Do It My Way Or Not At All –Is That Religious Tolerance? 2

23rd Apr 2009

Hello lovely people

The Catholic school allowed a Muslim child into the school.  The school then expected the child and its family to fit in with the school and the rules with very little consideration for the inevitable cultural clashes, especially with the child’s family who did not need to obey the school rules.  Surely it would be far more reasonable for the school authorities to assume that the woman is an adult with the right to freedom of expression, and that it would be reasonable to expect the child, but not the parents, to obey school rules.  The head mistress apparently also insisted on applying the rule of no full-face veils to one person in case a number of women wearing full-face veils simultaneously arrive at the school.  Talk about creating a mountain out of a mole hill!

The Muslim woman sent her child to a Catholic school.  As an adult she surely knew that there would be a huge potential for cultural and religious conflict by doing so.  Should she have been far more willing to compromise so that she would make life easier for her child and for herself?  She had the option of wearing a hijab or head scarf, but chose to create conflict.

From what I can gather wearing the niqab as opposed to the hijab is a matter of personal choice.  Surely it would not be asking too much to change this personal choice for a limited period of time simply to support another choice that she had already made, namely to send her child to a school that supports a different culture and different religious practices.

It seems to me that both parties insist that the other bend to their will.  Do they both want to achieve the objective of showing their Love of God by excluding other expressions of this Love? Is that religious tolerance?  Is that Love of a fellow human being?  Is that common sense and good judgement?

My personal view is that my every thought, word and action is an expression of my communication with God.  For me, faith is not only expressed in what I wear or in the man-made rules that I choose to follow or in how I spend parts of a Sunday.  My faith is expressed in my dreams at night and in my thoughts during the day.  My faith is expressed in the clothes I wear as well as in my naked body, which only represents the container for my soul.

My faith is also expressed in observing but not judging how others express their faith.  In this case both the school authorities and the Muslim woman have particular lessons to learn from the incident.  I also have a lesson to learn from both sides, namely that the way people judge one another without Love is often much harsher than any judgement God would express.

I am sending Love to both parties and wish them clarity in resolving this conflict.

Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.

Love and Light
Elsabe

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