Are European societies anti-Islam? That’s a question more people are asking in the wake of Switzerland’s referendum to ban the building of minarets in the Alpine country. Almost 6 out of 10 Swiss voters supported the ban — charges of racism be damned. France passed a law in 2004 that bans young women from wearing Islamic headscarves in public schools, and has now joined the Netherlands in debating a ban on full-body coverings like a burqa. And Muslims in multicultural Britain have also repeatedly accused officials there of talking down to them with urges to drop clothes that ‘form a barrier’ between them and mainstream society.
But while these controversies attract attention, there are also efforts to work out solutions to living with religious differences in Europe. Take a recent book by French anthropologists Dounia and Lylia Bouzar, Is There Room for Allah in the Workplace? The book offers legal guidelines on how work-religion conflicts might be examined, as well as practical suggestions on resolving them. “Paradoxically, as the question of the visibility of religious practice crops up regularly in the media, it remains a total haze in the professional world,” the book notes.
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buzz
Shams al-Nahar 1:15 pm on December 7, 2009 Permalink |
The left half of the bellcurve is permeable to scaremongering.
There are only 4 actual minarets in Switzerland.
Buzz 1:55 pm on December 7, 2009 Permalink |
I agree with Aziz’s earlier post that Europe is more anti-religion than anti-Islam. And rightly so. Religion needs a purge. There is way too much BS.
This is all part of God’s Plan in my opinion. Religion needs to find parity with secularism and integrate seemlessly. Extremists want a conflict between the two parties. They squabble and fight over traditions and rituals. Banning or insisting on all forms of nonsense as if God’s Dignity and Command weighed in the balance.
It is all nonsense. Religion is something besides what both groups are fighting about.