Muslim charity run

[Thomasina79]

Has banned women and girls over the age of 12 from participating. Thoughts?

We provide separate facilities from age 8, and ask that children over 8 don't enter opposite sex facilities.

We do not think they are "fair game"

Until 50 years ago women were barred from participating in road races longer than 6km in the UK, an activity that women of all ages who do sport now take for granted. I'll push back against any attempt to force the thin end of that particular wedge back in.

I was actually asking if Muslim women can enter open running contests and of course they can.

Maybe if they do, they'll show the Muslim women they are not alone, and that it's alright to protest against something that is detrimental to them. Show not lecture.

Yes, and think how long it took for women to be allowed to play football. The pitches were all for men's games only.

The Equality Act is tricky beast and it is not just a cut and dried case of illegal/not illegal.

As others have said It will come down to legitimate aims. If the charity's aims for the race are to promote participation in sport for conservative muslim men, a single sex race could be ruled to be justified and lawful. IANAL but I think they would struggle with that based on what I have read.

The Equality Act is not a zero sum game but more a careful balance of the rights of all protected characteristixs, which is why case law is so important.

Why is this happening in the UK where women have equal rights under the law?

If you want to live somewhere where women and girls are second class citizens, there are plenty of countries to choose from. Don't try and turn the UK into one of them.

I grew up in a Muslim country. Women were treated as second class citizens and their lives were really restricted. It wasn’t a particularly extreme one either. It doesn’t mean the men were monsters or all the women were unhappy but it isn’t a good situation. I wouldn’t have been able to go for a jog there without being harassed and would probably have had stones thrown at me. I did have them thrown at me on other occasions but I never risked running outdoors.

I think we do see it, question it AND protest it. There is just so much going on atm you may not have noticed.

I always find it fascinating when people come onto a thread about one particular issue and then point out bad things happening in different ways as if that’s relevant?

This story is about Muslims most of the asians in Leicester are Indian hindus or sikhs

Yeah I think this is true, when people migrate their country of origin crystallises for them. I think it varies by country as well. The gulf is modernising, synagogues are now open in Bahrain and in the Emirates, whereas countries like Somalia are still arguing over whether men should be allowed to marry children and in Iraq they think marrying a 9yr old is just fucking fine.

When I lived there the only time I saw a child (as in pre pubescent) in a headscarf was when they were south asian or a non gulf arab.

I actually remember when Pakistani girls in my hometown started wearing headscarfs, it was after an influx of somalis who all wore hijabs. That was the 80’s, before that, most Pakistani mums just dressed in a salwar kameez then slowly people became more conservative. They didn’t start out that way, if I hazard a guess I would imagine that there probably wasn’t that much difference between disparate groups arriving from the subcontinent initially . The african asian diaspora was always more liberal though.

I ran into someone wearing a one eyed niqab on the plane the other day. I felt miserable, she was a really nice older lady but I just felt like the extent to which modesty culture is taken is just so extreme. Women aren’t obliged to show anyone their skin or hair if they don’t want to BUT at the very least you should be able to see where you are going and be able to breath easily.

Driving past primary schools in my town, I see lots of little girls in hijabs. At some point someone decided it was for very young girls as well.

Did you read the whole article or just the bits that allow you to hate on Jews?

"The Jewish Chronicle, which first reported the story" ie this was called out BY the Jewish community in the first place. And it is not orthodox Jewish women, it's a specific ultraorthodox Haredi community. That's very different from eg the modern orthodox Jewish community.

But well done on finding a sexist event from 10 years ago that was heavily criticised by most other UK Jewish communities.

Surely covering up one eye all the time could have actual health (and safety) consequences?

Yes. While I’m not a fan of Farage, two main parties are just making life so easy for him.

All he has to fo us say “women don’t have penises” and “we need to control immigration“ and he’s winning.

When are they going to wake up?

What do ‘they’ see them as then? Why is it too dangerous and inflaming to the frothing uncontrolled passions of Muslim men to let them run in a charity race if they want to? Why do men get to make that decision for them?

Well if the men are allowed, then they should be as well.

And they should be called out for their behaviour regardless. Leicester is 33% muslim 25% hindu 6% sikh.

Most religions ban women from doing things. Islam is one of the youngest world religions. Women and men are not allowed to excercise with each other and once puberty hits then the gender segregation comes into play. The reason is modesty in the eyes of god. (I think but a muslim lerson might wish to challenge me).
I am not religious at all but I do read the teachings of different religions as I am curious.
Christianity had various rules about gender segregation in the past. And some denominations still practice it in different areas.
The uk laws have only really changed in the last 150 years to allow women any rights at all.
We and all religions need to go further but its a long process, we are talking about changing 1000s of years of beliefs and millions of peoples views to make changes. Its slow progress and you can see even in saudi arabia there have been some recent changes to allow women to drive for example.
I would say that I lived in the middle east for a bit and there are womens only gyms there, I joined one and it was pretty wonderdul actually. Women go in in their full niqab, take it off and are wearing hot pants and bra tops and doing all the excercise and classes, having a lot of fun and no sweaty men hogging the weights. So excercise itself isnt banned.
I think only muslim women can really comment on if they are happy with the segregation in excercise. But in the uk sports are actually still segregated. We just had the whole issue of allowing a trans man to compete in womens sports. I think we are still happy in the uk to segregate sports by gender. So I cant see the problem you have with this particular event.

It would be great to see this dragged through the courts if the organisers try it again next year.

Some people are never going to be happy.
The vast majority of muslim women wouldn't care

Maybe they aren't as interested as us in changing things so. If they're happy with how things are then I guess there's no problem

I have complained to The Charity Commission tho they don’t make it easy.
Stuff like this must be called out. We cannot pass by and ignore.

Sorry, I am not digressing.

I am thinking about all the things we passively accept that are not so different to the issues being discussed.

It is brought into sharp relief by this one event. And many important points are being made but they also belie the ubiquitous discrimination that we all live with day to day without discussing it like we are this particular event.

It absolutely does my head in that even high ranking women's teams such as Spurs don't get to play in big stadiums and the recent women's rugby world cup was a sell out, proving that when the opportunities arise, they are taken.

Obviously the best way of dealing with this would be for nobody to enter. I can only hope that one day Islam has its own reformation, as it certainly won't change at the behest of Christians - nobody wants to be told what to do.

Many proponents of Islam do sr them as fair game though.

See mainly Pakistani Muslim men grooming and raping underage white girls in towns across the UK.

See also the recent reduction in age of consent to 9 in Iraq. Some proponents of Islam are going backwards.