The Strib takes a whack at Katherine Kersten, and at all of you who take umbrage at Minneapolis Community Technical College’s investigation into installing foot baths for Moslem students:
Minneapolis Community and Technical College has been bombarded with letters and e-mails — most of them hostile, some of them hateful — since disclosing that it is considering the installation of a foot bath for some Muslim students to use before prayer. This reaction is out of proportion to the modest and cautious inquiry the school has undertaken, and it is certainly out of keeping with Minnesota’s long tradition of social tolerance and temperate thinking.
Actually, it’d be out of keeping with Institutional Minnesota’s traditional self-glorifying view of itself. Minnesota has plenty of racist skeletons in its closet, from the Duluth lynchings to the Russell Shimooka affair.
If the downtown Minneapolis school were discriminating in favor of Islam and against other faiths, we would understand the outrage. But it’s not. When Christian students asked for space to study the Bible and conduct prayers, the school obliged them. When a Jewish student asked to reschedule an assignment because of a religious observance, the college agreed.
Small interpersonal affordances are fine – and different.
The Strib Editorial Board should ask itself “if a Catholic, Protestant or Jewish group asked MCTC for a capital expenditure to modify a building to be more congruent with their religious practices, how far do they think it’d get?
They seem to have learned “logic” from the Minnesota Monitor:
And so the school found itself wading into that murky question of what the Constitution’s “establishment clause” permits and forbids. In our view it has handled that question appropriately. Banning Christmas carols on the official campus coffee cart — which incensed the school’s critics — seems plainly in keeping with a long string of court rulings that forbid the use of public resources to endorse a particular religion. But accommodating the prayer practices of some devout Muslims seems akin to putting kosher items on the cafeteria menu and letting employees display religious objects in their private workspaces — accommodations that MCTC has in fact made in the past.
Surely even the Strib editorial board isn’t this dumb? Is it?
Kosher food on the cafeteria menu, while a Jewish stricture, is not purely religious; I, a goy, seek out kosher food in many areas. And the fact that any official body nosed into the privately-funded, privately displayed stuff on a worker’s desk is downright Orwellian.
Now – do you think the foot bath is going to be a community facility?
But Minnesota will be a stronger state if it tackles these questions in a spirit of generosity and confidence — and who wouldn’t be confident when the state’s schools are full of pious, ambitious young people who are trying to get a college education?
Unless they’re Christians or Jews, apparently.
“Banning Christmas carols on the official campus coffee cart — which incensed the school’s critics — seems plainly in keeping with a long string of court rulings that forbid the use of public resources to endorse a particular religion.”
Mitch, are you sure you haven’t fallen for a parady of the Mpls paper? Surely their heads aren’t that far up their asses where they would write that sentence. And if I understood it correctly, it was traditional American Christmas tunes that were being played by the coffee worker.
Now – do you think the foot bath is going to be a community facility?
Perhaps that is the test. Maybe Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists and any other demonation should be able to use the facility as well.
I would love to see a Christian group step up and say, “You know, foot washing is part of our religous tradition as well. Can you please add a facility for us, too?” I think Mitch is correct in assuming the group wouldn’t get very far.
As for the mail recieved by MCTC being “hateful”, I happen to know that the administration considers the definition of “hateful” to be any point of view that disagrees with the administration. So, even that aspect of the report should be viewed skeptically.
Whether or not the idea makes any sense, there sure is nothing that brings out the “nut” in “wingnut” quite like “them furriners.”
Nordeaster observed: “I would love to see a Christian group step up and say, “You know, foot washing is part of our religous tradition as well. Can you please add a facility for us, too?” I think Mitch is correct in assuming the group wouldn’t get very far. ”
You mean cause there’s no tradition of such a thing and asking for it would be a disingenous, un-Christian pretense for a bunch of right-wing pricks to make noise?
Poor little wingnut-“Christian” victims. Hope you’re not feeling *disempowered* by all this!
You mean cause there’s no tradition of such a thing
Good thing you don’t work in a field that requires you to get facts straight!
Christ symbolically washed peoples’ feet at several points in the New Testament. And various sects of the faith have carried the tradition forward.
Right, Mitch, Angryclown has read the New Testament (though he can’t lay claim to regurgitating bits of it, out of context, in public discourse to justify kooky political positions, like you wingnuts.)
Go to any Islamic country and you’ll find ritual bathing facilities outside places where Moslems pray. This is not to say Angryclown understands why some crappy Minnesota HVAC-repair academy needs one. But there is no tradition of Jesus foot-wash facilities in the U.S. Your hypothetical is a pointless one.
You know, if someone had told me on Sept. 12, 2001, that come 2007, there would be Minnesota colleges considering foot washing basins for Moslems, Moslem taxi cab drivers rufusing to take passengers carrying alcohol, and Moslem check-out clerks refusing to scan pork items, my logical question would have been “So, the Taliban won?”
Yep, Yoss, they won. They baited us into invading Iraq, getting bogged down in a losing cause and alienating anyone who might otherwise be on our side.
Wait, maybe that’s not what you meant.
The only solace I can take comfort in is that, under our new Taliban overlords, the clowns will be the first to be stoned to death.
Or forced to done goatskins and recite Torah while being used for “entertainment”.
What the heck? The Loverly Mrs Clown has been shirking her wifely clowning duties or something? Sheesh, ac sure woke up on the wrong side of the clowncar today.
some crappy Minnesota HVAC-repair academy
That Klown Kollege Kertificate isn’t opening the doors you thought it would?