Would the college use public money to construct holy water fonts?
"College's foot bath plans spark backlash: Project for Muslim students draws accusation U-M Dearborn is giving faith favored treatment," by Karen Bouffard for The Detroit News (thanks to Kemaste):
DEARBORN -- The University of Michigan-Dearborn plans to spend $25,000 for foot-washing stations, making it easier for Muslim students to practice their religion but sparking questions about the separation of church and state.The university claims the stations are needed to accommodate Muslim students, who must ritually wash their bodies -- including the feet -- up to five times each day before prayers. But critics hit conservative blogs and radio airwaves Monday to argue public money shouldn't cover the cost.
"Technically, they've got a problem, because it's public money they're using to pay for this," said Hal Downs, president of the Michigan chapter of Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
"It's one of those issues that we're going to be facing more and more in this community."
The issue may push hot buttons in Metro Detroit -- home to as many as 250,000 Muslims -- but in nearby Ypsilanti, no one raised objections when Eastern Michigan University included a private bathroom with a foot-washing area in a new student union that opened in November, said Glenna Frank Miller, its director.
U-M Dearborn will include the floor-level stations at two bathrooms to be constructed in August at the University Center and Fairlane Center buildings, said Terry Gallagher, spokesman for the university. The units are necessary because some students resorted to washing their feet in sinks.
The university of 8,600 students doesn't track them by religion, Gallagher said.
"This was a reasonable accommodation," he said.
"The university claims the stations are needed to accommodate Muslim students, who must ritually wash their bodies -- including the feet -- up to five times each day before prayers."
....So they are required to wash their stinking feet five time a day....fine...tell them they must do so in their own apartment/home..If they insist on washing their feet they must go home to do so...and if they miss out on important classes or valuable speeches given by guest speaker....then so be it...they will fail the course if they fail the tests...This action will cost zero for the college and will determine who wants to get a valuable education....
Private religious customs have no place on a college campus...
It goes to show, you do not want these people in your neighborhood...Ban Muslim immigration...
The use of Student Actively fee to built footbath for moslim is perfectly legal by constuition law expect, they mention cases in the past where student actively money was use to built religious arficate for other religion like christian. On many games fourms christian fundie are not well like due to christian fundie lawyer sueing game companies for makeing games they donot like there is one in Flodia
who needed to be permant disbar from the practice of law as he anger judges in other states for mettleing in case for the court, one old judge found that playing Grand Thief Auto doesnot make you than car thief like that lawyer claim. The judge also play Grand Thief Auto to reflax.
"The judge also play Grand Thief Auto to reflax."
...THe Muslims like to play the system to create havoc and to force their ways upon those who do not want them....
"they mention cases in the past where student actively money was use to built religious arficate "
...by the way, having displays or artifacts depicting religious icons is quite different than being forced to conduct religious ceremonies or customs....
and I am not convinced that Islam is a "religion"..
I have been in airportt bathrooms when someone will come up, paying no attention to right or left, and start performing his wudu, while water flies all over the place, that person is placing his feet, one after the other, in the sink and washing them. While these -- to many -- nauseating public ablutions take place, most people hasten away, without going near even the empty sinks.
There is no god-given right to come to other countries and inflict one's behavior, in fulfilling some kind of faith-based mandate, in public places. The nurses who were arrested for singing Christmas carols behind closed doors, in their own apartments in Western apartment complexes, in Saudi Arabia, were not inflicting this on anyone: it was the religious police checking up, as they do everywhere they can. But, for exmaple, the slitting of a sheep's throat, and letting it bleed to death on the street, can and should be banned -- whether or not this is considered "part of Islam."
If Muslim students wish to have foot-washing sinks available, then they can certainly pay for them. After all, there is hardly a mosque or a madrasa in this country that does not receive, when it needs it, all kinds of financial support from those who, across the seas, batten on the unmerited oil trillions, and have by this point have used, collectively, more than one hundred billion of it (the estimate for Saudi Arabia alone) to pay for mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, and propaganda of every sort.
A mere $25,000 shouldn't faze the Saudis. And you might argue that $25,000 is so little -- why not spend it ourselves? But it is a symbolic act, an act that will be, and is, taken by Muslims not as a kind act, an act of accommodation (as those behind it might naturally think, for they think in terms of sweet reason, and compromise, and all that), but instead, is taken in quite a different spirit, as one more indication (see the postings of Naseem, passim) that Islam Is On the March, that here and there, little by little, the Infidles are yielding. It is of great symbolic value to Muslims, and will not result in gratitude but merely in a swelling of the sense that obstacles, one by one, to the spread of Islam are being removed -- which is what Jihad is partly about, removing those obstacles, of all kinds, wherever they are, so that Islam may spread, and domminate, and eventually Muslims come to rule. The dismissal of this as merely an alarmist fantasy shows that the dismisser has not been paying attention -- not to the tenets of Islam, not to 1350 years of Islamic history and subjugation of non-Muslims, and certainly not to what has happened, over just the last 2-3 decades, in the lands of Western Europe.
Every concession, every misuse of public funds, every Muslim employee of city or state government permitted undiscovered or unpunished to be relentlessly pushing for special deals (see that Boston Redevelopment Authority employee, working to get city-owned land sold in a sweetheart deal for a mosque, and see what else that employee did on his still-unexplained trip or trips to Saudi Arabia) in order to promote Islam, or to make sure that fellow Muslims are hired here, and here, and here -- all of this, every single act, needs to be noisily (and also quietly) opposed. "We must fight them over here so we don't have to fight them over there" would be an apter description of what needs to be done, although in truth there is no place where such "fighting" (not necessarily of the conventional, miilitary variety) will not have to take place.
