You can leave your hat on
(The original title simply couldn’t be improved upon.)
Should religious expression through clothing be allowed in
secular schools? Is the religious
indoctrination of children to be deplored, or simply a part of any child’s
education, just as non-religious parents would also teach their children
certain values and ideals?
This article dealt with a very important issue about practicing certain religious acts and beliefs. I was pretty surprised that the Eben Dőnges High School ejected two children for wearing their traditional religious hats.
ReplyDeleteThis topic is very controversial in many ways. On one hand I think that children should be allowed to wear their religious hats since it is a part of their belief and they should not be discriminated for being different. However, on the other hand, if other people believe other religions or simply just thoughts, then coherently, they should be allowed to wear whatever in “right” according to their beliefs. Some people might argue that this situation is different, since Islam is a common religion practiced by more than 2.1 billion people . But when we overlook the fact that Islam is so “popular”, is there actually any difference between minority religions which might have completely different requirements? In order to claim that people of a certain religion should be allowed to wear what they want, we have to make sure that the religion is legitimate. However, I still think that it is inadequate and subjective to judge which hats are allowed and which are not.
A very similar problem had a man who did not agree with the fact that other religions wear allowed to wear a hat on their ID card photo. Therefore, he decided to create his own religion named Pastafarians, which claimed that god can be in a form of a big spaghetti monster. He was later allowed to wear a spaghetti sieve on his head, because he claimed that it is a part of his religion. This religion is now completely legitimate and it has over 35 000 members.
Therefore, we come to the question which can be hardly answered: to what degree should we accept children to wear the hats prescribed by their religions, and how do small religions with various clothing demands differ from common religions such as Islam? When we consider these facts, should we still allow children who belong to religious groups to wear hats at school, which are demanded by their religions? Even when I try to proceed rationally and coherently, I am not able to find other relevant arguments which would support the religious beliefs of children in school uniforms, even though my moral beliefs differ.
After reading this article and Barbora's comment I have come to the conclusion that I have a completely different view on this issue. This article adresses different issues, but first I am going to concentrate on the one that it was named after. Mr. Rousseau claims that not allowing hijab and fez in school is discriminating. His reasoning is that the school would have no problem with a cross necklace and thus, its banning of islamic headwear is discrimination. I would have expected a better analogy from someone complaining about other false analogies in the same article. My cousin actually attends a school with clothing regulations and one of them is the ban of jewellery. Therefore, she is not allowed to wear a cross necklace if she wanted to. However, I do not think that Christians would complain if they were denied their choice of jewellery. That is why this is a very weak analogy, as muslims cannot choose freely what they want to wear. Thus the issue here is not discrimination, as it is not specifically targeting one religion, but restriction of religious expression. I believe that this issue should and could have been resolved by the school and the parents if they only displayed more understanding of each other's situation. Strong emotions this issue causes among the populations are in my opinion out of place.
ReplyDeleteThe article also deals a little with the issue of indoctrination and children's choices about religion. In this day and age when information is not only easily accesible, but almost forced upon you I do not think that there exist a lot of instances of indoctrination. Parents can raise their kids how they want, but the children will come across other information. Maybe at the beginning the child will not be able to make its own decision, but later in life there will come a point where he has to choose for himself.
I partially disagree with Jana’s statements that Muslims cannot choose freely what they want to wear. There are different types of Muslims as there are different types of Christians. Some are more religious than others and have to wear an Islamic headwear to pursuit their religion. In the modern world and mainly in the first world countries many Islamic women can freely choose what they want to wear. This topic should not only be specified on Muslims there are also many orthodox Christians, who cover their hair and shoulders. The only problem I personally see with the headwear is that sometimes it covers the whole face and you can only see the eyes. Therefore, the woman cannot be identified and many people think that it affects the security of others.
DeleteI believe that in schools it should not be restricted to express ones religion until it does not affect the security of others. Moreover, schools can shape and reform the opinions of their students. Therefore, I believe that there should be no crosses, pictures of religious people and so on in classroom and around the school. Student’s choice of religion should not be affected by the school.
Another statement made by Jana that I disagree with is that the every adult has the rights to choose for himself what religion he wants to believe in. This is not true in all cases. In many countries, mainly the 3rd world country there is a high number of people who believe in same religion. Many people are under the pressure of their parents and mainly the pressure of the society to believe a specific religion. Mainly in the process of choosing a wife or husband religion is a very important factor.
I personally don’t consider this issue to be as controversial as they make it out to be nor do I care much about the school’s policy regarding religion. It seems the author of the article simply tried squeeze out stirring content from a situation, where none is present. I highly doubt the high school’s decision to eradicate the two teenagers was made in a vain attempt to suppress their rights to religious expression. I would imagine the school decided to kick the students out after refusing to remove their respective headgear pieces because it can be considered impolite just like wearing a cap indoors or shades during class is. While temporarily suspending them might be a tad bit extreme, there is no reason to assume the school was targeting their religion. To put this into perspective, refer to the case of South African schools addressing the wearing of a crucifix necklace. They don’t take action against it because not because the majority there happens to be Christian, but because the necklaces, in contrast to hats, don’t disturb the learning flow. I find it rather improbable that the Eben Donges high school would have taken action against the two teenagers had they been wearing a star/crescent necklace instead of the fez/hijab
ReplyDeletecombination.
Lastly, I cannot help but question the validity of the article’s sub-title. It doesn’t demonstrate the dangers of prejudice between the religious. It doesn’t demonstrate the dangers of a generalized hostility towards religious expression in all its forms either. At best the author could claim anti-Islamic bigotry but for all I know the school might’ve found disparities between wearing certain pieces of clothing and their uniform dress code and have decided to expel them because of that, and not because they are Muslim. So long as the school isn’t absolutely secularized, I do believe they would have no problem tolerating the expression of Muslim beliefs through other means that don’t conflict with the dress code.