One small victory but the war is far from won!!
Sometimes
it's the little things that are most telling. In Switzerland it has
long been customary for students to shake the hands of their teachers at
the beginning and end of the school day. It's a sign of solidarity and
mutual respect between teacher and pupil, one that is thought to
encourage the right classroom atmosphere. Justice Minister Simonetta
Sommaruga recently felt compelled to further explain that shaking hands
was part of Swiss culture and daily life.
And
the reason she felt compelled to speak out about the handshake is that
two Muslim brothers, aged 14 and 15, who have lived in Switzerland for
several years (and thus are familiar with its mores), in the town of
Therwil, near Basel, refused to shake the hands of their teacher, a
woman, because, they claimed, this would violate Muslim teachings that
contact with the opposite sex is allowed only with family members. At
first the school authorities decided to avoid trouble, and initially
granted the boys an exemption from having to shake the hand of any
female teacher. But an uproar followed, as Mayor Reto Wolf explained to
the BBC: "the community was unhappy with the decision taken by the
school. In our culture and in our way of communication a handshake is
normal and sends out respect for the other person, and this has to be
brought [home] to the children in school."
Therwil's Educational Department reversed the school's decision, explaining in a statement on May 25
that the school's exemption was lifted because "the public interest
with respect to equality between men and women and the integration of
foreigners significantly outweighs the freedom of religion." It added
that a teacher has the right to demand a handshake. Furthermore, if the
students refused to shake hands again "the sanctions called for by law
will be applied," which included a possible fine of up to 5,000 dollars.
This
uproar in Switzerland, where many people were enraged at the original
exemption granted to the Muslim boys, did not end after that exemption
was itself overturned by the local Educational Department. The Swiss
understood quite clearly that this was more than a little quarrel over
handshakes;
it was a fight over whether the Swiss would be masters in their own
house, or whether they would be forced to yield, by the granting of
special treatment, to the Islamic view of the proper relations between
the sexes. It is one battle – small but to the Swiss significant – between o'erweening Muslim immigrants and the indigenous Swiss.
Naturally,
once the exemption was withdrawn, all hell broke loose among Muslims in
Switzerland. The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland, instead of
yielding quietly to the Swiss decision to uphold the handshaking custom,
criticized the ruling in hysterical terms, claiming that the
enforcement of the handshaking is "totalitarian" (!) because its intent
is to "forbid religious people from meeting their obligations to God." That,
of course, was never the "intent" of the long-standing handshaking
custom, which was a nearly-universal custom in Switzerland, and in
schools had to do only with encouraging the right classroom atmosphere
of mutual respect between instructor and pupil, of which the handshake
was one aspect.
The
Swiss formulation of the problem – weighing competing claims — will be
familiar to Americans versed in Constitutional adjudication. In this
case "the public interest with respect to equality" of the sexes and the
"integration of foreigners" (who are expected to adopt Swiss ways, not
force the Swiss to exempt them from some of those ways) were weighed
against the "religious obligations to God" of Muslims, and the former
interests found to outweigh the latter.
What this case shows is that even at the smallest and seemingly inconsequential level, Muslims
are challenging the laws and customs of the Infidels among whom they
have been allowed to settle [i.e., stealth jihad toward sharia
dominance]. Each
little victory, or defeat, will determine whether Muslims will truly
integrate into a Western society or, instead, refashion that society to
meet Muslim requirements.
The
handshake has been upheld and, what's more, a stiff fine now will be
imposed on those who continue to refuse to shake hands with a female
teacher. This is a heartening sign of non-surrender by the Swiss. But the challenges of the Muslims within Europe to the laws and customs of the indigenes have no logical end and will not stop. And the greater the number of Muslims allowed to settle in Europe, the stronger and more frequent their challenges will be. They are attempting not to integrate, but rather to create, for now, a second, parallel society, and
eventually, through sheer force of numbers from both migration and by
outbreeding the Infidels, to fashion not a parallel society but one
society — now dominated by Muslim [sharia].
The
Swiss handshaking dispute has received some, but not enough, press
attention. Presumably, it's deemed too inconsequential a matter to
bother with. But the Swiss know better. And so should we.
No comments:
Post a Comment