Good news, good news, and bad news

Three news stories I came across today (courtesy of CAIR) that I thought was worth passing on. First, the bad news...

* Muslims at the Islamic Center of Blacksburg, Virginia found "[o]utside the building, a plastic shopping bag filled with burned copies of the Quran...in front of the door. Blacksburg police say they do not have any leads on who left the burned religious books, but they are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime."

Choice quotation from the story: "Laila Al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday questioned how police could consider the act anything other than a hate crime. 'Let's face it, books don't burn themselves and end up outside of a mosque. It's a willful act,' she said."

Certain thoughts regarding people who have a certain part of their anatomy sunburned come to mind, but I refrain. Now, the good news:

* "A federal judge yesterday ordered the D.C. fire department to allow three bearded Muslim firefighters to serve on full duty until Aug. 1, when he expects to decide whether the safety issues outweigh the men's claims that shaving would violate their religious rights. ... 'This is definitely a victory, even though it is temporary,' said plaintiff Hassan A. Umrani, a city firefighter who has worn a full beard since his first day on the job 16 years ago."

Choice quotation: "Judge Robertson said he understood the concerns but asked whether the grooming policy was 'overkill.' He asked how often firefighters are given stress tests and physicals to determine their health and physical fitness. 'If you are going to go this far with the face masks, how far are you going with all the other intuitive causes for people possibly going out?' Judge Robertson said."


Finally:

* It took a little longer than it should have, but the Quebec Human Rights Commission has finally done right by Irene Waseem and, indeed, by all devout young Muslim girls who go to private schools. The commission concluded this week that College Charlemagne was wrong to forbid Waseem to wear her hijab to class when she was a student at the Pierrefonds high school two years ago. The college's private status is irrelevant, commission president Pierre Marois wrote in an opinion made public this week. Private, not-for-profit schools have the same obligation as public schools to make reasonable accommodation for their students' religious beliefs."

Choice quotation: "The key phrase the commission uses is 'reasonable accommodation.' Religious groups will not be able to use the position paper to force sweeping changes in the ways schools operate, or to place undue burdens on the staff and other students. They won't be able to demand prayer rooms in secular schools, for example, or separate boys' and girls' pools in co-educational ones. Nor will they be able to require Catholic schools to jettison their religion programs or to scrap their crucifixes.

"For their part, private schools will be able to continue to discriminate. A school with a specific vocation to serve a particular religious, ethnic or language group, for example, can continue to favour members of that group without penalty. But, the commission says, private schools cannot make exclusionary rules that have nothing to do with their central mission. A religious school, for example, can't exclude a child with a mild physical handicap just because the school also places a lot of emphasis on athletics."

All of which sounds perfectly reasonable. If only the French could be like their relations in Quebec...