Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Where To Begin With This One?

It's Spain, not the US, but it's still ridiculous:

It’s hard to keep track these days of what ¨shows disregard to the feelings of Muslims.” Consider the case of the student at the Menéndez Tolosa school in Cadiz who this week asked his geography teacher to stop discussing ham in class because it was disrespectful to him as a Muslim. It should be noted that the teacher, José Reyes Fernández, was not mocking the Koran’s prohibition against eating ham. What was so offensive to the student was Fernández’s use of the Granada town of Trevélez as an example of a cold moutain climate conducive to the curings of hams.

Fortunately the local prosecutor does not seem interested in pursuing this.

Muslims aren't supposed to eat pigs. I haven't yet read that they're not supposed to hear about pigs. This is just an issue of seeing how far someone can push his views.

Nevertheless, the story, which verges on parody, made headlines across Spain. Javier Jordán, a political science professor at the University of Granada, told PJM: “This incident is an absurd example of how the Islamist ideology attempts to impose an ‘Islamic exception’ to Europe’s customs and laws. The Muslim student and his parents who denounced the teacher have hurt the image of Islam in Spain and contributed to social polarization. These types of episodes do damage to the idea of Muslim integration into Spain’s pluralistic society.”
To show how far Europe has slipped, I'm relieved at this result. How hard would it be to believe in some alternate ending, with the teacher being fined or "reeducated"?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When I lived in the Twin Cities, some Muslim check-out clerks at a local SuperTarget (has full grocery) refused to touch pork products even though they were in sealed packages. Target reassigned them, but why should they have had to do so? No one has a right to a particular job and if they refuse to do the job for which they were hired, they should be fired. There was also a problem with Muslim cabdrivers at the airport refusing to carry passengers who were carrying alcohol. Again, those who refused should have lost their airport permits. Those Muslims who are intolerant, on religious grounds, of common and legal American practices should move to a Muslim country. The same goes for any immigrants who want their language and culture to be celebrated over English and the American traditions (which are always evolving); they should move.