Hey Gals, I change my mind! Maybe a little too late since this topic is long gone. But after reading this week’s news concerning the death of 13 babies in Turkey within a day because of bateria infection, and this is not the first time. Three monthes ago, sometime in July, 27newborn babies died within a short period of each other because of again bateria infection. That’s a total of 40 babies that died of “exposure of an infection and spread of infection”.

This goes back to the Muslim women who refused to bare her elbows because of “religious reasons” and was consequently fired because she did not adhere to the “universal hospital mandate” for infection control. At first I thought it was no big deal, that these doctors are just exaggerating hygiene and infection claims.

But after so many people or babies die due to infection because it’s at a high risk for them. I just underestimated what an infection may do to someone who is at a high risk of death because of it. I just didn’t know what the risk of an infection might do to someone, I didn’t know, and I feel really selfish to have believed other wise.

My heart goes out to all those mothers (families) whose babies died because of an infection that was preventable.

On one side, I do agree that she works in a place where hygiene is incredibly important, and if it is truly impossible to maintain proper hygiene standards with forearms covered (I don’t know enough about it to know if this is the case), then yeah, she should have been aware of this ahead of time, and if she isn’t able to comply with those standards, then she might be in the wrong field.

On the other hand, I worry that we’re being too dismissive. Other women have been fired from their jobs, for example, because they wouldn’t wear the uniform (or because their adaptation of the uniform to include, say, longer skirts, was deemed unacceptable), even in cases where the clothes had no impact on the work being done. In those cases, I think it’s more obvious that there’s no reason for the women to be fired, and that the rules that are in place are discriminatory. In other cases, maybe the clothes do have some implications in terms of safety or whatever, but the women have managed to come up with other arrangements that mitigate those effects without disrupting the overall workplace (and without compromising its health/safety standards.) I’m concerned that we’re not always drawing the line in the right place here, and that when we say “you knew the requirements when you took the job, deal with it,” there are times that we might be dismissing people when really we should be re-examining the requirements themselves, which may be unnecessarily exclusionary.

So I agree with Sobia’s “deal with it, or leave the profession” to the extent that if someone’s religious practices or beliefs are clearly incompatible with the job expectations, then yeah, they’re in the wrong place. But at the same time, I do think that it’s not always simple to distinguish the cases where the expectations are just arbitrary, or where it’s possible to fulfill the job’s expectations in alternative ways, and I think we have to be careful and not be too quick to assume that someone shouldn’t be working there. (This isn’t actually to say that any of you are jumping to that assumption, since this particular case seems a bit more clear-cut given hygiene issues, but just that it’s something to be really mindful of, that we’re not reinforcing oppressive rules just because they’re there.)

Anyway, sorry, this thread is already off topic and I’m not really helping!

Ditto!! How selfish to place your own interpretation of your religion (considering for many it is perfectly Islamic to show your arms) above the safety and health of those who you swore to help. Ugh!

Reminds me of the female Muslim police officers in Britain who refused to deal with male suspects. How would that work? You refuse to protect citizens from men, only from women, letting male suspects get away just so you don’t deal with them? Again, you chose the profession – deal with it, or leave the profession.

She’s a Muslim, yes; but she chose to work in a hospital- so get with the program: “First Do No Harm”.

Or rather, as Sobia said…

Yes, but as Fatemeh said, there are plenty of countries with similar or higher percentages:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Burundi, Central African Republic, Cameroon, DR Congo**, Fiji, Guyana, Madagascar, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Holland, Philippines, Thailand, Switzerland, and some more.

** DRC, which, BTW, has a lot of very, very nasty stuff going on in terms of women due to the long term conflict there – I can send you information if you’re interested),

And I have to agree with Cyad’s critique of Noami Wolf’s piece. Although I am a fan of Wolf, I have to agree that her piece was shallow and neglected the real issues.