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Politics : The Truth About Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (10877)	11/20/2007 1:02:31 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20106

Airport baggage screener suspended over long skirt Muslim woman alleges discrimination Allison Hanes, National Post Published: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 TORONTO - An observant Muslim woman has been suspended without pay from her job screening passengers and baggage at Toronto's Pearson International Airport since August over an extra 12 inches of navy blue fabric added to the skirt of her uniform out of religious conviction. Halima Muse, 33, felt the standard-issue knee-length skirt was not modest enough. So after five years of being ill-at-ease working in slacks, she made herself an ankle-length skirt out of nearly identical material and wore it for almost seven months before catching the eye of an operations manager. On Aug. 11, Ms. Muse was sent home and has not been allowed to return to the job she held for almost six years with the private security firm Garda, X-raying hand luggage and waving a metal detector over travellers. Garda is contracted by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA). Yesterday she filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging discrimination. "I practice my religion and I have to wear a skirt because it's a religious issue," Ms. Muse said. "It's not that I like it. I have to--it's my religion." Ms. Muse, a single mother of a 14-year-old son, does not understand why thepermission she is seeking is such a big deal when some of her colleagues hem their skirts shorter, and such religious garb as turbans, kippas and headscarves is permitted as part of the uniform. Ms. Muse's union and the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIRCAN) are also perplexed. Both groups are supporting Ms. Muse's fight. Ed Hawrysh, a trustee with the Teamsters local 847, said the union filed a grievance with Garda, but CATSA determines uniform policy. "Look at the RCMP," Mr. Hawrysh said. "If the national police force can accommodate that type of religious belief, I can't understand why CATSA can't do something even simpler. We're talking about a skirt. This is an issue in CATSA where they've made a decision and they're not prepared to move -- right, wrong or otherwise. I think it's totally ridiculous." James Robbins, Ms. Muse's lawyer, said the courts have repeatedly ruled in favour of accommodating minority religious rights, as long as the concession is reasonable and does not constitute an undue hardship for others. "It's seems pretty reasonable to let the poor woman lower her hemline a few inches," he said. "The accommodation she's looking for is trivial from CATSA's perspective." Garda, the private security firm, says it was just enforcing CATSA's rules in suspending Ms. Muse, and even approached the agency to find out if it would make an allowance for her longer skirt. "What they came back with was that they felt that the current policy they had with those alternatives addressed the concern that she had, and so for that reason they were not making a change to the policy for a longer skirt length," Garda spokesman Joe Gavaghan said. "The situation we find ourselves in is that when you have a contract with a customer, which is what CATSA is, you have to fulfill the requirements that they set forth." Yesterday, a representative for CATSA said this is the first time the agency has dealt with a request for more modesty since the uniform for screening officers was unveiled in 2003. "It's important to stress the importance of the uniform and uniformity. The reason it was rolled out was to have a credible and professional corporate identity," spokeswoman Anna-Karina Tabunar said. "We're treating it not just as an issue of a new skirt, we're treating it as a broader issue, a policy issue, and as such CATSA has to gather all the facts to evaluate the different aspects of the request and the impact it's going to have on CATSA's uniform and uniform policy." She did say for the first time yesterday that CATSA is prepared to ensure Ms. Muse "will not be financially penalized" as the organization contemplates her request. Email to a friend Printer friendly Font:****"If the screening officer and the screening service provider come to an arrangement, then CATSA will provide the money," Ms. Tabunar said. Mihad Fahmy, a human rights lawyer with CAIR-CAN, said that whereas turbans worn by Sikhs were the flash-point in a debate over public expressions of religious freedom a decade ago, the dress of some Muslim women is often the focal point of discussion today. "I think part of it has to do with the public's perception about Muslim women and about the hijab," Ms. Fahmy said. "I think a lot of it is not about safety concerns or business interests. I think a lot of the reaction has to do with assumptions about whether [the] hijab fits within modern society." © National Post 2007

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (10877)	11/21/2007 6:25:29 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20106

"Islam should not be blamed for terrorism," UN conference Dharam Shourie, Press Trust Of India New York, November 20, 2007 hindustantimes.com; The international community should counter the spread of Islamophobia partly due to "misinformation and misperceptions", participants at a UN counter-terrorism conference said. Speaking at the 3-day conference, experts said there is a need for the international community to counter the spread of Islamophobia, which they noted has been growing in recent years partly because of misinformation and misperceptions about the religion. The emergence of "misguided groups" that have deviated from the straight path to fanaticism, violence and extremism, attributing their acts to Islam, in no way justifies associating this phenomenon with the Islamic faith, they said during the conference titled "Terrorism: Dimensions, Threats and Countermeasures" in Tunis. "It profits from weak State capacity to maintain law and order," said co-chair and Tunisian Culture and Preservation of Heritage Minister Mohamed El Aziz Ben Achour, during the concluding session on November 17. "These vulnerable areas are exploited by terrorists to mobilize recruits and justify violence. None of the religions are a cause of political radicalism and extremism. Religious doctrine may be 'tools of mobilization,' rather than a direct cause," he said at the conference which was jointly organized by the UN's Department of Political Affairs and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Participants agreed that terrorism flourishes in environments where there is discontent, exclusion, humiliation, poverty, political oppression and human rights abuses, as well as in countries engaged in regional conflicts.