A couple of weeks ago, the New York Post reported that the foot washing basins are coming to New York University.
The Muslims also have to wash their arms, ears, nostrils, faces, necks, and heads, so they may still need the sinks.
Here is a description of the washing before prayer from an Islamic website. (I’ve lost the link but there are numerous websites giving these instructions.) This is done five times a day every day: – Before Wudu you make your intention. Then start with washing the hands as far as the wrists. You perform this 3 times.
– Rinse out the mouth with water using the right hand. You perform this 3 times.
– Wash the nostrils by sniffing up water and blowing it out. You perform this 3 times.
– Wash the face 3 times .
– Wash each arm up to the elbow. You perform this 3 times.
– Wipe or rub the head with the inside of the fingers. You perform this once.
– Clean the inside of the ears with the index fingers and the back of the ears with the thumbs. You perform this once.
– Wipe the back of the neck. You perform this once.
– Wash the feet up to the ankles. You perform this 3 times
The website also says that there are special rules for situations where water is not readily available, but the example offered is the desert.
CAIR has published guides for employers, schools, prisons, hospitals, etc., on the special needs of Muslims that they say must be accommodated in these places. These pamphlets appear to be the source for a lot of what we’re hearing of Muslim demands. For example, they insist that no Muslim should be expected to serve or sell alcohol. They do not say that Muslims should avoid taking jobs where alcohol is part of the work. On the washing business, they recommend using the sinks in restrooms for the ritual washing. In hospitals and nursing homes, aides should help Muslims who cannot perform the ritual washing by themselves. Students in public schools should be allowed to perform the ablutions and the prayers. In schools or the workplace, Muslims performing the prayers cannot be approached for any reason but an emergency and no one may walk in front of them. In public schools, they want qualified Islamic experts to be brought into the classrooms to explain Islam, and they call it an error to say that Allah is the Muslim God. He must be seen as the same God as of Judaism and Christianity, even though Islam calls Abraham a Muslim and says he nearly sacrificed Ishmael not Isaac, and the Muslim “Jesus” cannot be called the Son of God, did not die on the cross, and was not resurrected, all of which completely negates the entire Christian faith.
One wonders how this can be going on in public schools when the Supreme Court has ruled that even voluntary prayer is disallowed, when we have people mounting lawsuits to take “under God” out of the pledge and going into paroxysms of protest at the merest hint of God or Christianity in the public sphere. So much fear is focused on Muslims being violent that this kind of thing is being overlooked. People are grateful that they’re just washing their feet instead of becoming suicide bombers. But it is proof that Muslims are not assimilating, that they expect America to accommodate them, and not vice versa, and that it is not just jihad but everyday ordinary Muslim practices that will present problems to America.
One recalls how the supporters of mass immigration always insist that new immigrants are assimilating just as immigrants did in the past, and how they call people racists, nativists, and xeonophobes for the mildest demurral. But it is obvious from reading the guides that Muslims are counting on their growing numbers to make more and more demands on society while the rest of us sputter in protest or sheepishly go along. They are not even willing to modify or adapt an intrusive practice that is inconsiderate and discourteous to the majority of people with whom they work and study who must use the resrooms for ordinary purposes. As for the idea of installing special foot basins, it is obviously an unwarranted public accommodation of religion, but because the Muslims’ washing their feet in the sinks is so repellant (leading to “wet floors, dirty conditions,” and “uncomfortable moments”), and because political correctness and the principle of non-discrimination has gone so far, and because of the practiced nonchalance of today in which everything is supposed to be accepted, no one protests. Not even those who would grow hot with rage at any public display of Christianity.
The CAIR guides also make plentiful use of the concept of “diversity.” And Islamic spokesmen have learned to use the language of rights, pluralism, inclusiveness, in their debased multiculturalist meanings, to further their encroachments, such as demanding halal foods in public school lunchrooms. A spokesman on televison seemed to think that this is what America owes Muslims, that this is the promise of inclusiveness, tolerance, pluralism, etc., that there should be this much accommodation of Muslim demands. And of course no one is telling him otherwise. No one is telling him that if they want this level of religious observance, America allows them to create their own religious schools with their own money, not to renovate the public scools to fit their customs. Likewise, when it comes to serving or selling alcohol, no one is telling them that American freedom and prosperity means that Muslims do not have to take jobs that require dealing with alcohol.
But it’s not just the Left to blame for this state of affairs. The Right with its claims of America as a “universal nation” is also to blame. Theodore Dalrymple writes about how Scotland and Italy are succumbing to sharia laws. Dalrymple lives in Europe so he doesn’t see that it is also happening here, despite all the happy talk about Muslims in America assimilating better than in Europe.
I believe that Muslims would adapt if they met any resistance, but they see all this diffidence and fatuous servility toward them and so their only thought is to proceed with their sense of entitlement and make more demands. (A Muslim student at NYU did feel uncomfortable, which could be the basis for some kind of change in behavior: ”Having other students ‘just walking in and seeing us have our feet in the sink – it’s awkward,’ she added.”)
The president has unfortunately led the way in this, albeit out of good intentions. He has gone so far into the “universalism” that he has come to believe that America stands for nothing but openness and inclusiveness, has no culture whatsoever, and exists only to accommodate every group that deigns to gift us with their presence in full multicultural fashion. Thus his annual White House iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan. According to one article:
“President and Mrs. Bush host an iftar dinner every year because they want people around the world to know how much they respect Islam and the many Muslims living in the U.S. who are free to worship as they want, and are an integral part of our society,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
Actually it sends the opposite message. Not that they are part of us, but that they are separate and require separate homage to their religion at the White House. Also, the dinner is meant to prove that Bush is not an enemy of Islam, but those who believe that are not going to be put off by the annual dinner. The dinner just encourages them to expect more servility and to look for other ways in which Muslims are not being specifically served or accommodated.
It is not really called for that an American president host White House dinners in honor of Islam in order to show Muslims that he respects them. The American Constitution respects them and he is supposed to uphold the Constitution. Actually, believe it or not, time was when we would expect the groups to show that they respect America, not that our president would have to make a display of showing his respect toward them. And of course the WH makes no mention of the fact that Muslims’ being “free to worship as they want” is presenting a burden to others and is producing behavior that is entirely out of keeping with American standards of public comportment.
Furthermore, the president has accepted the Muslim view of God. Cal Thomas expresses dismay that Bush has professed on Al Arabiya television that the Muslim God is the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus that we know from the Bible. Bush does this explicitly in the name of ”universality,” indicating that becoming universal means eventually losing what is most dear.