Mona Marouf, left, Sohad Sarhan and Manal Elsay cover the windows at Meadowbrook Pool with paper before a special swim session. Muslim women must be fully clothed when seen in public, so swimming is a rare treat for many.
Posted on 07/19/2005 1:03:41 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
It's Saturday evening, the end of a hot day, and a group of women and children have gathered at North Seattle's Meadowbrook Pool for their monthly swim.
Most of the pool staff has left, except for two female lifeguards, who on this day will be on duty for the next two hours.
The women and children — all Muslims — have been swimming in private once a month at Meadowbrook as part of a program organized by the North Seattle Family Center.
Because Islam requires Muslim women to fully cover themselves in public, swimming in pools or the ocean is largely off-limits for many.
But across the Puget Sound area, that's starting to change as public and private pools at times are sending home their male staff members, covering up their windows and allowing women of faith to swim alone and in private...
Access to these pools is not free; the groups, like all others that use these facilities, pay a rental fee....
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Their concern for life and safety over modesty is not impressive to me.
I still recall the Saudi Arabian girls who were not permitted to exit a school on fire in less than full covering and thus died.
I also remember fights over ID pictures on US driver's licences.
Imagine if you will the YWCA asking for the same thing. The ACLU would come down on it like the World Trade Center.
runners, Romanians, romantics, Ring Bearers ...
Without taking sides here, I have to ask if you would also say tough 5hit to black lifeguards if a religious group objected to race mixing?
This has NOTHING to do with Modesty - and everything to do with the oppression of women.
Mona Marouf, left, Sohad Sarhan and Manal Elsay cover the windows at Meadowbrook Pool with paper before a special swim session. Muslim women must be fully clothed when seen in public, so swimming is a rare treat for many.
A distiction without a difference.
The parks and recreation guidelines provide for private use agreements. Groups that rent for private use enter into a contractual agreement with Seattle's Parks and Recreation Commission (or whatever it's called). When someone pays a fee to use a facility it's not a huge semantic difficulty to call that a rental agreement. If you want to call it a contract for private use then fine.
Regarding the complaint that the fees charged for the Muslim group's private use of the facilities weren't sufficient to cover costs, that would also apply to every group that reserved the facility for private use. If it's a misuse of taxpayer subsidees, then the fees should be increased for everyone, or no one should be allowed to reserve the facility for private use.
Regarding the rules violations which you previously described as "many rules were broken to accomodate a religiuos group of Muslim women," I only notice: 1) your citation of the ANTI-DISCRIMINATION policy, and 2) your supposition that swimming attire rules were broken.
Good question. My answer is no. But...
Is it okay to put male bathroom attendants in women's rest rooms?
Is it okay to allow male gym teachers and coaches unlimited access to girls locker rooms?
If a group renting a facility is paying for service personnel can they have any say as to who is providing the service?
A Ruckus of Dogs wrote:
Yeah, I've seen that. They seem to think that women's bodies are bad or indecent, hence the cover-up.
Well sorry, I'm impressed that they can stand wearing soaking wet robes! I can't stand being in wet clothes.
Too bad your hatred for all things Muslim has clouded your sense of humor!
Yeah, that place brings fond memories!
Bwaaahahahaa!
Why yes, that swimsuit IS very nobby!
We have a cute one in one of our shows that is SILK (v. unusual) and has a matching parasol and shoes. I bet it had a matching hat too, but that didn't make it through the years.
Note that the advertisement brags that the material does NOT cling to the figure! My how things have changed!
Thanks again for a smile!
I have expressed no hatred of Muslims. I have expressed hatred of values that place the virtue of modesty, an extreme form of it, above all others including the sanctity of life.
And I am not ashamed that I don't find that funny. Here, laugh your head off:
...........
"In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.
About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurred.
According to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam.
One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm
Thanks so much for directing the thread to a topic not at hand.
We were talking about Muslim women swimming, for goodness' sake! I lived in a Muslim country for several years, I know all about it, thanks!
I don't find the heinous behavior you cite funny at all, but that was not what we were discussing. So sorry you missed the point!
And you think Muslim extremes over women's modesty are not relevant to this thread?
I think the distinction is very real.
The pool rental is subsidized. Why is the City of Seattle using tax dollars to subsidize Muslim culture which is antithetical to this countries values and to its own policy of anti-descrimination based on sex?
Why is it spending tax dollars on a religious observance?
As to their attire, I got it from the article as posted in #347. Since the article was supportive of the Muslim swim, I have no reason to doubt the reporting.
Further others on this thread have seen Muslim women swimming in full Burka gear.
Do you know about this too? It was in my email this evening:
...........
"Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon by Dr. Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, aired on Saudi Arabia's Channel 1 on July 15, 2005.
"With all the violence and bombings that today's world has suffered, and with all the terrorism and destruction which have robbed the world of sleep, which are considered by all intelligent and honorable people as criminal, which are prohibited by all esteemed Muslim scholars, and whose negative effects afflict the Islamic nation one of the most dangerous wars to afflict the Islamic nation and to cause atrophy and decadence to nations and civilizations is the war against virtue and to promote vice.
"The noble Islamic law deals with all issues. One of the most important issues is protecting women's honor indeed, defending families, and protecting societies and generations from the flames of vice, from the removal of the veil, from the volcanoes of debauchery, from the storms of evil, from the armies of harlotry, from the voracity of pleasure, and from bestial libertinism.
"The most dangerous weapon which the enemy has raised against us with which he tore to pieces our established order, and with which he soiled our spiritual and social purity, is the terrible deluge of all manner of vice, which is considered a form of moral terrorism against the values, ideals, and virtues of the Islamic nation."
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD93905
So here it is folks -- the equivalency of terrorism that kills people with 'terror' of the West on women's virtue and veil. This is a justification of Jihad in the name of women's modesty.
And people don't understand what our objections could be to these quaint customs.
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