I'm shocked
This post is not related to technology in any form, but I feel so stong about this issue that I'm sending this out into the world anyway.
In recent days, the Flemish public schooling system voted for a ban on headscarves, much to the anger of the Muslim community.
Apart from public protests, there was a response from an Imam that they would open their own schools that allowed religious symbols for students (not only Muslim). The politicians immediately responded that they would try to block such a move (which is completely legat at the moment) because they label it divsive.
I find both of these decisions a strong violation of our much proclaimed Western Freedom and the Freedom of religion which is part of Belgian law.
You see, we always fence with our so-called freedom as better, yet when someone tries to take that freedom and use it for something we disagree with, we immediately look for ways to block that effort.
I think it is time we start to put up, or shut up. That means that if we truely value Freedom (both religious and otherwise), than we should not fear pieces of cloth that you wear on your head or metal objects shaped like crosses, specially not when they are worn by pupils in schools and not by an authority figure. We should not feel threatened when someone has a religion different than our own, nor should we seek to forbid their religion.
It is also time we put an end to the catholic schooling system that gets large amounts of public funding but only serves those of a single religion and openly discriminates against both other religions and atheists. (As a Belgian native that turned to atheism at 14, I found it impossible to remain free of the religious grip of the Catholic church and nearly 20 years later, I have the same problems for my children.)
So, I put out the proposal that we reform our institutions and take religion out of them entirely (religious classes can be given on school property outside the school hours and be optional). At the same time we could return the right to exercise one's religion to each of the pupils, be it Christians, Jews or Muslims by allowing religious symbols like headscarves and crosses as part of one's own identity.
The atlernative is to come out openly and rewrite our laws to abolish religious freedom and reinstate the Catholic religion as the only state-allowed form of religion (which still is the case in part because we rely on laws dating back to Napoleon).
Please, people of all sides, stop being afraid and stop being intolerant. Your own believes will survive someone that does not share them.
Comments
11 comments postedYep, totally agree with you.
Jos
As a self proclaimed freedom fighter, you want to take away the *constitutional* right of freedom of education of others?
http://www.arbitrage.be/nl/basisteksten/basisteksten_grondwet.html (Artikel 24 - § 1)
No, just avoid that exercising this right violates the right of others.
I agree partly. I believe that schools should be free to impose a dress code if it's necessary. It's arbitrary, and I don't like it, but I can see reasons for it. If it comes to a point where kids are seen as harlots and are ostracized because they don't cover their hair, we failed to protect the freedom of those kids too. The point is, in an ideal world everyone should not be afraid and wear whatever the hell they want - not only legally, but in practice too. However this isn't an ideal world, and the reality on the ground means that the school or the state can't realistically protect minorities that are or dress differently (minorities = muslim/sikh/orthodox jewish/... in a predominant western school, but also western in a school with a large share of muslims f.e.). I guess having a school ban is a bit the way out; but i suspect educating bigots, especially religious bigots, is not very succesful.
That being said, I think it should be up to the management of the school, and not the state. I'm very much worried about the state becoming the arbiter of good taste, i.e. the fashion police. Taste should be completely abstracted out of the government.
No offense, but that doesn't solve everything. A headscarf ban is only symbolic of the deeper problems within secular public institutions. I've been to publicly funded schooling in two different western countries, and a mix of public, public catholic, and private Christian schools.
I have never felt welcome in a public institution. Some students were welcoming, some teachers were, but I lost marks on assignments and I fell out of the "in" crowd because of my faith. Now that I am in university, I have made the same choice that my parents made for me in elementary school and that I made after enduring 3 1/2 years of public education. I choose to work harder, to make more sacrifices, and pay more money so that I can have education I can be proud of. Though at a public institution I am free to wear a headscarf crucifix or anything I would like, I am taught by people who do not know what I believe to be the truth and I am consistently taught beliefs that either directly or implicitly attempt to subvert my thinking to a more "secular" point of view. At the aforementioned institutions, I have been taught that all religions are equal paths to salvation, that Genesis and most of the Bible is myth, sex is good outside of marriage, drugs are okay as long as it's not the hardcore stuff, everyone get's drunk and does stupid stuff so just go along with it, abortion is a woman's right and definitely not murder, we came from monkeys, marriage includes men with men and women with women... this runs deeper than clothing choice, and it is something you are intdoctrinated into from both your teachers and peers. And if you don't fit, well, too bad. You're just intolerant, homophobic, sexually-repressed, brain-washed because you don't believe in the pluralistic and open gospel of freedom.
You see, this is the deeper mentality and idea behind banning head-scarves and crucifixes... religion is dirty. Oh, superficial religion is nice, even healthy. But if you truly believe your faith alone to be true... It's divisive, corrupting and cruel. It's too exclusive, the source of too many arguments and brings nothing positive to the table. Much better to keep it from coming to the table at all. You say put up or shut up yet you also want to end funding to a system that teaches things that you don't like (in this case, the catholic system). You bemoan the difficulty of escaping the grips of the Catholic church. Have you considered that many people of faith think the same thing about "secular" (aka atheist) culture?
