Three weeks ago Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten took to the Wall Street Journal to explore the phenomenon of Sharia in Minnesota. Kathy’s Star Tribune colleague Curt Brown subsequently reported:
Minneapolis Community and Technical College is poised to become the state’s first public school to install a foot-washing basin to help the school’s 500 Muslim students perform pre-prayer rituals. “We want to be welcoming,” MCTC President Phil Davis said, noting a student was hurt trying to wash in a regular sink.
Brown didn’t pause to reveal the nature of the injury sustained by the Muslim student hoisting his foot into the sink. I should think that would make an interesting sidebar all by itself. Where is a reporter’s curiosity when you need it?
The Star Tribune can get unusually exercised about church/state separation. I doubt that the merger of mosque and state would even be pointed out as such — Brown noted it as a “sign of accommodation” — let alone raise any alarms on the editorial page. Indeed, if they take notice, I think the editors will celebrate it in the spirit of Brown’s description of it as an “accommodation.”
Not the estimable Ms. Kersten. In her Star Tribune column today Kathy contrasts the treatment of Christianity and Islam at Minnneapolis Technical Community College:
Its officials say the college, a public institution, has a strict policy of not promoting religion or favoring one religion over another. “The Constitution prevents us from doing this in any form,” says Dianna Cusick, director of legal affairs.
But that seems to depend on your religion.
Where Christianity is concerned, the college goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of what the courts call “entanglement” or support of the church. Yet the college is planning to install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers, an apparent first at a public institution in Minnesota.
Separation of church and state is clearest at the college during the Christmas season. A memo from Cusick and President Phil Davis, dated Nov. 28, 2006, exhorted supervisors to banish any public display of holiday cheer: “As we head into the holiday season … “all public offices and areas should refrain from displays that may represent to our students, employees or the public that the college is promoting any particular religion.” Departments considering sending out holiday cards, the memo added, should avoid cards “that appear to promote any particular religious holiday.”
Last year, college authorities caught one rule-breaker red-handed. A coffee cart that sells drinks and snacks played holiday music “tied to Christmas,” and “complaints and concerns” were raised, according to a faculty e-mail. College authorities quickly quashed the practice.
They appear to take a very different attitude toward Islam. Welcome and accommodation are the order of the day for the college’s more than 500 Muslim students. The college has worked with local Muslim leaders to ensure that these students’ prayer needs and concerns are adequately addressed, Davis told me.
Muslim prayer is an increasingly controversial issue. Many Muslim students use restroom sinks to wash their feet before prayer. Other students have complained, and one Muslim student fell and injured herself while lifting her foot out of a sink.
Some local Muslim leaders have advised the college staff that washing is not a required practice for students under the circumstances, according to Davis. Nevertheless, he says, he wants to facilitate it for interested students. “It’s like when someone comes to your home, you want to be hospitable,” Davis told me. “We have new members in our community coming here; we want to be hospitable.”
So the college is making plans to use taxpayer funds to install facilities for ritual foot-washing. Staff members are researching options, and a school official will visit a community college in Illinois to view such facilities while attending a conference nearby. College facilities staff members are expected to present a proposal this spring.
Why is it that Minneapolis, of all places in the United States, faces the eruption of controversies over Sharia law? From the Somali taxi drivers who refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol to the Target cashiers who refuse to ring up pork products and the flying imams testing airport security, something’s happening here. I think Kathy may be homing in on what it is.
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