Need help with a presentation on religious discrimination

[minkajane]

I'm doing a class presentation on religious discrimination in the workplace. I had the idea of doing a PowerPoint where I show pictures and say, "What do you think of when you see this?" And showing things like a Sikh knife, a pentacle, an inverted cross, a woman in niqab. Then zooming out and showing that their perceptions were wrong. For example, the woman in niqab is in a college class, the cross is St. Peter's cross, and so on. Sort of a way to get them thinking about the misconceptions we carry with us about other religions.

Problem is, I'm having trouble finding pictures that will work for the zoom-out thing I want to do. I think it will be more powerful to use the same picture than use a similar one with the same symbol. They don't all have to be zoom-outs, so if anybody has any ideas for other pictures that would work, let me know.

Also, I would like to use specific examples of how religious misconceptions and discrimination can cause trouble in the workplace. If you have any stories or examples of this type of problem, please share.

Thanks in advance!

[Magelet]

sorry I can't be much help. honestly, my religion has only led to interesting discussions with people of other religions and no religion at work.

maybe the library for the pics? you'll need really high quality to get a good zoomed in image.

[Smokering]

I've heard of this being done before, and it's a cool "trick", but I'm not sure it's about religious discrimination per se. Regilious awareness, maybe; but unless the respondents are saying things like "That's a Satanist symbol, if I saw that on someone's car I'd slash their tires!", is it really relevant to the topic? I dunno, maybe it is. Shouldn't be too hard to find a picture of a woman wearing a niqab in class on Wikimedia Commons; in fact, searching on there for "religious icons" might get you some handy photos. Morguefile's another good place for copyright-free images.

[minkajane]

Originally Posted by Smokering

I've heard of this being done before, and it's a cool "trick", but I'm not sure it's about religious discrimination per se. Regilious awareness, maybe; but unless the respondents are saying things like "That's a Satanist symbol, if I saw that on someone's car I'd slash their tires!", is it really relevant to the topic? I dunno, maybe it is.

I'm using it as kind of an ice-breaker intro thing. A way to say, "What we think we see is not necessarily what's going on, so if we react badly to our misconceptions about what we see, how can that change the way we act about someone?" Then I'll use that to move into talking about judging people in the workplace and how that becomes discrimination.

[umsami]

Syria just recently (maybe yesterday?) banned the niqab from universities... so if you check around, you might find pictures online. Just search google images.

[MusicianDad]

Recently France has been working on a bill that would ban niqabs and burkas in public. Just google "france to ban muslim veils" and you get a few articles linked right away. What gets me is they are doing it in the name of freedom, but what about the freedom to wear a niqab?

[umsami]

The bill in France passed...maybe last week or the week before. What confuses me is that out of 3 million Muslims in France... we'll assume 1.5 million are women... only 2,000 wear niqab (according to the French gov't.). I think that they're probably antagonizing their Muslim population (even though 99.9% of them don't wear niqab or have any intention to) unnecessarily. : JMHO.

[Bekka]

Maybe this isn't too late to be helpful. In about 1995 I was temping with a local agency and my job was to work at the community college helping take pictures for a new kind of student ID card. There was a young woman who was in line for the ID cards who was wearing hijab. The rule was that they were supposed to remove all headgear for the picture. The manager tried to tell her she had to take the scarf off for the picture, and she was very shy but said that she could not, it was against her religion. He was getting very pushy about it, but I backed her up and said that it was her First Amendment rights that he was violating, and he couldn't require her to remove the veil to get the picture taken. She was in front of my camera!

[Amatullah0]

Originally Posted by Bekka

Maybe this isn't too late to be helpful. In about 1995 I was temping with a local agency and my job was to work at the community college helping take pictures for a new kind of student ID card. There was a young woman who was in line for the ID cards who was wearing hijab. The rule was that they were supposed to remove all headgear for the picture. The manager tried to tell her she had to take the scarf off for the picture, and she was very shy but said that she could not, it was against her religion. He was getting very pushy about it, but I backed her up and said that it was her First Amendment rights that he was violating, and he couldn't require her to remove the veil to get the picture taken. She was in front of my camera!

Thats awesome, good for you! and, thank you!

that reminds me, I was working in a psychiatric hospital once, and wearing niqab, and they took my id pic, no problem, no questions even asked, and i was wearing niqab. I was totally prepared to take off the niqab too. it was a bit strange, but cool, i guess.


also, wanted to make a suggestion about the sikh picture, maybe show a religious sikh man visiting people in the hospital. if you can't find a niqabi in a university pic, you could do a niqabi doctor.

[annettemarie]

It sounds a lot like the beginning of the movie The DaVinci Code. I'm not being facetious, but maybe you could check it out for more ideas?

[merpk]

Not sure if you're looking for actual discrimination related to work or just general discrimination that happens to happen in the workplace ... ???

I know a lot of Jews who've dealt with not being hired because they're Sabbath-observant, or having a new boss suddenly decide that their workplace will no longer tolerate someone who works longer hours the rest of the week so that they can leave to make it home in time for Shabbos, etc., so you either have to forego religious observance to keep your job or, well, you quit.

Other similar stories abound.

Of course, if you just arrange to only apply for jobs in religious Jewish businesses, then you don't have the problem, as a general rule. Which many do.

If you arrange to be a civil servant you don't have the problem in theory, because religious discrimination is not allowed, but it still happens.

