Are they demanding too much?

This is a load of toss out of your man to be honest. I work in a community centre in Tower Hamlets in East London, the immediate area I work in is 85%+ Muslim. A significant part of my job is helping get Muslim women into training and education and we also have free, community-based English lessons which I help teach occasionally. Our classes are mixed between gender and everyone really enjoys them. No eye-contact with members of the opposite sex?? F*ck right off. It's not my experience in dealing with literally hundreds of Muslim women anyway. When I brought my mother in one weekend, all the men shook her hand and were very friendly.

The type of Islam that this fella is advocating represents the worst tendency in religious fanaticism and repressive conservatism; it is a message of disempowerment of women dressed up as protecting modesty and respecting culture. I know plenty of Bengali and Pakistani women who would think he's talking out of his hole and have no bother in telling him that either.

I agree with him that religious symbolism shouldn't be stamped all over the education system. The French have the right idea, ban the lot of it. Any Republic should have a fair and inclusive non-denominational system for all. That also applies to Islamic symbolism in education as that.

If he has a problem with that then tough sh*t.

To answer the question - are they asking too much? Yes and no.

There is no problem with Islam or for any other religion for that matter. The thing is, I don't hear of Buddhist or Hindi people making similar demands. Islam is growing throughout Europe - fair enough you may say as I do viewing that as a standalone fact.

The problem I see is the bending over backwards of some countries (see Swedish example above) to do their utmost not to offend Muslims. This is admirable in one way. In another way it could be viewed as Muslims failing to integrate into a society that has accepted them and hoped that they integrate fully and respect the history and traditions of their host country.

This is one reason why the US is so successful at integration. EVERY child pledges allegiance to their flag and their country. They are proud of being from one place, with one citizenship while respecting and tolerating each others diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds (on paper anyway). I am not advocating this style of nationalism in Europe, but we take the complete other route, which is to allow others to change OUR traditions, our ways of life, for fear of being called intolerant.

As stated, no problems with Islam or Muslims. I do however feel that we should cut back on the bending over backwards style of conforming to their wants and to have a happy integration of them to our countries, our cultures and ultimately where they have chosen to come.

My eldest goes to a gael scoil it's a Catholic like the majority of schools here .
But they don't celebrate St patricks day instead they have green day after one non national parents complained about it .
One of the funniest moments came when during Green Day teachers painted polish flags on 8/ 10 pupils who's parents were polish , only for the parents complain about there kids are irish and shouldn't be treated as been from Poland .

People complain about lack of choice but yet it's still a fairly new dilemma 20 years ago there wasn't a major issue with schools now everyone wants choices after choices ,
But what does it matter as long as there getting the best education

Frynge wrote: »

Most of what is laid out in the article is a non issue. Over the years I've read many treads on boards wher the line "if irish were in their country we would have to conform to their way of life" is spewed out. This may come as a shock to many people but for the majority of Muslims in Ireland do conform to our way of life.

Having about 40 Muslims work for me in Ireland over the last number of years, the biggest issue we have encountered is simply pronouncing their names correctly.

I have never once had any expierience of them treating women any different to how everyone else treats women. Never witnessed any wear burqas. Only know of one who doesn't drink or eat pork because of their religion, and only know one other who makes sure to say his prayers during the day ( he only does it as long as we are not too busy).

Their May be 65000 Muslims in Ireland but I would reckon a high percentage of them are about as Muslim as most irish are catholic.

Interesting enough your experiences, were they Turkish out of curiosity? The vast majority of Muslims I deal with are pretty doctrinaire about their religion, I've only met one Bengali man who has a very occasional drink and he only took that up when he moved to Waterford! The vast majority of Muslim women I deal with wear the hijab and some wear the niqab (face veil). Nearly all of them fast, only eat halal and generally pray five times a day.

Where the wearing the hijab by Muslim girls in Irish schools is concerned he says this “shouldn’t cause any more debate than other religious symbols worn by either male or female students in Irish schools do.”

I think a few schools ban all jewelry... so no hijabs there either?

As for the rest of the rules, there's a nice Islamic school in Dublin. He doesn't seem to want integration, he seems to want to impose the will of some cult upon the schools in Ireland. And as we're getting rid of the last cult finally, IMO he can eff right off. We need less cults in our school, and not just replace one cult with another nastier cult.

Oh, and as for no male staff member in the same room when the kids are having a lesson, are you having a f**king laugh mate?

Yeah they hate music the Muslims:









This fella is a grade A w*nker. I wish these religious loopers would just f*ck off and let normal folk get on with their lives without breathing down their neck with a pile of reactionary b*llocks.

Gatling wrote: »

So how will it work in a classs where a teacher says boys and girls are equals and a Muslim child tells mammy and daddy who in turn take offence to the idea and start complaining that there religious beliefs are been offended ,

Now on the other side of the arguement would irish non muslims be given the same response to been in a predominantly muslim school's

To be fair when if a muslim says that men and women aren't equal they could reference catholicism as their justification. They could point to the fact that women were air brushed out of the new testament, the only woman who survived was then called a whore. That's besides the fact that women weren't allowed talk in church till the 60's and they had to cover their hair. they locked up pregnant, or even just attractive, women. Oh and they can't become priests. The catholic church is not an example of an equal opportunities organisation.

I think religion, both christian and muslim, should be gotten out of schools. It should be there as a comparative religion course. All schools should teach that evolution is correct and teach tolerance (ie, specifically call out that homosexuality is natural and discriminating against gay people etc is wrong) .
Schools can help local religions by providing classrooms for Sunday schools etc. No religion should be excluded from this unless it's promoting a message of hate.

But the school should be non denominational and shouldn't promote any religion.

FTA69 wrote: »

Interesting enough your experiences, were they Turkish out of curiosity? The vast majority of Muslims I deal with are pretty doctrinaire about their religion, I've only met one Bengali man who has a very occasional drink and he only took that up when he moved to Waterford! The vast majority of Muslim women I deal with wear the hijab and some wear the niqab (face veil). Nearly all of them fast, only eat halal and generally pray five times a day.

No, the majority of them would have been from Malaysia, some from Iran, Pakistan and a few from different places in North Africa and one from bangledesh.

I accept that there are going to be a fair few who are indoctrinated in their faith and way of life, but there are irish people with similare indoctrination. A quick example is three weeks ago before I got married, one of my uncles who happens to be my godfather sent my now wife an email telling her how he felt sorry for me for losing my way and that he prays for me everyday that I will return to the joys and celebration that is the Catholic Church. All because we were getting married with a civil ceremony.

On a side note we went for a civil ceremony after having many discussions with a priest about the matter.

smash wrote: »

He's not complaining about the lack of Catholic schools, he's complaining about the uniforms and rituals of schools... which are catholic! I don't know what he expected!

That it might be possible to go to school without being bombarded by catholicism. Most of the schools which are funded by the state are catholic.

Someday if I have kids, it'll be next to impossible for me to find a state school which is not catholic.

You canhave catholic education, but i don't think the state should pay for it. And pretty soon they won't. The number of catholics drops with every census. I pass a church on my way home and the vast majority of people i see going in and out of mass are well into their 60's. Pretty soon there will be a majority of people who will question why the state is paying to promote catholicism.

State schools should be non denominational and should not promote religion, any religion.