Religious discrimination grievance? AIBU

[Namechangedforthisdrama1]

So a colleague of mine is a lovely woman, we often go out for lunch together and are very close. she is however, very very religious and pushy of her religion, I had my dd out of wedlock and she continued to tell me throughout my pregnancy that I must get married and the baby will grow up with no morals ect..

Anyway the other day we were discussing her marriage, she had an arranged marriage which meant that She had to give up uni (years into a medicine degree) to bring her husband to the UK and and then had To work at a part time job at my work, she always talks about this but says it's her path to take ect.

She has lost 12 babies and I have been there for her throughout, she has openly admitted it's due to 'genetic' issues as her husband is her first cousin, I went to see her when her son tragically passed a few months ago in hospital and she was destroyed, but her husband has forced her to keep tying (she gets pregnant usually a month after mc)

I was talking to her about this but she has told me that in her religion you must have many children or you are a failure, I said to her that it was not her fault - and not her fault that she has been made to be with a first cousin and have children with him.

She then told me about her sister who has been getting abused by her husband for 20 years, I asked her why her sister hadn't left this man, she was horrified at the idea and said you can't leave a marriage that is terrible why would I suggest this etc..

Then I asked what her parents thought of this, she said 'they are trying to keep the peace and they can't let her leave him as they would be looked down on by the community' she said this was the plan for her sister and she had to deal with it as that was the man that had been chosen for her.

This made me angry, I have been in an abusive relationship and when my dad found out I'm pretty sure he wanted to kill the man. I also thought of my daughter being forced to put up with an abuser from the age of 17 scared I would disown her if She left.

I told her that her parents were idiots if they thought that and if that's what there religion is about then in my opinion, I can't see why anyone would want to be a part of it. I said that to watch her sister be abused for 20 years is horrendous and her parents should be protecting her above there 'rules'

Anyway I have since found out that she has put a complaint in against me to HR and said I discriminated against her and her religion.
We have since continued at lunch and being friends and I am shocked to find out she has done this.

So WIBU? I have no issue against her religion, just against what was going on. I don't know what to say to her or to HR.

Sorry, just read that you've been invited to a meeting.

Is it the start of a potential disciplinary or something more informal?

From your account I don't see anything discriminatory. You expressed an opinion on her parents putting embarrassment among their peers above protecting their daughter from abuse. She might have found the comment offensive but I can't see that it was discriminatory.

I do think you should have stopped spending time with her back when the ridiculous comments about your pregnancy were made though and should definitely not spend more time with her than you need to in order to do your job in future.

No, lorelei9.

What I see here, on the information given, is two friends having a very strong difference of opinion. A clash of cultural beliefs, of you like. It's a non event at this point and I'd be doing my best to see that it remained that way!

I wonder how her beliefs would have influenced her treatment of patients should she have finished the course. I would imagine a bit of a clash, unless she only had patients with similar beliefs.

Its like a perfect storm of employment/ religion/ race/ ethics/ fertity issues isn't it?
Did you sit down with a checklist before you posted?

From what you have said there is no discrimination here. You are not her manager and her role / working environment has not changed due to your comments. She has been very critical of your actions in the past, what you have said is merely on the same lines as what she already dished out.

She sounds indoctrinated and is running to management as she cannot justify her lifestyle so wants to play the religion card in the hope she gets 'back up'.

Never speak to her personally again. If you have to deal with her in work be polite and professional, but if she ever try's to talk to you personally, rebuff her in the strongest manner and make it clear that you are no longer friends.

You are well rid of this person.

Yanbu. This woman sounds dangerous. Cut all contact which it seems you have now. In addition to her filing a formal complaint, what if she's also told her family your comments? If they treat each other with such little respect, it would not be pleasant to be an outsider and be targeted by them. In fact, I would bet she's already told them and they encouraged her to file the complaint. Her life and that of her sister's sounds grim indeed and they fall right in line with it. OP, keep your distance from people like her no matter their religion or lack thereof. She may even have been goading you for months to say something slightly provocative that she could take hold of so she could file a complaint and win some kind of damages payout, which would gain her family money and also perhaps a spotlight in the media. Bad all the way around. Stay far away from her. Also the fact she continued to pretend she's your friend and have lunches with you after filing the complaint shows how devious she is. I wouldn't apologize to her, by the way, you've done nothing wrong.

