to not send my girls on this school trip because of my beliefs

[JustGiveMeTwoMinutes]

The trip is to a mosque and the girls (year 3 and 4) have to cover their heads with a scarf, the boys don't have to.

Just to be clear about where I am coming from, this is about a specific practice which I believe is discriminatory and therefore disagree with. I would not choose myself to enter a building that I could only enter if I wore particular clothes but where that requirement was limited to one gender or one group defined by arbitrary characteristics. I would be happy to cover my head as a sign of respect/tradition if everyone entering the building was required to do so.

They can make their own decision on this when they are adults.

Am I being ridiculous and petty or is it reasonable to stand up for my view that just because a custom is part of a religion that does not excuse it being discriminatory?

What if there was a school trip to South Africa during apartheid and your child was black. Everyone could go, but your child had to drink from different water fountains and be treated differently from white children, would you think it was ok because it was the belief of the people who ran South Africa which was translated into law. Like in Saudi Arabia.

Or they could go to a trip to the Alabama of the 50's , but had to sit at the back of the bus. Because that was the belief of the people who ran Alabama in the 50's.

Would it be disrespectful to not go along with these beliefs too?

Actually the covering up or hiding of women heads is Assyrian. It was used in Assyria, more than a millennia before Islam was created and was used for men to classify and distinguish women into 'respectable' (veiled) and 'not respectable' (unveiled) i.e. the poor slaves and concubines. There was an excellent programme by the bbc on this. It was a series about women in different societies and different ages. Assyria was was an extremely patriarchal society, different to the Sumerians before them. The Sumerian women had their own legal identity. Not so the the Assyrian women. Their identity was in relation to males. A militaristic society. Women who were sort of taken or under the authority of other men were covered up so the rest would know. I guess the others were fair game. It appeared to be a sort of 'keep the troops happy' idea. The sexual regulation of women. Men had no need to take special measures to signal their status in the same way. I suppose branding by clothing. It distinguished women from each other and also women from men.

Women were more restricted and made less free in their movement than men. Men could just go into a public space as they were without covering in any special garb. Women had to be veiled and indeed it could be questioned why they were in a public space at all. The veil is definitely a separation or seclusion of women in/from public life relative to men.

It was then adopted by other societies. Ancient Greece. I guess a few patriarchal societies kept it along the way. And made many excuses why it was a good idea, religious et al.

There is no need to make stuff up -- it's all been done over the course of hundreds of years in interpretive texts and pronouncements by imams. Every single detail of human life has been covered in multiple ways by multiple authors. You can choose from a vast smorgasbord of opinions, to suit your agenda.

Questions about divine inspiration aside, the lack of centralisation is an enormous issue in Islam, always has been and always will be -- essentially what it means is that different factions are constantly fighting to ensure their brand of Islam is the dominant one, just like Europe in the periods of religious wars and papal turmoil, only ongoing and for the foreseeable future. Everything is up for grabs in Islam, constantly. Because of the intertwining of the west and the middle east, the structural problems of Islam affect us all.

There is a mother at the school my youngest goes to who has converted to Islam and dresses her daughters, age 6 and 7, head to toe apart from face and hands, So veils, woolly tights in the summer for them, and so on. They do not run around as much as the other little girls and they are both becoming increasingly unfit and sedentary (as is their mother). At what point do we think this stops being a religious issue and starts being a safeguarding one?

Mathanxiety, I am not making stuff up. The earliest records about the veiling women into what is basically their sexual activities is from Assyria, millennia before Islam. Men were able to divide women up based on the veil. Free men weren't property so not divided up in the same way. It was adopted by Greece and came into Christianity too.

I'll try and get a link to that programme later.

I rather think arguing about who started it is missing the point. We should thinking about the fact that is still practiced.

I see it as demeaning and insulting to women.

Just some of the rules Muslim have to respect during war:not killing children,women or the elderly,no destroying temples,no destroying trees and fields ,only initiate war as a self defensive act,stop fighting as soon as the other side gives up...yes,you can see how well ISIS follows Islam...

It's tha Yazidis I probably weep the most for. It's like the Holocaust all over again, with one religion labelled as 'wrong'. The thought of those girls and women being held in buildings and raped over and over again while their grandmothers are shot for not being attractive and therefore useful, while the menfolk are massacred ... it doesn't get much darker than that, does it?

Is it missing the point? Don't people accept it as being written by a man who said it was a decree from a god in Islam? I think the fact that it is simply an inherited form of female organisation from pre Islamic societies in the same region kicks that to touch as being an Islamic thing or suddenly being the inspiration from a god.

The divorce thing where a man simply says 'I divorce you' a few times to divorce is inherited from the previous societies too. The Babylonians were before the Assyrians. A woman couldn't divorce her husband in the same way. I think this was inherited too. Although if a woman said it in Babylonian society, she could be drowned. I don't know if that was brought into the Advent of Islam.

Yes, the Yazidis were left to their fate. It was/is a holocaust. Somebody should have come to their aid when they were surrounded on that mountain.

There is so much commemoration about being on the right side against events in the second world war. Well after a few countries had been invaded and others knew they were in the firing line. Yet, the world just stood by and watched what happened to the Yazidis.

If the Nazis had just had their camps without threatening and invading other countries, I doubt if the allies would have intervened. It was self defence. It was only after Pearl harbour was attacked the Americans got involved.

