Yonat Shimron, Raleigh News & Observer, January 1, 2009
Salman Sheikh was organizing a swim class for his two sons last summer when fellow Muslim parents approached him about starting a class for girls.
{snip}
Problem was, the small pool overlooked a larger, Olympic-size pool, and Sheikh wondered whether the center could provide blinds to cover the windows and shield the women from onlookers.
Sure, the center’s leaders said, but it would cost $3,000 for custom-made blinds. Sheikh was ready to drop the idea. But the Muslim community in Raleigh and Cary wouldn’t let him.
Within a month, Sheikh, a native of Pakistan who works as a project manager for the state Department of Health and Human Services, raised the money and signed up 35 women for the first class.
{snip}
This type of accommodation to the religious requirements of their faith is something Muslims are seeing more. All-Muslim Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops have cropped up across the country. Muslims are entering politics, studying Islam at major American universities, even finding halal, or ritually slaughtered foods, at local stores.
“I see this as sign of Muslims learning to operate within American civic institutions,” said Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.
{snip}
In mostly Muslim countries, it is common to have separate pools for men and women. But in the United States that’s virtually unheard of, and as a result many Muslim women grow up not knowing how to swim.
{snip}
Many of the women came dressed in full-length Burkinis, swimming costumes that looks much like a scuba-diving suit but are made of water-protected polyester rather than rubber. Designed for Muslim women, they cover the entire body except for the hands, feet and face.
{snip}
For the Sheikhs, the success of the class is a lesson in cultural adjustment. “It makes sense for business and service providers to accommodate the needs of the community,” Salman Sheikh said. “All it takes is dialogue to make it happen.”
Original article
(Posted on January 5, 2009)
Comments
Wouldn’t starting a swimming class for girls, be sexist? I almost forgot, they’re girls. They are supposed to be proud of sexism when it’s for their favor.
QUOTE: “Within a month, Sheikh, a native of Pakistan who works as a project manager for the state Department of Health and Human Services, raised the money and signed up 35 women for the first class.”
Hey, this is fine with me. As long as the taxpayers aren’t expected to foot the bill, and Americans aren’t put out by it, I don’t see how it’s that big of an issue. I get the underlying problem here, which is foreigners coming to America and not assimilating, but this particular issue isn’t a big deal. As a White Nationalist, I can sympathize with other people who feel that America’s moral bankruptcy is being forced on us all.
I think that there’s a lot to be said for making swimming lessons same sex. A 150 years ago, our ancestors would have thought it terrible to have young boys and girls parading around each other in skimpy bathing suits. The push to make everything coed was part of a larger to effort to destroy all things traditional. In the name of diversity and cost cutting, we’ve destroyed age old social barriers that served a distinct purpose. It is this lack of social norms that has destroyed our society.
I heard a guy recently who was making the point that the reason America and Europe are being overwhelmed by foreigners is because neither one has a strong culture anymore. Anytime a society loses social cohesion, it’s people will be replaced by others who have it. Our lack of social rules and an overall since of being a people, has created a vacuum that Muslims and Hispanics are more than happy to fill. Instead of getting angry everytime other groups try to enforce their social norms on our socity, we should try to create our own. A lot of Christians like to say that America has turned away from God because we’ve removed him from the public sphere. I say that America has removed God from the public sphere because we’ve turned away from him. (I’m not actually a Christian, I’m just using this to illustrate a point.) If we had a strong culture in place, these people would never attempt to change our rules. In fact, if we had a strong cuture, these people wouldn’t even be here to to change anything. We’re getting angry at the symptoms when we need to deal with the sickness that causes those symptoms.
Imagine, if you are an American woman or girl, what it would be like to have to go about swathed like a mummy all the time, as Muslim women in strict cultures are forced to do. Hair covered, neck covered, arms and legs covered — do you even know what it feels like to have a fresh breeze caress your skin?
Did I say “forced” a moment ago? No doubt many of those Muslim women would say, “No, no, we are not forced; we are doing this as part of our faith.” OK, ladies, if you’re not FORCED to dress this way, then just once try going out attired in what most of the world would consider “normal” clothing. Of course, if you are living in a country like Saudi Arabia or Iran, no doubt the men on the street would stone you as soon as they saw you “violating the Prophet’s commandments.”
