Orthodox Jewish men don’t shake hands with women, but for very different reasons: note Klefbeer’s point number four below. Jihad Watch reader Klefbeer has kindly sent in this translation of this Dutch article from de Volkskrant:
Fuss over a handshake
Dutch Queen Beatrix will not shake hands during her visit to the Mobarak Mosque in The Hague. This has been agreed to out of respect for Islamic rules.
‘In principle men and women don’t touch one another if they’re not direct family’, Hibatunnoer Verhagen says, chairman of the Ahmadiyya movement in the Netherlands. ‘So it has nothing to do with inequality. On the contrary: it’s a sign of respect.’
The visit is paid on the occasion of the 50 years anniversary of the mosque. The Ahmadiyya-Muslims were the first to open up an Islamic house of prayer in the Netherlands. The movement is known as very open and tolerant, but does keep to Islamic rules. ‘If someone doesn’t know our customs and sticks out his hand, then we will surely not refuse it’, Verhagen says. ‘A painful or embarrassing situation should be avoided. But if we get the chance to explain why we don’t shake hands with the opposite sex, then that’s what we choose to do. The Queen sympathised with this.’
In November 2004 a row was started after an imam from Tilburg had refused to shake hands with Verdonk.
According to the Minister, the imam thus showed that he doesn’t see her as his equal. Verdonks thinks of shaking hands as the most important way to greet one another. The imam later declared that he would rather die than renounce his religion.
Klefbeer comments:
1) The visit by our Queen took place last Friday.
2) Tilburg is just another city in the Netherlands, with a lot of Muslim residents.
3) Rita Verdonk is the Dutch Minister of Alien Affairs and Integration. She’s also the one who denaturalized Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently, in accordance with Dutch law. She definitely is NOT a dhimmi. [On this, of course, Klefbeer and I disagree — RS]
4) We should all know that male Muslims do not shake hands with women not out of respect for those WOMEN, but out of respect for the MEN who own those women. I just wanted to get that clear.
5) The comparison with the ‘case Verdonk’ is rather inaccurate. ‘Verdonk’s case’ of ‘being refused a handshake’ took place in a public environment, while this case is inside a mosque. Of course the ‘Verdonk case’ is only mentioned by this newspaper to incite people against Verdonk. Dutch people tend to think very higly of our Queen, so in their eyes she must be right and Verdonk must be wrong.