far as mulitculturalism, I feel that when America stopped being a melting pot and became a salad bowl, we lost all hope of ever being a truly united states.
I for one say english only, study and swear allegience to our constitution and become an "American" ( no disclaimers such as African, Mexican, Arab or Asian )
Jim, you hit the nail on the head. Started in the late 60's and early 70's.
It is the root of most of the societal problems we are having and definately will be the death of our country.
That is where the fight will be.
Posted by: Elmo on August 15, 2005 03:21 AMWe had this same situation in London (Ontario). The Muslim women in the community wanted swimming, BADLY, because that was about the only exercise they got AND they could take their kids since many of the fathers were absent from this function of the family ie minding the kids.
The public pool offered swimming to women only 'mixed' with non-Muslim women. They also put up a curtain on the windows for privacy.
I wanted to advertise the swimming in the local mosque's newsletter but a newcomer to Canada from Egypt, a professor at the University, refused to put in an advertisement because "HE didn't think the BOARD (all male members) wanted Muslim women mixing with non-Muslim women.
We had the same situation at the University, except they offered private pool time that was totally funded by the Muslim women ie they paid $3 per swim to cover the pool rental.
Prior to this, myself and a younger student from the Muslim Student Association went to a Human Rights officer to inquire about what services that the University could provide.
We were told we could fund it ourselves or provide swimming 'for women only' that included ALL women on campus.
I brought up the question about protests to make sure the young student knew what to expect. The human rights officer confirmed that this was a possibility.
When asked about the mixed swim that the University would offer itself without the Muslim women having to pay, the young student refused to mix with non-Muslim women because those women could be lesbian, or they may show their 'aura' (their body) ie wearing a normal bathing suit.
I'm sure all the non-Muslim women would have respected the Muslim women, especially if they chose to segregate themselves from a male/female swim. There are also many Muslim women do NOT want to have any segregation.
The men (and many women) in the community insisted the women keep seperate from non-Muslims (as Sharia law states in many clauses in the Quran)but they or the board offered no funding to pay for private costs.
Yet they willingly gave money to a Lebanese man who travelled from Lebanon, who did a khutbah (sermon) at Mosque during Jumah (friday prayer) and mentioned in Arabic the Palestinians and Israel several times during his 45 minute speech.
Then in his 20 minute English translation, the money he stated the money was for 'their gymnasium, parking lot etc etc'.
This raised the ire of more progressive Muslim women that were there that day. Our mosque was pleading from our Muslims to give to their own gym and parking lot because they were ready to get sued for not paying their bills.
This foreign visitor was not making a request for gymnasium money. What would Palestine and Israel have to do with basketball or asphalt?
After not quite 2 years, I was getting sick of the bigotry against Jews ie I was told when I converted, making sure I wasn't going to be 'taught' to hate anyone, I was assured that I wasn't only that we, as Muslims, were to "be cautious around/with Jews" ie not exactly sure what that meant but it was assumed not to believe them. In anycase there is much mention about this in the Quran (Sharia)
By this time, I had quite enough. In response to the professor's deliberate discrimination I was removing my hijab in protest of his and the attitude of the community.
I was told to "watch what I say". Although I didn't ask him "or what", I took it as a threat.
Re: xenophobia...I think it could be said that Muslims are the xenophobes because they are afraid of losing their Islam if they mix with non-Muslims, not because they are dirty per se, just that non-Muslims are not pious, according to their standards.
As for swimming for orthodox Jewish women, I know of quite a few centres that are funded solely by the Jewish community that serves its members - no others are allowed as far as I know.
(Sorry for the long post)
There's alot more to this story on my blog
Posted by: habamusrodentum on August 15, 2005 04:36 AMLet us face the truth, Islam is a backward, intolerant culture, that has nothing in common with liberal American civilization. Islam does not accept our liberal way of life, and we should not accept their attempts to maintain their ways here.
What are they here for anyway? Obviously not to become Americans and assimilate into society.
Posted by: Shipwrecked on August 15, 2005 12:04 PMQuote from Roanoke Times: "Tech officials said administrators from the Saudi university separated the sexes to mirror classroom settings at their home institution, which operates separate campuses for men and women."
The alliance between liberals and Islamists is continually amazing, as is their inconsistency. They bend over backwards to accommodate gender-segregation in classes, but will force female Christian students to LIVE in the same dorm rooms with male students.
Posted by: Shannon K on August 15, 2005 01:01 PMOnce public money becomes involved, the activity is no longer private (as the Boy Scouts have found out). And therefore, discrimination (in any form) is not permitted.
Posted by: Palouse on August 15, 2005 02:10 PMThis would be the perfect place to find out
Posted by: Julio on August 15, 2005 02:17 PMBecause Mike, if we give them an inch - they take a foot. Give 'em a foot, and they take a yard ... and so on.
That's precisely why we need to remain vigilant. Always. It's their m.o., and always has been. It's what they've done for centuries, and if we continually look past the small things - eventually we won't be able address the bigger ones because by then it'll be too late.
History can teach us many valuable lessons if we simply pay attention, and not repeat the mistakes of others. It's that simple, really.
Posted by: jimg on August 15, 2005 02:22 PMIs this an example of "homophobic venom"?
With regards to homosexuality, he states that "The jurists of Islam have held different opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice. Should it be the same as the punishment for zina, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements." - Yusuf al-Quaradawi The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, p. 165.
Posted by: GenghisKhan on August 15, 2005 02:31 PMI, too, asked questions, by phone.
From the author of the original Seattle Times article: in so many words, "What's the big deal?"
From the program director herself (Cheryl):
"This is not just for immigrants, or Muslims, but is open to all women."
So, I suggested, why not rename it 'Women's Swim Night', and solve the problem.
Here's the deal.
Muslim women requested this ongoing event and are the folks who named it. And the North Seattle Family Center is trying very hard to accommodate THAT community's CULTURAL need for modesty (even though she said it is open to ALL women).
And the agency WILL NOT drop 'Muslim' from the title.
The director is both adamant, and arrogantly insistent that a Muslim woman's need for modesty is based NOT upon the religion of Islam, but rather upon the CULTURE from where she came.
Really?
Does the director actually believe that a white woman revert from Kalamazoo's understanding of modesty is based upon the same 'cultural' background as a woman born into a Muslim family from Karachi?
This is, without question, a case of brain-dead, booger eating morons using taxpayer money to accomodate the religious beliefs of a particular religion.
And they've been caught.
Posted by: PRCS on August 15, 2005 03:09 PMWhen you adopt attitudes and policies that fail to encourage assimilation, and/or concurrently establish precedents that enable cultural separation, what you get is: little to no assimilation, and continued cultural separation.
A "little adjustment lag" tends to turn into a big "adjustment lag", and then calcifies into a permanenct "adjustment lag". The Europeans have been pretty generous in accommodating and even encouraging continued separation, rather than assimilation, by their Muslim minorities. After all, what’s a little "lag" time, eh? And 30, 40 years later, what do they have to show for it? Entrenched, growing, and definitely unassimilated Muslim enclaves, unappreciative and even hostile to their host nations, that pose a real threat to the long-term sustainment of the very cultures that initially welcomed, or at least tolerated, their now-no-longer-so-recently-arrived immigrant “guests”.
Not a road we want to go down on this side of the ocean, IMHO.
If you are upset, join Federation for American Immigration Reform at www.fairus.org and help hold politicians accountable for poor legislation and law enforcement.
Posted by: saxa on August 18, 2005 09:20 AM