it's going to be interesting to see what muzzy men do when American
muzzy women refuse to cover their faces.
sorta like:
Brooklyn - Recently, an article in 'The Forward', focused on a private
firm receiving funds from the New York State Department of
Transportation while maintaining sex-segregated commuter bus operation
on routes between Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.
The recent controversy over sex-segregated commuter bus service in the
New York Hasidic community began in October, when two women, a
reporter for The New York World Sasha Chavkin, and her friend Melissa
Franchy, boarded a B110 plying the route between Williamsburg to Boro
Park, to find out what will happen if Franchy violated the segregation
rule.
A Hasidic Jewish man approached Franchy and demanded she sit at the
back because "women sit at the back on this bus and men sit in the
front."
Franchy wanted to know why. All that the Hasidic Jew could say was,
"Well, that's the rule because this is a private Jewish bus."
After the The New York World reported on the incident, the operators
of the route agreed to end the enforced segregation, although it was a
private bus company that was not receiving public funds, only paying
franchise to New York City to run the commuter service.
But on November 4, The Forward in collaboration with The New York
World, reported the case of a commuter bus service run by Monroe Bus,
a private firm that received $1.6 million government funding between
2009 and 2010 to operate commuter bus service between Brooklyn and
Kiryas Joel Jewish community. In the journey from Boro Park to Kiryas
Jeol, the female reporter was asked to move, but when she refused no
one tried to enforce the rule. In the journey from Kiryas Joel back to
Brooklyn, a few days later, no one asked her to move, but the reporter
noted that the buses had curtains separating the male and female
passenger seats.
Observers have noted that in recent times, segregation of sexes in
public places in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities is increasing.
There is controversy over the legal implications of such practice.
Some say that the trend in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community
contravenes New York's Civil rights laws. Donna Lieberman, executive
director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told The Forward:
“That practice is unlawful...You can’t require separate sections
for men and women any more than you can based on race or national
origin.”
Theodore Shaw, Columbia Law School professor and former director-
counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational fund
agreed with Lieberman:
“Even if they don’t enforce it strictly, if you get onto the bus
and have to deal with the question of whether or not you get to sit
with men or women… I think it raises some questions...If they were
challenged [in court], I doubt they could prevail. I think they would
have to stop the practice.”
The Forward reported that Cole Durham, director of the International
Center for Law and Religious Studies at Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah, disagreed with Lieberman and Shaw. He argued that there
are circumstances in which "reasonable accommodation" should be made
for religious beliefs. Durham argued:
“If there’s reasonable seating elsewhere that’s not aimed at
discrimination or causing disparagement of the other individuals, it
seems that we want in our society to have room for religious groups as
well as secular groups."
Durham argued that if "reasonable accommodation" is not made for Ultra-
Orthodox passengers, they might feel unable to use public buses. He
said:
“Denying it may mean that they don’t have any access to the public
transportation system, which is actually discrimination against
them...So you have to ask which is the greater form of
discrimination.”
National Public Radio reported that Shulem Deen, a former Hasidic Jew,
and editor of Unpious.com, confirms that the practice is based on
Jewish religious rules of modesty. Ultra-Orthodox tradition prescribes
that the sexes be segregated in public life. Deen says strict
observance of the rule forbids men socializing with women in public,
and some even say it is wrong for a man to look at a woman in public.
Deen says sex-segregation in New York Hasidic Jewish communities is
rising:
"It's become more codified...Now you have signs on the streets,
telling you, 'Women, please step aside from men,' whereas in the past,
that never would have been necessary."
Durham's defense of sex-segregation in the Ultra-Orthodox society
seems dishonestly self-serving. It seems to suggest that a fact of
discrimination may be justified on religious grounds. In the strongly
patriarchal culture of Hasidic Jews, sex-segregation operates exactly
as race-segregation does. It victimizes women by isolating them, in
public life, from the dominant group, the men. Social segregation
facilitates perpetuation of second class status of a disadvantaged
group in society, because it provides powerfully effective means for
blocking access of members of the disadvantaged group to the social
circles in which power is exercised.
There are no better religious grounds for "reasonable accommodation"
of sex-segregation than there are for race-segregation. The alienating
effect of sex-segregation in public places on women, especially in
male-dominated society, is such that governments have the duty to
interfere even with private institutions and businesses providing
essential services to the public but discriminating on the basis of
sex to obvious social disadvantage of women.
The message must be made clear to religious fundamentalists of all
creeds and sects that while secular society guarantees their religious
freedom, under no circumstance will they be allowed to exercise such
freedom at the expense of others.
Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/314351#ixzz254B6FXpU
---
and:
Thousands of Israelis protested yesterday against rising Jewish
religious coercion in a small town near Jerusalem, in a rally
reflecting worsening relations between Israel's majority and the fast-
growing ultra-Orthodox minority.