But then again, I'm not sure that this is what you're talking about.

[Magelet]

oh huh, I hadn't even thought about that as discrimination. I definitely have had problems with a job saying they won't schedule me to work on shabbat then scheduling me on shabbat. It was a kosher style (not observantly jewishly owned, I don't jewishly owned at all) place too. eventually, I quit, though it was one of many stressors.

[MusicianDad]

So I was asking around and have an interesting? story.

A friend of a friend (yeah that dreaded phrase) works at a place that has a good number of both Jewish and Muslim employees. This place provides lunches for the employees, and initially they didn't have even a vegetarian option let a lone halal or kosher option. So people complained and the response they initially got was "there's salad, you can eat that". Well, the salad doesn't fit any of the aforementioned diets because it has bacon. The employees point that out, the response is "pick the bacon pieces out". Um... not the point. Besides, more observant Jewish and Muslim employees can't just pick the bacon out because the bacon was already in the salad and thus makes it unsuitable for eating. Not to mention the vegetarians who would like an option that has not had to be picked clean of meat.

[minkajane]

You are all being very helpful. I really appreciate the stories.

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by merpk

Not sure if you're looking for actual discrimination related to work or just general discrimination that happens to happen in the workplace ... ???

I know a lot of Jews who've dealt with not being hired because they're Sabbath-observant, or having a new boss suddenly decide that their workplace will no longer tolerate someone who works longer hours the rest of the week so that they can leave to make it home in time for Shabbos, etc., so you either have to forego religious observance to keep your job or, well, you quit.

Other similar stories abound.

Of course, if you just arrange to only apply for jobs in religious Jewish businesses, then you don't have the problem, as a general rule. Which many do.

If you arrange to be a civil servant you don't have the problem in theory, because religious discrimination is not allowed, but it still happens.

But then again, I'm not sure that this is what you're talking about.

This happened to me - I said I couldn't work Sundays, before I was hired, and they agreed. Then they kept scheduling me only for week ends. I ended up leaving that job. It wasn't that they were anti-religion I think, they just didn't care, which is a bit more subtle.

[Smokering]

The combination of being five months pregnant and not working Sundays is particularly bad when looking for a job, I've found. I can't exactly blame the companies - if they want someone to work weekends, they want someone to work weekends - but it's annoying. I applied for dozens and dozens of (menial, absolutely within my competence level) jobs when I was pregnant with DD and eventually gave up.

With jobs I actually got, my bosses were pretty nice about the Sunday thing. I had coworkers who'd routinely bug me to swap shifts with them, and I'm pretty sure they thought I was just being difficult for not working Sundays, but I wouldn't go so far as to call that discrimination.

It sounds a lot like the beginning of the movie The DaVinci Code. I'm not being facetious, but maybe you could check it out for more ideas?

Ha! That's where I've seen it! I knew I'd heard of it before. I wonder if the OP could just play the clip? It'd certainly be simpler than hunting up all the images herself, though it might distract the class into a discussion about the merits of the book/movie/data contained therein/Paul Bettany appearing naked in every single movie in which he appears.

[mamabadger]

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

It wasn't that they were anti-religion I think, they just didn't care, which is a bit more subtle.

I think this is becoming a much more common problem. Religious observance is starting to be seen as a luxury, a personal quirk, and both employers and co-workers have trouble taking it seriously enough to bother accommodating. It might be hard to pin down as real discrimination.

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by mamabadger

I think this is becoming a much more common problem. Religious observance is starting to be seen as a luxury, a personal quirk, and both employers and co-workers have trouble taking it seriously enough to bother accommodating. It might be hard to pin down as real discrimination.

Yeah, it's part of the idea that religion is only something that is completely private. As soon as it becomes part of the public sphere in any way, it must be suppressed.

I think it is more common in the US than in Canada, other than maybe Quebec. Interestingly, it is similar to the way the Soviets suppressed religion - they interpreted "religious freedom" only to mean the freedom to worship in a place of one's choosing.

It's a bit scary.

[Arduinna]

Religious descrimination in the workplace, here are a couple examples I read about recently. One is about an Oxford professor who was discriminated after converting to Christianity

And then we have this one

Fired for Teaching the Truth Ken Howell Sacked for Presenting Church Teaching on Homosexual Sex


Yes we have a professor who was teaching courses on Catholicism who was fired for telling his students what the Church teaches about homosexuality. Although he has since been invited to come back and teach this fall after an uproar over his firing due to a complaint made by a guest that was a friend of one of his students.


oh I forgot about this victim of religious persecution in the work place

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov...addonresigns26

Raddon was forced to resign after he got a vote of no confidence by his board because of his Mormon beliefs

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by Arduinna

Religious descrimination in the workplace, here are a couple examples I read about recently. One is about an Oxford professor who was discriminated after converting to Christianity

And then we have this one

Fired for Teaching the Truth Ken Howell Sacked for Presenting Church Teaching on Homosexual Sex


Yes we have a professor who was teaching courses on Catholicism who was fired for telling his students what the Church teaches about homosexuality. Although he has since been invited to come back and teach this fall after an uproar over his firing due to a complaint made by a guest that was a friend of one of his students.


oh I forgot about this victim of religious persecution in the work place

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov...addonresigns26

Raddon was forced to resign after he got a vote of no confidence by his board because of his Mormon beliefs

That case with Ken Howell was unbelievable - totally undermines the idea of what a university is supposed to do.