I don't know whether I was right to have been offended by this….

[DaisyHayes]

I am a teacher, and part of my role in school is to train and mentor new teachers and student teachers.

Last year, when we got the intake of student teachers, I greeted them and delivered my welcome presentation and induction as usual.

One of the students, when I introduced myself to him, refused to shake my hand when I introduced myself to him. He did not offer any explanation for this. I continued to offer my hand expectantly, and after an awkward pause, he told me that he does not shake hands with women on religious grounds.

I found this unbelievably fucking offensive.

Aside from anything else, the man was a student teacher on his first day in the school. I was (effectively) his manager who had the power to pass or fail him - I am fairly experienced and have been in my current school for eight years, so have some responsibility and superiority. He was at least ten years younger than me.

Firstly, I think that if someone in a professional environment is proffering their hand to you upon being introduced then professionalism and simple manners would take precedence over whatever religious conventions you adhere to.

Secondly, if you are going to be so rude as to not shake my female hand, then you should at the very least explain why you are not doing so, rather than let me stand there with my hand stuck out while you studiously ignore it.

Part of me worries that I am being incredibly bigoted. I am an atheist, but have never felt the need to demonstrate a Richard Dawkinesque crusade against those who have religious belief and think that it is good manners to respect others' faith.

On the other hand, part of me just thinks why on earth should I be understanding and accommodating about someone who clearly demonstrated that he thinks my possessing ovaries makes me utterly inferior to him and unworthy of simple manners?

I'd be really grateful for your thoughts on this.

This seems fairly straightforward to me.

The OP is in a managerial position towards this student. Whether or not she is personally offended is besides the point. SHe has an obligation to the student teacher to make sure he receives proper feedback and to the school staff and students that the student teacher behaves appropriately.

The OP should take advice from senior management, the Equality officer at the LEA or her union. It has been demonstrated in numerous test cases that religious belief is not protected from discrimination if the religious belief is being used to justify discrimination against others (women, gay people). So it seems extremely likely that the comment and behaviour of the student teacher are discriminatory and the OP has an obligation to give the student teacher feedback about this. If the student teacher behaved inappropriately in response to the feedback then this issue would have to be taken further.

It sounds like a cultural rather than religious thing.

Spot on Milly - once again cutting through the crap to what the OP should do in response.

The OP is required to deal with this based on what actually happened, not on what we can speculate it might be about. What actually happened was that the student teacher stated that he intended to treat her differently because of her gender, and his justification was religious.

Do you think Sir Ian Blair could have charged the Muslim woman police cadet with discrimination under anti-discrimination laws for refusing to shake his hand because he was a man? I don't think so.

Megapixels..... I have no idea what this man is, race wise, but this country doesn't obviously discriminate against women, but many do.

Why should I accept relatively new cultural practices that make this country move in a backward direction? I am not religious at all, and quite frankly despise the 'tolerance' for intolerance and prejudice because these people are religious. If this guy was BNP we'd, quite rightly be appalled, but if he's a homophobic man who won't touch a non Muslim women, we're okay because 1000 years ago someone wrote some rules.

'A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said of the Imber Court incident on December 21 that normally the police would have refused a request not to shake Sir Ian's hand.'

Maybe he would have had to wrestle her to force her to shake his hand.

I don't think anybody could be charged. It is not a criminal offence and to charge somebody would be an extreme response.

But a female police officer should certainly receive feedback that not shaking hands on the grounds of gender was unacceptable. She is, after all, working with and for the public. This does not mean that she has to shake hands with anyone; it simply means that she should apply her behaviour equally to both genders and not use gender as a justification.

What if she refused and said that was part of her religious culture? Do you think they would say, then you can't join the police force? I doubt it, because I think it would make a mockery of the whole diversity policy.

Who's charging anyone? Both Milly and I have said that providing him with feedback would be the way to go on this.

I think they should say that she couldn't join the Police force.

Diversity and liberal tolerance are all about accepting customs of different faiths and cultures that are alien to us and which we may not be comfortable with.

Forced me to do a bit of digging on this (will give links below) and someone on another forum made an interesting point about tolerance for different methods of greeting in cultures (e.g. westerners like to shake hands, but when in Japan I greeted people as they greeted me, and same with Indian greetings - hands together Namaste). The Muslim version of this would be to put your right hand on your breast and say Asalamu Alaikum (peace be upon you). If he had made any effort at explanation (and agree no one has to be forced to shake hands as NotjustKangaskhan said) then he could have explained and said this is my preferred way to greet people in my culture so this is how I do it. I don't think anyone would have taken offence at that and if they had, would have been unreasonable to do so.

Sadly the way he has chosen to conduct himself does leave him open to accusations of treating women as inferior and comes across as very ignorant. To him they are probably just haram (and yes I do agree with other posters that sadly, most religions perpetuate the concept of women being inferior through a myriad of means and religious teachings etc.) but he is at the very least a man with no manners.

www.shiachat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/234987676-why-a-man-cant-shake-hands-wid-women/

www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?11235-Advice-for-a-brother-on-how-NOT-to-shake-female-s-hands&p=116004&viewfull=1

I don't think there is any point speculating about situations that have never actually happened. There are plenty of cases where people have been sacked from their jobs because they used their religious beliefs as a justification for treating other groups differently. It is legal to sack people for such behaviour, and every incident where people have been sacked for such behaviour has been supported by tribunals or upheld by courts.

So we know what the law is. There's no point making up imaginary sackings.

Don't feel that you can leave this incident off his assessment. What anyone else decides to make of it is up to them. Maybe he wants to ultimately teach in a faith school.

This is the UK and our ways of greeting people are perfectly acceptable here, if you can't do it choose another job.

'The OP should take advice from senior management, the Equality officer at the LEA or her union. It has been demonstrated in numerous test cases that religious belief is not protected from discrimination if the religious belief is being used to justify discrimination against others (women, gay people).'

that sounds like starting some sort of disciplinary procedure against someone who doesn't shake hands because it is part of their religious custom. Diversity means accepting things you may not like.

Claig, that isn't what diversity and tolerance is all about. Diversity is about race, disability, gender, sexual orientation and religious belief. That is the law.

I wonder if preventing him from teaching the female A level class was unfair. It either prevented him from displaying how he could interact professionally with female students in the classroom, or prevented you from being able to report on how he had failed to do so to whoever had the power to sign him off as fit to teach. Was it that you wanted to protect the girls from any potentially offensive behaviour?

Is it legal to discriminate against someone due to their religious beliefs? I don't know. Have any religious groups started proceedings because their members had been sacked due to incidents such as these?

Claig, it is not about starting a disciplinary procedure. Equality officers give informal advice to people all the time about how to deal with situations like this. It is nowhere near the point of a disciplinary procedure, and the person in question is a student teacher - so it wouldn't even be within the OP's remit to start disciplinary proceedings.

I think PatientGriselda may be right. I'm not a lawyer. I think MillyR is, if I remember rightly. But I would be surprised if religious groups were unable to challenge things like that in law under discrimination law.

Claig, yes, there are many widely reported cases where religious people have taken employers to court because they were sacked because they discriminated against people based on religious teaching.

In every single case they have lost and the employer has won.

The woman police officer who refused to shake hands with Sir Ian could have listened to a thousand equality officers and she still wouldn't have changed her mind, because it was fundamental to her beliefs. What happens then?

I'm not a lawyer. I'm just aware of equality law and have had to deal with certain situations with advice from an equality officer.

I agree about the A level thing. The OP should not have done that, and could get into a lot of trouble if she repeats to anyone at work why she did it.