Our most basic, core belief is that Jesus is God and functions as the only way to salvation - it is what Christianity was founded around and what diffrentiates us from the Jewish and Muslim faiths. Likewise, those faiths have core beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with our "much proclaimed Western Freedom". Those beliefs don't resonate strongly with a secular culture, and I suspect, with a self declared atheist. So Western Freedom is content to let us hold those beliefs in private, but is tremendously opposed to them entering the public sphere. Western nations only differ on where to draw the line; your system perhaps thinks clothes belong to the public sphere, while others think only government and education and truth. The freedoms which are "much proclaimed" were originally designed to protect religion from the state... but now they are being used to keep religion out of the public square. Is it any wonder that we want to leave a system where we are forced to hide our faith as a dirty little secret?
Irrespective of whether I'm religious or not, I wouldn't want religion to invade the public sphere. For the simple reason that your interpretation of religion might be very different than mine. So let's abstract it out completely, and let the public sphere be the common ground shared between religious (any kind) and non-religious people. If you and your church want to create a parallel society layered on top of the state, with morals and rules founded in your religion, that's OK. However, don't impose it on people outside of your church.
So then, on what "religion" is our government based? Our government chooses to provide certain services, to behave in a certain matter on the global stage, and to make certain laws and carry out certain punishments. That requires a guiding set of moral principles, which most people get from religion. I see what you are saying, but no matter what you do, government will be governing from a set of moral principles and acting as if a certain set of beliefs are true (even if individual government members believe differently, Western states tend to function as if God didn't exist... some more than others). You may like this current system because it may fit well with your personal beliefs (whatever they happen to be, religious or nonreligious) but others will disagree precisely because the state's interpretation of moral principles and guiding beliefs are very different from them. You will never make everyone happy, so saying 'well, some people would disagree' is not really a good defense of the current system because the current system is not 'common ground' and will never totally be unless our government steps back from every controversial issue.
Also, there is a difference between religious involvement in government and government establishing a mandatory state church that everyone must attend. I'm not proposing that my church alone be given the "keys to the kingdom" as it were. In fact, I didn't even necessarily argue against withdrawing funding from public religious institutions. I wanted to point out that headscarves and crucifixes are simply superficial indicators of a deeper issue - our secular society doesn't want anything to do with religion in public, and doesn't understand that religion is incredibly public and you can't wish away different interpretations and disagreements by hiding them under a rock and hoping they go away. If our society truly wants to embrace people from all walks of life and give them freedom, it must encourage religion (spanning the range of faiths, not just my church or Christianity) to be a part of the public sphere, to retain its uniqueness but to dialog and bring to the table its important perspectives on the beliefs and principles that shape our Western nations.
Sounds like a call for some civil disobedience by encouraging people to wear headscarves regardless of religion, in opposition to the law.
I agree with you.
I agree with you, definitely. The debate whether 'speciaal onderwijs' -- special education, mostly this means schools with a religious identity -- should be allowed recently also started again here in the Netherlands, but unfortunately it will be very hard to get rid of those schools because this 'right' has been put in our constitution.
Blocking only one religious symbol is indeed discriminatory, but something that some people here favour as well (like the man that said that Flanders could be added to the Netherlands, because that would give _us_ the city of Antwerp with its large harbour).
Education on a school which identifies itself mainly with a certain religion is very bad in my eyes because you it could harm the world view of children and their capacity of scientific thinking. Teaching creationisms like Intelligent Design or an unadapted version of Genesis would teach people to ignore certain facts and keep on to what they're told to believe, to doublethink, to use a Newspeak word.
I concur in part but dissent in a larger part.
First, you’re presenting a false dilemma. A school system without religious education but allowing religious symbols on the one hand and the proclamation of Catholicism as the state’s only allowed religion on the other, are by no means the only two options.
I agree that a pluralistic society should allow religious symbols in the public sphere. Clothes are a form of expression, and there should be freedom of expression.
But this freedom does not necessarily apply in all circumstances.
For example, an employer may ask its employees not to wear clothes with political of religious symbols, especially if those employees come in contact with the public, representing their company.
Similarly, I believe that a school may deny its pupils expressions which would be allowed in the streets after school hours. A school may disallow religious symbols. This is what a lot of schools decided years ago, and the Community Education Board (Raad van het Gemeenschapsonderwijs GO!) has decided for all its member schools now. It’s the situation as it has been in France for many years now.
I actually agree with you that religion should not be thought at school, and should be optional. Legislation not to finance free (mainly Catholic) schools has been proposed in the past, but was fiercly opposed (Schoolstrijd). Too bad. (Although, I hate to admit that the quality of primary and secondary education has remained high during the 1970s, thanks to the conservative attitude of Catholic schools. Credit where credit is due.)