Is college using a double standard on ‘entanglement’ with religion? – StarTribune.com: The college is implementing a series of measures that could be create a separate community within the campus instead of promoting integration.
Cultural clashes involving Islam have recently made headlines in Minnesota. At the airport, some Muslim taxi drivers refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol; at Target stores, some Muslim cashiers won’t scan pork products. Now there’s a new point of friction: Minneapolis Community and Technical College.
Its officials say the college, a public institution, has a strict policy of not promoting religion or favoring one religion over another. “The Constitution prevents us from doing this in any form,” says Dianna Cusick, director of legal affairs.
But that seems to depend on your religion.
Where Christianity is concerned, the college goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of what the courts call “entanglement” or support of the church. Yet the college is planning to install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers, an apparent first at a public institution in Minnesota.
install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers
What facilities does a Muslim need to prepare for prayers? They seem to do OK by themselves out in the middle of a dessert.
Facilities for ritual foot-washing.
So many of these “absolutes” about Islam are really self-fashioned Islam.
Like not driving passengers who have alcohol. I seriously doubt that is in the Quran or the Sharia law.
I’ve never encountered that problem here in the Muslim world — here in Dubai they sell a zillion dollars of booze at Duty Free and I’ve never ever had a taxi driver object. Usually they insist on loading it in the trunk for me.
So why is it suddenly a problem in Minnesota?
The same for selling pork. It’s done all over the place here in Dubai. Of course Muslims don’t eat it… but there is no problem with selling or handling it that I’ve ever encountered.
mmm… Pork…. *drool*…
I would imagine that over here in the States, the majority of the muslim community is as it is over there in the Middle East. Keep in mind that our current mass media outlets thrive on scandal, corruption, and death – you average person will not make it onto the news so that the reporters can detail his/her daily existence… Only the really extreme situations make it on the news (aka the muslim cabbie who wont drive w/ alchy in the car, muslim cashier who refuses to bag the bacon, skool shootings, etc).
Okay, I’ve had ENOUGH! I want a facility where I can prepare for my daily denunciation of religion… and I want it NOW!
This was interesting, until I got to the bottom and saw that it came from Katherine Kersten. At which point I discounted it nearly entirely.
Ms. Kersten is a rabid right-winger, and I have found her articles to be full of half-truths and distortions to fit her political views. She used to be classified as an editorial writer, but since she has been caught feeding stories to reporters to publish under their names, the paper has now classified her as a “reporter”.
I would take everything she says with much more than a grain of salt — more like a 25 pound bag!
#6, Tim
Thanks for the clarification.
#6 – Yeah, thanks. Dangerous to ignore such people but it helps to be forewarned about their biases.