Littlebeautybelle. Why is there no like button for your post?

The accusation is bullshit. Tell the truth to HR, and if the accusation is not dropped, report her for discriminating you. If necessary, convert to the religion of the flying spaghetti monster and say it is part of your religion to have children out of wedlock if you so choose.

Also, I admire your patience. I would not have stayed friends with someone who thinks she's entitled to tell me to get married.

She needs help (coerced to have 12 miscarriages, where any sensible couple would opt for a sperm donor or just give up? That's a form of domestic violence) but I don't think anyone can help her when she doesn't admit she needs help to get out of her abusive relationship.

Blimey. I don't want to say did this really happen but...did this really happen?

If so, then just tell HR what you've written here.

The whole thing is ludicrous.

One thing that baffles me about religious people (but then so much stuff does): if you believe that human life is sacred, and abortion is wrong, which so many fundamentalist religious people do, why do you keep on creating pregnancies that you know will inevitably miscarry? You're creating life only to destroy it over and over again.

Don't even get me started on first cousin marriages.

Don't tell HR what you've written here. In particular, don't tell HR that you critized her parents and called them idiots (however idiotic their position may be). Ask HR exactly what you are accused of and what their proof is. Do not provide them with any information you aren't absolutely obliged to. And if you are in a union, get their support immediately.

It's not discrimination unless she has in some way been disadvantaged. Criticising her way of life isn't disadvantaging her. It's just criticism. You're still going for lunch with her and being her friend - in what way have you actually treated her badly by expressing your view? What bollocks. It's not on to say 'discriminating against' when you mean 'disagreed with'.

Speaking as a religious person (Anglican, FWIW) YADNBU. As a matter of simple common-sense, expressing an opinion cannot ever be discrimination.

Unfortunately society has got itself tied in knots, enacting laws that allow people to make claims on the basis of nothing more than hurt feelings, I don't welcome this development at all because it encourages people in my situation to embrace victimhood and believe there is something morally admirable about feeling hurt.

I hope you don't get burnt by that.

enacting laws that allow people to make claims on the basis of nothing more than hurt feelings

I agree. It makes me angry when people rush to HR with this kind of nonsense...nothing more than hurt feelings because someone had a different opinion.

It seems to be trendy in some liberal circles to express any form of negative opinion on this variety of Islamic culture as 'islamophobia', which given this culture is about as illiberal as possible is perverse in my view - I've no idea why they expend such effort trying to insulate it from criticism!

Quite right, and in fact it has the opposite effect from what they intend as it gets everyone else's backs up, not just about Islam but any religion.

When people constantly express view that criticize your way of life that can create a hostile environment. (Think about people criticizing women for working when they have children - it's "just an opinion" but it's an opinion that has created environments in which women with children are not treated the same as men with children. It can create a discriminatory environment.) When the way of life is a protected characteristic the workplace has a legal problem it has to deal with. However you think "common sense" or "nonsense" applies to the specifics of your case, the reality is that you have to tread carefully, because these sorts of comments have been part of discrimination in the past and the law protects people's religious beliefs.

When people constantly express view that criticize your way of life that can create a hostile environment

True, but the OP is the one who was first wronged, here.
A person who gleefully accuses someone of being "immoral" for having a child out of wedlock, but then acts all offended at being told that "IF your religion makes you so very unhappy, THEN this religion is not a good one" ... does not really want to uphold anti-discrimination laws, she just wants to exploit them to get what she wants.

That's why I say: If she wants to bring the law into this, well, okay, you can play that game, too.

I'm amazed that someone with such archaic views would go whining off to hr for hurt feelings whilst she stands by and condones by her silence abuse and the horrific situation of having to go through miscarriage after miscarriage for the same of 'face'.

It's not religion but culture. So she can say horrible judgemental things but noone else can voice an opinion?

I'd avoid her. She sounds very small minded.

I despair at the responses here tbh. With all the shit going down in the world it is more essential than ever we at least try to understand this culture.

I'n not saying we should agree with it but at least try to understand it, what it is, where it comes from; to recognise that cultural beliefs are DEEPLY HELD. Both hers and ours - as is apparent on this thread.