I’ve used a bathroom in Jeddah, right down the road from Mecca, in oil-rich Saudi Arabia. It consisted of a hole in the ground and a metal trough with an overhanging pipe, dripping water into the trough.
My error was thinking that the trough with the dripping pipe was the urinal. It was actually the sink. As I was taking care of business, the Saudi that stepped up next to me to wash his hands was not pleased with my presence.
The need for Muslim footwash stations is an absolute fabrication, created to impose Islam’s will on us Infidels. People should find an appropriate alternative use for these stations to indicate that we will not submit.
I wonder if the UM at Dearborn allows their Christian employees to wear crosses, read their Bibles at their desks or go to the chapel to pray five times a day.
Public health, public safety and legal precedent don't have anything to do with policy at the UM of Dearborn.
Some good Wuslim must be writing them a check now to fund a chair for Schizlamic studies.
UM-mah! UM-mah! What do they want? UM-mah! What do they need? UM-mah!
"the Infidles are yielding. "
....but the stretching rubberband is reaching its limit....
Robert:
Though I appreciate you breaking this valuable news on Jihadwatch, I believe credit for true news source should go to Debbie Schlussel who first this 'exclusive' on her Detroit/Dearborn area blog on May 30th and not The Detroit News whom she sardonically refers to as “The Detroit Newsastan”. A fact that Ms. Schlussel recently attested to plainly stating that her original May 30th article had been ‘ripped off’ by The Detroit News.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2007/05/exclusive_so_lo.html
Secondly, I contacted Richard G. Behrens, Vice Chancellor of Business Relations at U of M Dearborn and who supposedly authorized the footbath funding in the first place, and he, in turn, responded by denying any connection with the use of public tax funds for this latest of muslim outrages. I then forwarded Mr. Behrens response to Debbie who flatly said 'he's lying about the tax funding. Though I appreciate the Vice Chancellors response, I also believe Mr. Behren's was evasive and not totally truthful but to what extent I do not know. At any rate: I encourage anyone interested to press this probable tax-use infraction by contacting Mr.
Behrens themselves:
Office of the Vice Chancellor
Robert G Behrens
1090 Administration Building
Dearborn, MI 48128
Phone: (313) 593-5110
bbehrens@umd.umich.edu
bberhens@umd.umich.edu
Gosh, I hope they install some low mounted electric hand..I mean..foot driers to accommodate the muslims as well.
Not only should there be baptismal fonts in the bathrooms, but also Buddhist prayer wheels. And perhaps pentagrams on the tile floors for Satan-worshippers.
"People should find an appropriate alternative use for these stations to indicate that we will not submit."
Try throwing one of these into each of the basins:
http://foodservice.chef2chef.net/restaurant-supplies-equipment/janitorial-supplies/Urinal_Screens/index.htm
-XRDC
or better yet...
http://www.all-encompassingly.com/urinal-ready-aim-fire/
-XRDC
If I could, I'd throw a big pork chop or a pound of bacon in their damned footwash stations. Unbelievable that this university and other institutions around the country are making concessions such as these to placate muslims.
While UM is at it they need to install
Mohammad urinals...Piss be Upon Him.
Christians and Jews and any other religion on campus must push for their own accomodations. If they don't need anything, make something up...insist the university pay equally. Make enough noise to get the attention of the ACLU...then we will see if it is equal treatment under the law.
I have been recently baptized. I have become a member of the "CHARIOTS OF GOD." We are required to wash our armpits not five, but six times a day. please, I need my local community college to help me fullfill my rightious duty. We need armpit basins. I understand the foot washing thing my brethrin. Take care. (SATIRE)
Hugh; take a deep breath, I understand where you're coming from.
mustang65
Ah, the 'Chariots of God' are just a watered down version of the truth faith of which I am a member, the 'Verruca's of Allah'! We read the sacred Scholls testaments for revelation and enlightenment on proper care of our tootsies as we heap scorn and disdain upon that other bunch of fakirs 'The Bunions of Mohammad'.
Oh, did I say 'fakirs? sorry that was a spelling mistake!
Hey, me like! "Hey, you fakir!" Has a bit of a ring to it...
Defenderofislam, learn to speal prooperly. Fakir...
If there ever was any doubt as to whose side the ACLU is on, the article says the ACLU is not getting involved, arguing the footwashes are secular. What a load of crap. The university explicitly mentioned that the purpose is religious. The ACLU has proven itself is be a branch of Islam.
Christians need to petition to construct a baptismal font, which could also be used as a public pool for small children. I'd love to see what the ACLU does then.
What is all the fuss about?
The footbaths are relatively low and hence will make excellent urinals as well.
Here is the perfect opportunity for Muslims and infidels to show cooperation.
At the same time considerable savings could be realised by piping in less warm water.
So the tax dollars will go twice as far as expected.
I trust the chancellor will be invited to partake in the opening ceremonies.
M.O.T.
The biggest threat to America is come right wing Christian who want to treach the phoney science of creationist in public school. It will be China or Japon or both China and Japon and may-be Islamist Empire that will settle the moon and outer space. The america nation doesnot have enought educrate people to built space rockets. Our local Islamist School is doing than better job in educrateing 35 kids in science and math than the public school does. They are thinking about offering middle school treaching next year as many muslim parent are anger about the public school not allowing then to take they kid to firday prayer service under the reasonly religious accodannce law passed by congress.
The right to die law passed in many state allowing people who want to die because of old age and illness the right to ask hositipal and doctors not to bring back after they heart stop beating. Some patient have mult heartattack aday and hotipical before these right to die will forceful bring then back from peaceful death. Right wing Christian Lawyer want to end right to die laws.
Also they are flying in 3,000 Iraqi's to live in Detroit too! All paid for by us!
Better they live here then fight and get killed over there!