It seems to be self interest that drives us. I wonder if the States in the region stood idly by because they regard the Yazidis in the same way as IS do -as devil worshippers. Or christians- they are not keen on them either.

I don't understand why our Government isn't doing more for the Yazidis.

I don't know if any Yazidis are in the camps the British government are taking refugees from. I don't know how safe they would even be in those camps.

It was interesting when America made a deal with Turkey to use the air bases. After being brought on board, the first thing the Turks did was bomb the Kurds. This must have been helpful to IS as the Kurds were the only ones successfully fighting IS on the front line.

I don't know if any Yazidis are in the camps the British government are taking refugees from. I don't know how safe they would even be in those camps.

It was interesting when America made a deal with Turkey to use the air bases. After being brought on board, the first thing the Turks did was bomb the Kurds. This must have been helpful to IS as the Kurds were the only ones successfully fighting IS on the front line.

sorry

"It seems to be self interest that drives us"

There's a surprise! Of course what went on before helped form the newer societies and religion. And with women covering, you make it sound like it was just about women being controlled and being treated alley as possessions. I imagine practically, it was also about men trying to protect the females in their lives. Also made some sense given the climate and terrain. Men often covered too.

Of course many people no longer live in the extremes of the dessert these days and it would be nice to think women needed less protection from abuse.

Well, one could be forgiven that altruism was being mooted as a driving force somewhere in the mix with all the commemoration events.

Oh yes, it was very clear on that programme from the Assyrian laws the status of women and the objective of classifying women. It is not at it's core about protection of the woman herself. Even if it is touted as such. Even if someone came along later and claims as much and it was now a decree from a god.

Yes, men do employ face coverings as a practical protective garment when in harsh environments, deserts. Especially in some tribes like the Tuareg. Interestingly, where it is good sense and a practicality to do so, the women don't.

I don't know men are beaten up by a clothing police if they aren't completely up from head to toe and from view. Or if there are the same consequences for them like for women.

It was brought into Christianity as well, probably made its way along from same well. Big Greek influence through St Paul on the development of Christianity from merely being another Jewish sect.

Women had to cover their heads in church. Because men were supposedly the image of a god and just had to show off their godlike amazingness and women were.....harlots. Of course, what I really meant to say supposed to be created in the image of men. Married women covered their heads in medieval times. The nun's veil is what ordinary married woman wore then. A nun being like a married woman as in the bride of Christ.

It's the Yazidis I probably weep the most for Yes. I watched a documentary about people who rescued some of the women. Their stories were heartbreaking.
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11723360/Islamic-State-Meet-the-man-who-helps-kidnapped-women-escape-horrors.html

I realised a few years back that I had happily veiled up at my own wedding a couple of decades ago, and not given it a second thought at the time. It's all the same thing, really, isn't it? I wouldn't wear a veil now.

BoffinMum Thu 19-Nov-15 08:42:33

Out of the whole sorry mess, its the plight of the Yadizi that has affected me most. I don't know why, perhaps just being a woman? A daughter and a mother?

Yet, the world just stood by and watched what happened to the Yazidis

I don't know, I think their plight and being stuck on that mountain did help to galvanize world action in the area. Helicopters went in to try and lift them out and give them aid.

Obv not enough but they can't put boots on the ground.

boffin

I would say safe guarding without question! I am aghast the school has not stepped in and yet we seen threads all the time that the black leather shoes were not quite right and the child excluded from class, or the black leggings were not suitable for PE so child excluded.

Boffin I would go as fas as asking school about it.

There is no need to cover up small dc in veils, possible sign of mad extremism.
I have seen fully clad ladies in London with the metal grid thing over their faces to boot and even they have little girls running round in normal western clothes.

Boffin
My DC go to an Arabic school on the weekend and the majority of pupils there are also Muslim often with at least one Arabic speaking parent. There are a couple of hundred children of varying ages and there were very few girls with their hair covered (they were the older looking girls). I don't recall seeing a single girl who would be around 6 or 7 wearing a headscarf. DS2 is 8 and none of the girls in his class were wearing one.

I see this as another form of forcing children to grow up too quickly and I do think it is an issue when young girls aren't allowed to be children.

I actually mentioned it in my capacity as a school governor, that it needed attention.

I am trying to work out whether I am brave enough to speak to the mother myself. Whole can of worms that would be. But I think she is cheating her daughters of their entitlement to a full and active, and unselfconscious, childhood.

Pangurban, I wasn't addressing your post in my remarks about making stuff up -- sorry, I should have included the poster's name when posting.

I was responding to
redstrawberry10 Wed 18-Nov-15 21:13:46

"The thing about Islam is that anyone can claim they are the True Followers and everyone else is an infidel." (my post)

sure. but you can't just make stuff up and claim you are a true follower. I can't claim that true muslims should bake 5 chocolate cakes a day, and hope that everyone agrees.

and while having a centralised system removes the problem of fractiousness, it doesn't solve the most basic problem: that these books are divinely inspired has no real justification. that claim lends credence to the idea that they should be followed closely, without question.

My response was that there is no need to make up stuff today, in 2015, as it has already been done over the course of hundreds of years, with no tiny detail of human existence not commented upon and opinions preserved in posterity. You can find any quote you want and claim you are the True Followers, based on that.