To say her parents are idiots was deeply, deeply insulting to her/her cultural beliefs. Not for us to agree or disagree but to recognise thisviolated a core cultural belief.

My opinion now: these people are caught in the most awful beliefs and traditions: she is not dangerous, those cultural beliefs are 'dangerous' . We find her cultural beliefs offensive, ditto she, her culture, finds many of our cultural beliefs offensive. We have to accept that and not insist we are right. We may find their beliefs abhorrent but we do need to at least try to understand what this culture believes and not dismiss, even if we don't agree, what are deeply held beliefs and traditions, held for centuries. This culture gets a lot of things right that we get dismally wrong eg caring for the family, respect, prioritising society above the individual so we shouldn't think we're blameless.

This clash was about respect: it was calling her parents idiots that would have deeply offended her culture and traditions, even if the sentiments she expresses are offensive in our culture.

Just something to bear in mind in future: to not be insulting in speech. Rather like MN talk guidelines, really lol: we can say we don't agree but we can't directly insult a poster. Directly isulting her parents was way beyond the pale for her/her culture - even if your sentiments were understandable, given your experiences. Though i should qualify: its understandable to us/our culture but not to her/her culture in which respect for tradition/elders/family/deity comes waaaay before everything else. Our culture respects worships the individual, which is a foreign concept in that culture.

Rambly! Tired zzzz

Just to give context: I had a middle Eastern Muslim student, fresh from his country for the first time, staying in my house and he left some books downstairs. I put them on the stairs for him to pick up when he passed - he was ENRAGED. Turns out I [thought i] had insulted him (deeply) by putting the books on what was essentially the floor, a major taboo in his culture. Not for me to agree or disagree. Yy for me to uphold boundaries within my home ie that he is respectful to me (which he was, just extremely angry bcs he thought I had insulted him).

Our cultures are SO different! We have to at least try to understand, and learn to be respectful of, one anothers cultural beliefs, even if we don't agree.

Sorry, he thought I had insulted him.

Zzz for real now.

When people constantly express view that criticize your way of life that can create a hostile environment.

If people have made their point and continuously repeat it in order to belittle you, they have gone far, far beyond expressing an opinion, and are at best being unprofessional and rude, and at worst are bullying. Simply expressing one's disagreement with a religion (or an aspect of it) and even expressing dislike is not in itself any of those things. Honesty is too important to be interfered with without a good reason.

Also, I hope that if people criticise my way of life, I at least consider whether their criticisms have a point.

In my own office environment some of my colleagues are very religious, others probably hostile or at least incredulous. Religion is a topic that occasionally comes up as we have worked with each other for most of a decade, and know each other pretty well. Everyone copes, probably because we know we're all grown adults who are there to do a job that has nothing to do with religion.

Vestal This is a disciplinary matter and saying "but she started it" isn't going to get rid of the complaint against her. She needs to tread carefully and not giveaway anything she doesn't need to. After all, the OP says she did not feel that her colleague's comments created a hostile environment for her, perhaps because it isn't an attitude that is widely held anymore. So any reciprocal complaint would be a tactic rather than a rightful grievance. It may not be a good one. Whatever the ethical situation is there is a legal one that needs to be navigated.

There's also a different narrative here than the tit-for-tat outrage - the OP had someone she thought of as a friend, whom she talked to a lot about quite personal things. And her friend was so hurt by something she said that she couldn't even raise it with her and felt she had to go to HR. Perhaps it's something that happens to her again and again - people insulting her parents and the values she has around marriage, values that are so culturally important she sees her sister hurt to uphold them - that it is oppressive to her and so she felt a deep betrayal when the person she has been confiding in turned out to be just like everyone else. I'm not saying this is an objective view of what happened, but it could be a personal one for the OP's colleague. God knows I'd like to see cultural values that condem women to abusive marriages wiped from the face of the earth. But this narrative of the events isn't about that cultural war, it's about the way individuals feel. And understanding that can lead us to being better friends.

I think the best basis for a friendship, along with understanding, is honesty.

Toad well if honesty is so important, it must be fine for every guy that likes the new woman in the office to walk up to her and say "I'd like to shag you". Or "you've got really nice tits". Because, how can simply expressing an opinion be unprofessional, rude or bullying?