Gender Apartheid
Apartheid is normally used in relation to racial segregation in South Africa, but gender apartheid seems like a perfectly fair description of the attempts being made to by religious fundamentalists to enforce a separation the sexes - at public events in the UK.
Apartheid supporters in South Africa made their case against different racial groups being allowed to associate and mix together freely which they said was part of their cultural tradition and belief system, but this was rejected as an apology for racial discrimination - and rightly too.
So, I agree with Janice Turner in this recent opinion piece from the Times - secular principles and gender equality needs to be defended.
Female equality needs doughtier defenders
By Janice Turner
Politicians and university authorities must find courage to resist radical Islam’s push for segregation
What with funeral selfies and imperilling due legal process in the Grillo sisters’ trial, the Prime Minister clearly had no time until yesterday to absorb the Universities UK (UUK) report sanctioning gender segregation.
Perhaps David Willetts, the Universities Minister, and Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, were likewise toiling too hard for #TeamNigella to address a landmark ruling thatcaused uproar among academics and students. Maybe they assumed it came under the remit of women and equalities or faith and communities. Funny, then, that we heard neither from Maria Miller nor Sayeeda Warsi.
The silence of the ministers ended yesterday, when the Education Secretary called upon UUK to withdraw its guidance: “we should not pander to extremism” he said. That was Michael Gove author of the 2006 treatise Celsius 7/7, a searing critique of Islamism’s conflict with modernity, rather than Michael Gove, progenitor of the al-Madinah Free School in Derby, closed down after it was found to seat girl pupils at the back of class and force even non-believer women teachers to wear Islamic garb.
Then only after demonstrations, petitions, and academics flooding the UUK website did Downing Street eventually act and the UUK ruling was finally withdrawn.
Its guidelines always resembled that archetypal academic attire, a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches: effortful political correctness overladen with swatches of cultural-relativism, the end result misshapen and unwearable.
If a speaker insisted upon men and women being seated separately, UUK ruled, they should be side by side. And if objectors, feminists perhaps, opposed this gender segregation, they could request an area of mixed seating. But “ultimately, if imposing an unsegregated seating area in addition to the segregated areas contravenes thegenuinely held religious beliefs of the group hosting the event, or those of the speaker, the institution should be mindful to ensure that the freedom of speech of the religious group or speaker is not curtailed unlawfully.” My italics. So, in the event of a stalemate, religious belief systems trump secular ones.
According to a report by the anti-extremist group Student Rights, 46 gender-divided meetings were held in British universities in the past year. Organisers announced that “segregation would be provided to the best of our abilities”, offered separate entrances for “brothers” and “sisters”, women often confined to the rear of lecture theatres or separate rooms with video links. These events were not held in mosques or other religious buildings, but in our publicly funded educational institutions. Nor was it a question of women preferring to sit with female friends: they were compelled.
UUK said helpfully that a university should ask “what reasons does the speaker. . . give for the event to be segregated?” Which is the big question, but an even bigger one is: just how hard do you ask it? Do you accept surface justifications, such as those offered by Saleem Chagtai, of IERA (the Islamic Education and Research Academy), on the Today programme that its meetings have “a religious as well as a political dimension”? Or do you keep pressing, as presenter Mishal Husain did, until you hit a bedrock of misogyny and abject nonsense?
Mr Chagtai said “psychological studies” had shown men and women are more comfortable when seated apart. The IERA website publishes headshots of male speakers but not its female ones, he said, because Islam was opposed to “wanton depictions of women”. Yes, women’s faces are wanton, a temptation for men; cover them up!
A friend raised in a rich Pakistani family recalls the segregated gatherings of her youth. Men talking politics, power, and work, whilethe women conversed about marriage and children. I was reminded of Margaret Thatcher failing to secure a Tory seat in the 1950s because constituency business was done among the men over port.
And the intent of Islamist speakers is to shift norms: to make gender segregation in universities not an outrageous request but a reasonable one. In surrendering to requests perhaps UUK members were considering their finances. As Abdurraheem Green, chairman of IERA, remarked darkly, if Muslim students must sit in mixed-sex groups at a particular institution, they might study elsewhere: “Such behaviour is not in the economic interests of universities or indeed the country as a whole.” Was this why Mr Willetts stayed silent? He recently visited the hugely wealthy Qatar Foundation, which sponsors Qatari students to study in Britain, and he knows that one of the largest investors in UK universities is now Saudi Arabia.
