Why America may provide more Muslim-friendly work-places than Europe

[rug]

Jun 3rd 2016, 13:35
BY ERASMUS

ACCORDING to one American stereotype, Europe is doomed to fail because it has made too many cultural concessions to Islam and too many ideological concessions to anti-business, enterprise-sapping socialism. But an important legal ruling issued this week would suggest a very different transatlantic comparison.

A pronouncement by the advocate-general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) came to the firm conclusion that private companies were entitled to bar employees from wearing the Muslim headscarf, as long as it was part of a general and consistently applied policy of banning all conspicuous displays of religious or ideological affiliation. It upheld the right of an employer to impose a dress code, as part of the broader principle that a firm should enjoy some leeway in the pursuit of its commercial aims. This principle could mean requiring workers to appear and behave in a certain way: not only on the obvious grounds of hygiene or safety, but simply as part of company strategy.

The Euro-pronouncement seems almost diametrically opposed to a ruling issued by the American Supreme Court exactly a year ago. In a decision which Judge Antonin Scalia described as “really easy” the Court found that the clothing store Abercrombie and Fitch had been at fault in denying a job to a headscarved woman, even though she had not spelled out the fact that covering her head was part of her Muslim belief. The headscarf was considered out of step with a “look” that the store was projecting at the time, although it has since changed its policy. In the background of that decision was the well-established American legal principle that employers must provide "reasonable accommodation" of their workers' religious needs, provided that this does not cause intolerable hardship to the operation of a firm or organisation.

The European statement wasn’t a judicial verdict but it was a very significant piece of legal guidance, running to more than 30 pages and issued in response to a request from a Belgian court for advice over a woman who was fired from a security firm after insisting on wearing a headscarf to work. The governments of Britain, France and Belgium as well as the European Commission had all sent the ECJ opinions on the case. France, mindful of its own secular principles and its ban on headscarves and other conspicuous symbols in schools, had stressed that EU treaties allow countries to maintain their “national identities” and distinctive approaches to religion.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/06/europe-america-and-religious-symbols

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=179082&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=408247&version=meter+at+1&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D2%26ved%3D0ahUKEwibo5mKx4vNAhWKIMAKHTpOBScQqQIIJTAB%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2016%252F06%252F01%252Fworld%252Feurope%252Feu-legal-opinion-upholds-employers-ban-on-head-scarves.html%26usg%3DAFQjCNHX58XjnyVuExOFVsx4z3Sezsl8qQ&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-86_p86b.pdf

[MisterP]

1. I think there's two faces to the Continent's behavior--one is of course laicism

or "negative separation of church and state" (like, the Masons would keep you from getting promoted if their plainclothesmen caught you going to church) and the other is integralism: these both combine so that nobody's supposed to look like they diverge from the preponderant majority

but while laicism insists that nobody should be visibly different from the majority, the integralism defines the norm as looking an awful lot like both irreligious and Catholic French people, conflating the two--it's like when the pols blab about "a Judeo-Christian culture" or whatever, and slowly shifts the irreligiosity to a sort of "Catholicism minus the Christianity, as a sort of identity shared by true French/Quebecois that the "outsiders" have to adapt to

the stated goal is to not be able to tell what religion someone is by looking at them (lolwut?)--but the flipside is that only the way the majority presents itself as becomes acceptable: most French Christians won't have to give anything up to conform with the laicist mutaween, so "looking Muslim" and "looking Christian" are rendered qualitatively different

plus France's approach to its colonies' cultures since Jules Ferry was "kill it with fire!"; the laicist factions left behind there are known as "the eradicators" ...

[rug]

2. There's always the old stand-by - fascism.

[MisterP]

3. which also had two theological faces: anticlericalism and the nation-state-as-God

but this is coming from across the political spectrum--mostly Trots unhappy that religion didn't vanish by 1970 like some Edwardian pamphlet they worship said it would

[rug]

4. The party hierarchy readily absorbed the clericalism.

Down to the garb.

[MisterP]

5. ???

[rug]

6. Their officials exercised authority in relation to their position in the Party.

Their uniforms denoted that relationship and rank.

And it became a career path.

[MisterP]

7. those are armies yer thinking of

[rug]

8. Hah! What's that from?

[MisterP]

9. "Father Ted" a sitcom about priests

only in Ireland

[rug]

10. Thanks.