Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (10550)	12/3/2005 9:10:01 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32591

Ever heard of a Mosque? McGill Muslims launch human-rights complaintBy INGRID PERITZ theglobeandmail.com Saturday, December 3, 2005 Posted at 3:32 AM EST Globe and Mail Update Montreal — Muslim students at McGill University say they've been forced to perform their daily prayers in hallways, in stairwells, even on the increasingly damp and snowy lawn of the main downtown campus. Now, they say, they want to come in from the cold. In the latest chapter of a long-simmering feud with McGill, a group of Muslim students filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission that alleges the university is violating their rights by failing to provide them with prayer space. The dispute tests the limits of religious accommodation at one of Canada's best-known and diverse universities, which insists its mission is secular. And it marks the second human-rights complaint by Muslim students demanding a dedicated prayer space at a university in Quebec. “This is an issue of basic human rights and human dignity, and believe me there is no dignity in having to pray in a dirty hallway,” said Sarah Elgazzar, a former McGill student and spokeswoman for the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations, which participated in yesterday's complaint. At a news conference, the Muslim Students Association of McGill provided a list of 36 universities across Canada that they say provide space for Muslim students. These range from non-denominational meditation rooms to separate “prayer houses” for the students. Just a few blocks from McGill, Concordia University, with its large Muslim student body, is expanding the prayer room. Some were surprised to find McGill at the centre of such a dispute. The university has one of the oldest Islamic-studies programs in Canada, and became a home for Muslims in the early 1960s who gathered for prayers there before the city's first mosques were built. “It's the ultimate irony,” said Syed Naseer, a former McGill student who retired this year after working as a librarian at the university for nearly 40 years. He said he is so angry that he will now change his will to remove McGill as a beneficiary. McGill had been accommodating Muslim students with free prayer space in one of its downtown buildings. This spring, after a one-year warning, it reclaimed possession of the room because it said it was needed for academic purposes; the room is now an archeology lab. Since then, McGill says it has met with its Muslim students 15 times, helping them look for properties for prayers off campus and offering advice on fundraising. Jews, Christians, and even Ismaili Muslims all have prayer space off campus, the university says. “We don't provide religious groups with space for religious activities,” Kristine Greenaway, a university spokeswoman, said yesterday. “McGill is a secular institution. Our space needs to be used for our academic mission.” The Muslim students say theirs is the only faith that requires them to pray at specified times, five times a day. Besides, they say they don't have the financial means of longer-established communities to take over a piece of real estate in downtown Montreal, near McGill. “In all of our history, we have never heard of a university telling students that they have to pay to pray — that you will only be permitted your rights to the extent to which you can afford them,” said Mohamed Sheibani, national president of the Muslim Students Association. For now, Muslim students say they find themselves praying in hallways and drawing stares. “You're trying to reach this spiritual utopia, and people are stopping and watching,” Ms. Elgazzar said. “One person thought I was having a heart attack.” The Quebec Human Rights Commission is already grappling with the volatile issue of dedicated campus prayer space for Muslim students. It expects to rule by March on a similar complaint by Muslim students at a Montreal engineering school affiliated with the University of Quebec.