On second thought, maybe you’d better wait until you emigrate to Europe or America, where people are not (yet) quite so loony, before you declare yourself sartorially independent. Discretion is the better part of valor when you’re surrounded by psychos.
Okay so the Sheikh was able to raise the funds to accomodate his people so what is the problem? Sheese! You people have been “crying racism” ever since Obama won. Go crawl back under your rock; you “racialists” are in the ashbin of history.
The Muslims got what they wanted….after they paid $3,000 for new blinds and $175.00 per hour to use a pool that’s only 15 yards long.
I don’t really have a problem with this, and think this model should be used for other requests from minority groups and those requesting special interest accomodations.
My beef lies with those who say, “I demand special treatment, and I want you to pay for it. Oh, and you should probably pay extra too, as I’ve been oppressed for a long time and you owe me.”
” Muslims are entering politics, studying Islam at major American universities, even finding halal, or ritually slaughtered foods, at local stores.”
This “ritually” slaughtered food is an abomination for certain.
Dictating that a cow has to be slaughtered a certain way is the stuff on the same plane as witch doctors and backwoods Amazon tribesmen, but worst of all it’s unequivocally cruelty to animals.
I would say I have little respect for people who engage in such barbaric practice, but that wouldn’t be quite true. The fact is I have zero respect for them, and believe they should all be in jail for cruelty to animals.
The only good thing about having religious fanatics in this country is that eventually, when their numbers are greater and they have more power, they’ll drive the PC crowd crazy by trying to push off their religion on them.
This multicult bunch thinks Christians are too restrictive for their tastes. If they weren’t so dense they would have realized from the beginning that Sharia law will cause them far greater grief than Christianity ever has.
It seems obvious this madness will continue because of political correctness gone amok. Muslims should never have been allowed here in the first place. They add nothing but weird beliefs and make demands that are contrary to traditional American ways. One can imagine what our country will look like five or ten years from now. Muslims will have everything their way and they will get it. Muslims are a clutural cancer encouraged by immmigration laws enacted by out and out traitors. I can understand politicans selling out to the cheap labor demands of big business. But why Mulsims. I don’t really get it. Perhaps the madness of insane multiculturism.
I hope BUSH is tried after he leaves for fighintg them in Baghdad but not here.
Hey, this is fine with me. As long as the taxpayers aren’t expected to foot the bill, and Americans aren’t put out by it, I don’t see how it’s that big of an issue.
It would appear to me that the phrase “a native of Pakistan who works as a project manager for the state Department of Health and Human Services” would settle the “who will pay?” question here.
“You people have been “crying racism” ever since Obama won. Go crawl back under your rock; you “racialists” are in the ashbin of history.” Posted by Blackvet at 7:34 PM on January 5
Wrong. We’re on the cutting edge of a new white nation that will have our own nation-state, and you will have yours. Ours will thrive as all our lands have, but yours will be as Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the other failed sub-Saharan countries, which are all almost as bad as Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
And about crawling back under a rock? How can we do that when it probably houses a black family of four, which consists of a pregnant single woman and three kids, all with different fathers?
This problem for that is what it really is, where Muslim men cannot be trusted to look at women without rabid lust in their minds, has occurred in Britain and the councils got round it by closing public pools, which are all in large buildings due to the climte there, so that Muslim women/girls could use the pools on their own. But it caused an outcry because the local taxpayers who had paid for te pools were being deprived of the use of their pools fo long periods of time. But of course, Muslim men were not stopped from entering public pools where non-Muslim women were swimmimg. It is essential that new immigrants adapt to the culture of their new country, not the reverse otherwsie. go they must return back to where they will be comfortable even if they have to work hard to make it so.
I do not have a problem with a women only swimming session as long as they are paying for any special accomodations and the session is open to ALL women not just Muslims. This also seemed to be a private facility so no tax dollars were spent to make Muslims feel comfortable.
By the way, AmRen posters, today’s Dallas Morning News carried a story on the Bush’s new Dallas neighborhood. They’ve asked for a taxpayer funded (gate) to seal off the area in which they’ve purchased their 8,500 sq.ft. home. Funny…he didn’t leave us with a fence to be protected from terrorists and illegal invaders. Do drop a line to the DMN and let them know how you feel.