The demonstration followed two days of violence in the mostly
religious town of Beit Shemesh, as dozens of extremist ultra-Orthodox
men clashed with police officers dispatched to take down street signs
ordering gender segregation in the public sphere.
Many Israelis, most of whom are secular or moderately religious, have
been infuriated in recent days by reports of ultra-religious zealots
trying to enforce their strict religious code on the town's other
residents, especially the forced separation of men and women.
Most prominently, a report broadcast on Israeli television on Friday
had drawn national attention by showing how an 8-year-old girl is spat
on and harassed every day by the ultra-Orthodox on her way to school,
about 300 metres away from her home.
The bespectacled second-grader, Naama Margolese, attends a modern
Orthodox school that borders an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood and that
is viewed by many of the ultra-religious as trespassing into their
territory.
The girl's plight helped ignite yesterday's protest, as organisers
made a call on the social-networking site Facebook for supporters to
attend the rally by starting a group called "One thousand Israelis are
going to Beit Shemesh to protect little Naama". The group has drawn
some 10,000 followers.
The increasing ultra-Orthodox pressure on the less religious residents
of Beit Shemesh, a town of about 80,000 people located 30 kilometres
west of Jerusalem, is the latest source of religious-secular tensions
in the country.
Secular Israelis have increasingly become embittered over what they
say is religious coercion and rising violence by the ultra-Orthodox.
Most recently, civil-rights advocates have condemned some ultra-
Orthodox groups for forcing women to sit in the back rows of buses
driving through their neighbourhoods while men sit at the front. In
Israel it is illegal to force women to sit in the back portion of the
bus but females who refuse are verbally and even physically attacked
by male passengers.
In Jerusalem, several rabbis have pressured businesses, which often
depend on clients from the city's large ultra-Orthodox population, to
stop posting advertisements with images of women or employing females
in any of their shops frequented by the strictly religious.
In Beit Shemesh, a more extremist sect of the ultra-Orthodox community
has sent out a "modesty patrol" to enforce a strict dress code for
women that calls for closed-neck, long-sleeved shirts and ankle-length
skirts, and have erected signs ordering men and women to walk on
separate pavements.
On Monday, dozens of ultra-religious men surrounded police officers
who arrived in town with municipal inspectors to remove for at least
the third time in a week a sign calling for women to avoid walking on
certain streets frequented by religious males.
The men blasted the police officers as "Nazis" and danced in circles
around them. Ultra-orthodox males later pelted a television crew
covering the clashes with eggs, assaulted a videographer, threw rocks
at police officers and set nearby rubbish bins on fire.
In the face of public condemnation of the attempts to enforce gender
separation, the violence and religious coercion in Beit Shemesh has
this week been lambasted by the country's leaders. Shimon Peres, the
president, yesterday urged Israelis to attend the protest.
Speaking to journalists before a meeting with Israeli ambassadors, he
said: "Today is a test not just for the police but for the entire
nation. All of us, religious, secular, traditional … must as one man
defend the character of the state of Israel against a minority that
tries to break our national solidarity."
Eli Yishai, head of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, on Monday also
joined the criticism against the religious extremists in Beit Shemesh,
calling the harassment of the schoolgirl "nauseating and disgusting"
and adding that such behaviour goes against the teachings of the
Hebrew bible.
Israel's ultra-Orthodox, known as Haredim - a Hebrew term referring to
their fear of God - are a tightknit community that accounts for almost
10 per cent of the country's population of 7.7 million.
By Vita Bekker
On Aug 30, 1:16 pm, Travis <[email protected]> wrote:
> **
> Dr. Eowyn posted: "Boushra al-Moutawakel, a female photographer from
> Yemen, created this stunning piece of photo-art as a commentary on how
> Muslim women in her country are literally disappearing from public life.
> H/t American Conservative 2 Conservative ~Eowyn" Respond to this post
> by replying above this line
> New post on *Fellowship of the Minds*
> <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/> Amazing
> disappearing-females magic
> act!<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/amazing-disappearin...>by
> Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>
>
> Boushra al-Moutawakel, a female photographer from Yemen, created this
> stunning piece of photo-art as a commentary on how Muslim women in her
> country are literally disappearing from public life.
> <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H40S4JGE6Hs/UDvP47RryoI/AAAAAAAAIU4/iYkJTyi...>
>
> H/t American Conservative 2
> Conservative<http://americac2c.com/profiles/blogs/day-69?xg_source=msg_mes_network>
>
> *~Eowyn*
> *Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>* |
> August 29, 2012 at 3:00 am | Tags: Boushra
> al-Moutawakel<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=boushra-al-moutawakel>,
> burqa <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=burqa>, Muslim
> women<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=muslim-women>,
> Yemen <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=yemen> | Categories:
> Islam <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=420> |
> URL:http://wp.me/pKuKY-gO7
>
>
> Comment<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/amazing-disappearin...>
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