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Financially Based Religious Accommodation?
Female segregation
Teen felt ‘degraded’ after teacher backed aikido student’s request to avoid touching females on religious grounds
Cited
'A Nova Scotia high school student is asserting she was reduced to “second-class citizenship” after her Halifax aikido school followed provincial human rights law and accommodated a male student’s religious request not to touch his female classmates.'
'Ms. Power, a resident of the Halifax suburb of Upper Tantallon, NS, had been a student at East Coast Yoshinkan since the age of six. In the spring of 2012, Ms. Power, then 15, was just on the verge of earning her aikido black belt when she said a man enrolled at the school and told its owner that, for reasons of his Islamic faith, he was not allowed physical contact with women.'
'The request would not have been noticed in a pottery class or a fencing course, but Aikido — like any martial art — is uniquely physical. The ultimate effect, said Ms. Power, was that sessions were suddenly being divvied up by sex.'
'Steve Nickerson, a fifth degree black belt and the owner and sensei of East Coast Yoshinkan Aikido, wrote in an email to the National Post that although he met the student’s request to avoid physical contact with women, the student “interacted, without physical contact, with women in my classes each week as part of our regular program.”
“There was never any segregation,” he wrote.'
'As for the bowing, Mr. Nickerson said the request was made respectfully and was “very easy to accommodate.” “I believe every person should have an equal opportunity to participate in recreational activities and I would not deny this student access to my classes,” he wrote, noting that he made the accommodation with the confidence that it would not be “disadvantaging any other person’s participation in my classes.” The decision, he said, was supported by both the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and the Halifax Recreation Administration, which operates Lakeside Community Centre.'
'‘Why would someone’s religion — something that they choose to follow — trump my gender, which is something that I was born with?’'
'Amir Hussain is a theology professor at Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount University and wrote his thesis on Toronto Muslim communities. Speaking to the National Post, he called the student’s requests an unusual interpretation of mainstream North American Islam, but said “it could well be that this person feels that this is what their religion is demanding.” Said Mr. Hussain, “in Islam, you’re supposed to respect your teachers. You’re not supposed to bow down to other gods, but the sensei isn’t your god.”'
End citations
The two links appear to take a different angle of the story. The Sun News video takes a stronger view that segregation took place.
In Canada, the federal government handles immigration and provincial and territorial governments attempt to bring in new immigrants for business purposes.
The first link, the Sun News video states that many sought after immigrants in Canada are from Northern African countries that are Islamic.
Therefore the primary reason governments and related agencies would make at times these special religious accommodations for Muslims is not because state agencies are choosing religious rights over women's rights, which would seem the opposite of what would likely occur in Canada, but for the sake of being attractive and to appease current North African Muslim immigrants with money to invest in Canada and for potential immigrants to view Canada as a good place to immigrate to and invest money.
Personally, I would not support accommodation in the context of a public martial arts class for religious reasons as it is not a clear religious context as would be a mosque or men's prayer breakfast or women's lunch within a Christian cultural context in a church where natural rules of separation would apply.
Christian Tingle?
In a previous post on my other blog I noted an interaction with a professional writer and businessman that deals issues of psychology.
Divinity Student
Cited with edits:
'Two, he stated I needed to change the type of people that I wished to associate with in certain ways. He claimed that I should avoid certain relationships with fundamentalist Christians, in content/context seemingly as if all Bible-believing Christians were stereotypical American fundamentalists. Within the context he wrote, he labelled the fundamentalists as being naive in certain aspects. He did not state I was a fundamentalist.
Now, I can admit, certainly some fundamentalists will be naive in certain ways, as will some non-fundamentalists, but the red flag came up in basically labeling all Bible-believing Christians as stereotypical fundamentalists.'
Well, my main disagreement with him was his claiming I was a divinity student and his refusing, seemingly to be corrected, even as I obviously had the greater knowledge at point.
Clearly, I have never been a divinity student, never interested at all in becoming a Reverend or Pastor, but was a theology, religious studies and philosophy of religion student at a secular European level.
Therefore the archived post.
But I digress...
He was stating in the context of potential romantic relationships that fundamentalist Christians, and he meant Bible-believing Christians, evangelicals included, were naive and immature in regard to romantic love.
Now with a few more years of online listening and reading, I can state that this type of view of Biblical Christians is probably pretty commonly held by secularists in psychology related fields.
Interesting indeed as almost none of these experts I have studied, I reason, have been happily married for several years. Many are divorced.
And yet they often state that they have the exclusive best answers and advice.
Few of them have religious views that I would find challenging to debate.
Not well-reasoned out.
There goes my skeptical, intellectual nature again, but in whatever fields one studies whether theology, philosophy and various psychology related, one has to think and pray hard to cut through the falsehoods and find some truth.
However, the clip below makes me ponder again on his view in regard to naive fundamentalists....
Satirically.
Just viewed via a Facebook friend:
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