The UUK ruling may have been defeated, but the challenges to secular principles that enshrine equality will go on. The push for gender segregation, for women to give evidence in court while veiled, for Sharia to be recognised, for girls’ school uniforms in state schools to be ever more restrictive, shrouding and “Islamic”, are continuing demands. Gender apartheid is not a sideshow of radical Islam, but intrinsic to it. And rather than our universities tying themselves in philosophical knots or our government ministers remaining silent, we need a robust and rapid response.
Politicians and university authorities must find courage to resist radical Islam’s push for segregation
What with funeral selfies and imperilling due legal process in the Grillo sisters’ trial, the Prime Minister clearly had no time until yesterday to absorb the Universities UK (UUK) report sanctioning gender segregation.
Perhaps David Willetts, the Universities Minister, and Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, were likewise toiling too hard for #TeamNigella to address a landmark ruling thatcaused uproar among academics and students. Maybe they assumed it came under the remit of women and equalities or faith and communities. Funny, then, that we heard neither from Maria Miller nor Sayeeda Warsi.
The silence of the ministers ended yesterday, when the Education Secretary called upon UUK to withdraw its guidance: “we should not pander to extremism” he said. That was Michael Gove author of the 2006 treatise Celsius 7/7, a searing critique of Islamism’s conflict with modernity, rather than Michael Gove, progenitor of the al-Madinah Free School in Derby, closed down after it was found to seat girl pupils at the back of class and force even non-believer women teachers to wear Islamic garb.
Then only after demonstrations, petitions, and academics flooding the UUK website did Downing Street eventually act and the UUK ruling was finally withdrawn.
Its guidelines always resembled that archetypal academic attire, a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches: effortful political correctness overladen with swatches of cultural-relativism, the end result misshapen and unwearable.
If a speaker insisted upon men and women being seated separately, UUK ruled, they should be side by side. And if objectors, feminists perhaps, opposed this gender segregation, they could request an area of mixed seating. But “ultimately, if imposing an unsegregated seating area in addition to the segregated areas contravenes thegenuinely held religious beliefs of the group hosting the event, or those of the speaker, the institution should be mindful to ensure that the freedom of speech of the religious group or speaker is not curtailed unlawfully.” My italics. So, in the event of a stalemate, religious belief systems trump secular ones.
According to a report by the anti-extremist group Student Rights, 46 gender-divided meetings were held in British universities in the past year. Organisers announced that “segregation would be provided to the best of our abilities”, offered separate entrances for “brothers” and “sisters”, women often confined to the rear of lecture theatres or separate rooms with video links. These events were not held in mosques or other religious buildings, but in our publicly funded educational institutions. Nor was it a question of women preferring to sit with female friends: they were compelled.
UUK said helpfully that a university should ask “what reasons does the speaker. . . give for the event to be segregated?” Which is the big question, but an even bigger one is: just how hard do you ask it? Do you accept surface justifications, such as those offered by Saleem Chagtai, of IERA (the Islamic Education and Research Academy), on the Today programme that its meetings have “a religious as well as a political dimension”? Or do you keep pressing, as presenter Mishal Husain did, until you hit a bedrock of misogyny and abject nonsense?
Mr Chagtai said “psychological studies” had shown men and women are more comfortable when seated apart. The IERA website publishes headshots of male speakers but not its female ones, he said, because Islam was opposed to “wanton depictions of women”. Yes, women’s faces are wanton, a temptation for men; cover them up!
A friend raised in a rich Pakistani family recalls the segregated gatherings of her youth. Men talking politics, power, and work, whilethe women conversed about marriage and children. I was reminded of Margaret Thatcher failing to secure a Tory seat in the 1950s because constituency business was done among the men over port.
And the intent of Islamist speakers is to shift norms: to make gender segregation in universities not an outrageous request but a reasonable one. In surrendering to requests perhaps UUK members were considering their finances. As Abdurraheem Green, chairman of IERA, remarked darkly, if Muslim students must sit in mixed-sex groups at a particular institution, they might study elsewhere: “Such behaviour is not in the economic interests of universities or indeed the country as a whole.” Was this why Mr Willetts stayed silent? He recently visited the hugely wealthy Qatar Foundation, which sponsors Qatari students to study in Britain, and he knows that one of the largest investors in UK universities is now Saudi Arabia.
The UUK ruling may have been defeated, but the challenges to secular principles that enshrine equality will go on. The push for gender segregation, for women to give evidence in court while veiled, for Sharia to be recognised, for girls’ school uniforms in state schools to be ever more restrictive, shrouding and “Islamic”, are continuing demands. Gender apartheid is not a sideshow of radical Islam, but intrinsic to it. And rather than our universities tying themselves in philosophical knots or our government ministers remaining silent, we need a robust and rapid response.
