On 25-Jan-09 16:54, somebody wrote:
> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
> news:497### [at] hotmailcom...
> 
>> - There is a distinction between culture and faith. I think that this is
>> more culture than faith (although not having studied this particular
>> religion it is hard for me to judge). Even so, in this case culture
>> should prevail over arbitrary school rules. I have probably written
>> about this before, but for me this is a very fundamental discussion. Too
>> often cultural expressions (head scarfs, female genital mutilation) are
>> claimed to be religious in order to have them accepted in a host
>> culture. We even had a religious 'leader' who claimed that he as a
>> muslim was not allowed to shake hands with females and 'therefore'
>> refused the hand of a minister. As long as we don't make the distinction
>> between culture and religion anybody can make such things up to annoy
>> others and get away with it because the others are not allowed to
>> discriminate against a 'religion'.
> 
> You have some points about "abuse" of religious freedom, but I don't think
> it's very productive for courts to go into long winded arguments of what's
> culture and what's religion, and how old the religions/customs might be. And
> fundamentally, I agree with your claim of distinction between faith and
> culture. Much (in fact, all) of the practices of Abrahamic religions are
> based on culture. Ultimately, there's no such thing as religion distinct
> from culture - at least from this atheist's perspective - since all
> religions are invented by men, and culture is just that - whatever lifestyle
> man invents. So instead of wasting time and money trying to sort all the
> silliness, I say that the principle be adopted where so long as there are no
> adverse effects (health, safety... etc), let them wear what they want, and
> be consistent/evenhanded. Braids, long, free flowing hair is a no-no in a
> machine shop, food preparation.... etc, but it's hard to justfiy it as a
> risk at a school.

I disagree. The refusal of jews and muslims to eat pork or obeying 
Ramadan or sabbath is firmly established in the books. Your point that 
the books were written by humans may be true but is irrelevant. For the 
believers it is *provably* part of their religion.
OTOH you have things like women to have to wear hats on sunday when 
going to church as is the practice in some circles in the Netherlands. 
This has no basis in the script but rests on an interpretation of (IIRC) 
Timothy 2:9-10 (no don't ask me how they do that). The common cultural 
idea that women have to wear headscarfs or worse also rests on such an 
interpretation of similar words by Mohamed.
NB I don't have a recipe to distinguish culture from religion.

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