I think there should be some old school peeping tommery with the added twist of video cameras. Who wouldn’t love to see the reaction of the Muslims, the left, and talking heads if videos of muslim women swimming was posted on the net?
Wayne Engle wrote: Did I say “forced” a moment ago? No doubt many of those Muslim women would say, “No, no, we are not forced; we are doing this as part of our faith.” OK, ladies, if you’re not FORCED to dress this way, then just once try going out attired in what most of the world would consider “normal” clothing. Of course, if you are living in a country like Saudi Arabia or Iran, no doubt the men on the street would stone you as soon as they saw you “violating the Prophet’s commandments.”
It is a dress code. In the U.S. if a woman went to the mall wearing only bikini bottoms she would be arrested for public indecency. Same thing over there.
The men don’t have special privileges, they can’t swim in open pools where women may be lurking either. In addition the men do have dress codes as well, typically short sleeved shirts are forbidden, and shorts are unthinkable. Everyone always focuses on the women’s dress code but the men certainly have rules to follow as well.
POSTED BY BLACKVET: “Okay so the Sheikh was able to raise the funds to accomodate his people so what is the problem? Sheese! You people have been “crying racism” ever since Obama won. Go crawl back under your rock; you “racialists” are in the ashbin of history.”
We both know that you don’t really believe that racialists are in the ashbin of history. Why would you come to this site if you did? If you thought that White Nationalism was just some loony band of misfits, you wouldn’t have spent your time coming here, and you wouldn’t have taken the time to post this comment, and you certainly wouldn’t come back to see the responses to it, which you have undoubtebly done several times since you first posted it. Would you have all of us believe that you stumbled on this site by accident? No, you found this site while Googling words like racism, racialism, white nationalism, etc… Something in your mind is very interested in us and what we’re doing. Nobody researches whether or not Eskimos are planning to take over the world, because nobody sees that as a threat. You found this site because you’re interested in us, which means we’re on your on your mind, which means that regardless of what you tell yourself, you do take us seriously. Deep down, you know that we’re lurking just beneath the surface. You know that all it will take is the right set of circumstances to catapult us to the national scene again. You come here because we fascinate you. Like most Americans, you seek to marginalize us by trying to convince yourself that we’re all just loony tunes. You minimize us to minimize your own fear of us. You want us to engage you in a shouting match, you want us to insult you. You want these things because, if we do them, you’ve brought us down to your level, which means that we’re nothing to be feared. While some of our rank and file might indulge you there, don’t let it fool you. There are plenty of us who know exactly what we’re doing. You have a wonderful day, and please enjoy your stay in our beautiful country.
“It is a dress code. … In strict Muslim countries they typically do try to be fair, bath houses, health spas, indoor pools etc…are typically rotated with days for women and days for men. …The men don’t have special privileges, they can’t swim in open pools where women may be lurking either.”
I don’t see this as a major issue, not to me. But it IS annoying.
Moslems are just too damned obsessed with sex and bodies! It’s morbid. (And they accuse us of same!) But when you keep everything covered up, it’s only natural and inevitable with humans that a prurient curiosity is going to develop.
Also, they have totally confused “dress codes” and customs with religion. In our society, if a woman shows up topless at the mall, she won’t be arrested or beaten by the religious police. It’s not considered a religious matter.
Would an Eskimo be scandalized if he doesn’t see you swathed in fur? Anyone who has read William Graham Sumner’s classic anthropological work, “Folkways”, will understand that clothing, and what our eyes are accustomed to see, have NOTHING to do with religion. Nor with morality. NOTHING!
I don’t care who pays for it, I don’t want them here. Today Moslems in America are “reasonable”, but when there are more of them, they won’t be so accommodating. Yesterday’s requests are tomorrow’s demands. I’m surprised that AmRen posters don’t see that immediately. The flood of Mexicans was once a trickle too.
Muslims just don’t fit in with modern, western culture. they shouldn’t be here.
“Moslems are too damned obsessed with sex and bodies! It’s morbid.
“The flood of Mexicans was once a trickle too.”
Excellent point! Often when groups are small, they are on their best behavior. When their numbers increase, they feel entitled to make demands. Also, as we all know, non-Whites generally have many more babies than we do. Immigration of non-Whites + their high birthrate = a non-White country in short order.
