History is offensive

There's an article in the UK's Daily Mail, saying that a UK government study has shown that "Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils." As it turns out, this sexy headline from one of the UK's most conservative newspapers is only partly true. From Snopes.com, we find that the study references a single school that was worried about teaching the Holocaust to Muslim students whose local mosque had indoctrinated them with a different perspective on the Holocaust. The BBC also debunked the Daily Mail's flamebait.

So, having had my righteous anger extinguished by cold fact, I do wish to say this:

• Sometimes history is offensive (e.g. European treatment of Native Americans, slavery, etc). Knowing the folly of our ancestors is how we learn.
• Sometimes fact is in conflict with belief. Making fact-based decisions in life avoids major mistakes.

As the spouse of a teacher, I'm happy to hear when students have their parent/faith-based/adolescent assumptions shattered by the brick of reality. These students will learn to question and to think.

It's dishonest that the Daily Mail tried to blow this out of proportion, but it's a tragedy that even one cohort of Muslim and non-Muslim students might fail to learn their history.

Muslim cab drivers II

The Metropolitan Airports Commission moved one step closer to punishing cab drivers who refuse service to passengers this morning as their committee recommended the change to the full Commission. The full MAC will hear the proposal this afternoon.

The story on the committee vote had a bit more context on the issue as it's being discussed in the Commission. For one, it details the proposed punishment for the cabbies:

The proposed change would suspend for 30 days licenses of drivers who refuse to carry alcohol. A second offense would result in license revocation for two years...

MAC's perspective was offered by the lead hearing officer:

"But personally I think it is reasonable to ask them to accept alcohol if they want to drive at MSP [airport]," [hearing officer Molly Sigel] said. "If we're going to err, I think we should err on the side of customers. I think this is a practical, reasonable solution."

And the cab drivers weighed in as well, along with their lawyer. The cab driver's comment on the very few folks refused service is interesting, though I'm sure the court cares little whether it's 27 or 2700, since it seems to be more of a civil rights issue.

Abdinoor Ahmed Dolal, a taxi driver at the meeting, noted MAC statistics showing 27 alcohol-related refusals out of 120,000 passengers for two months starting in mid-November, one of the airport's busiest times. "This is a religious issue, not a customer service issue," he said.

Jeffrey Hassan, a lawyer for the Muslim drivers, told hearing officers about a 1990 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that allowed Amish people to forego displaying bright orange triangles on their buggies for religious reasons.

I thought the latter's comparison to the Amish and buggies a very interesting precedent. And as an amateur legal pundit, I'd say that it all depends on whether the courts will consider this an issue of religious freedom or civil rights.

Muslim cab drivers: Serve or be served

The Minneapolis Star Tribune writes that the Metropolitan Airports Commission will vote today on penalties for cab drivers who refuse service to any passenger, for any reason. The is the latest development in the dispute between Muslim cab drivers and the airports commission after Muslim cabbies had refused service to people with guide dogs or who had alcohol in their carry-ons (both dogs and alcohol are verboten to strict-practicing Muslims).

Previously, the airports commission had ruled that cab drivers refusing service would have to go to the beginning of the cab queue (a three-hour wait).

Conservative columnist Katherine Kersten also wrote on the issue of accommodating religious beliefs of Muslims today in a "slippery slope" column. She discusses the Muslims Accommodations Task Force (link provided, but the server was down at the time of posting):

The task force's eventual objectives on American campuses include the following, according to the website: permanent Muslim prayer spaces, ritual washing facilities, separate food and housing for Muslim students, separate hours at athletic facilities for Muslim women, paid imams or religious counselors, and campus observance of Muslim holidays.

I think the organization's goals reflect two big ideas: 1) that Muslims would like to feel free to practice their religion in their daily life and 2) that this organization has a poor understanding of why Americans have fought against "separate but equal" for 60 years.

Accommodations are important means to respecting each other's beliefs. Separate facilities are a gateway to deliberate discrimination and misunderstanding. In the same fashion, the Airports Commission is right to draw the accommodations line at where other people's rights are trampled on.

Note: on that topic, Skemono has an interesting look at how civil unions have promised the equivalence of marriage for gays, but how in practice it's more like providing a "colored" restroom.

Making hay out of pork

A news story broke recently about Muslim cashiers at local Target stores refusing to ring up pork products. Many in the Islamic faith believe that pigs are unclean (true in the Jewish faith as well) and like the cab drivers before them, have asserted their religious right to ask another cashier or the customer themselves to ring up the item.

My gut reaction probably reflects some religious prejudice. As a "lapsed Catholic," I don't ask for or receive any accommodations for my religious beliefs in my workplace. As a Christian it's easy - you already get your holidays as vacation (note: in my workplace, you can exchange these holidays for the holidays of other faiths). I also am not interfacing with others in a public setting, so there are fewer opportunities for differences of faith to create friction. In other words, when I read about this at first, I had these reactions:
1) Get a job where you don't have to handle pork
2) You aren't handling pork, you are handling plastic-wrap (Target stores don't sell unpackaged meat).

I'm glad I waited to blog, because I saw this story in today's Minneapolis paper that sums up the reader reaction on their message boards. There were a few good points, such as the legal issue that employers are required to make "reasonable accommodations" for religious beliefs or face lawsuits. Some Muslim cashiers were fine with wearing plastic gloves, others were fine with handling the meat if it was packaged. In other words, it's certainly not every Muslim cashier that even requests accommodation.

But what about the customer side of things? If I was Target, serving a public that is increasingly impatient, I might want to consider trying to put folks with religious objections to ringing certain purchases somewhere other than the cash register. It's not just Muslims and pork. Conservative Christian cashiers might object to ringing up condoms. It's not conducive to sales to have clerks who intentionally or unintentionally stigmatize shoppers by refusing to ring certain items.

This issue mirrors the one of the pharmacists who expressed religious objections to dispensing the morning-after birth control pill, although buying bacon is a bit different than trying to obtain the morning after pill from the town's only pharmacist.

I guess my conclusion is this. There's a moral difference between refusing to ring up bacon and dispense drugs or serve people with guide dogs. Having to wait for another cashier or scanning your own bacon is an inconvenience, and might give you some healthy second thoughts about buying bacon in the first place. Being refused a cab ride because you use a guide dog (or carry alcohol) is unjust and perhaps illegal - cab drivers obtain a public license and have a charge to serve the public. Being refused birth control by a medical professional is unconscionable, because obtaining adequate medical care is a right and medical professionals take an oath to do no harm.

Matching that picture does not make you secure

A researcher who had posted a boarding pass generator on his website has just been exonerated due to a complete lack of evidence of criminal intent. He had posted the feature on his website to emphasize that the ID checks and no-fly lists were ineffective methods of preventing terrorist attacks on airplanes, especially compared to random searches.

His post and the following comments highlight the various issues at stake with airport security and identification checks:
1) No fly lists don't work because suicide bombers only need to get through once and can have a clean record beforehand.
2) ID checks are therefore useless because verifying the identity of a suicide bomber before they commit their terrorist act does not stop it.
3) ID checks do, on the other hand, threaten the rights of Americans to fly without informing the government that they are traveling, as well as adding inconvenience to traveling.
4) There are more effective ways - random searches - to improve airplane security.

As he sums up, the issue is not WHO is on the plane but WHAT is on the plane. Letting a potential terrorist onboard but without his weapon will pretty much guarantee failure. On the other hand, making every traveler show ID or profiling Muslim travelers does very little to ensure security.