New York Transit Authority and Muslim headgear

[Abdul Alhazred]

From New York Daily News:

TA comes out ahead in Muslim work rule (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/v-pfriendly/story/128592p-115038c.html)


An arbitrator has ruled the TA is not breaking state or federal law by requiring three female Muslim bus drivers to wear official TA caps over their religious headgear, the Daily News has learned.

The women, who wore the head-covering khumur, were given other jobs driving empty buses around depots - "a reasonable accommodation," arbitrator Richard Adelman wrote.

But union leaders, who have said the drivers were victims of a post-9/11 anti-Muslim backlash, have not ruled out a court challengeto keep the women from having to choose between their faith and their work assignments.


Just two comments:

1) Post 9/11 backlash is nonsense. The rule was the same before.

2) Does Islam really permit a woman to be a bus driver?

[Cleon]

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred
Just two comments:

1) Post 9/11 backlash is nonsense. The rule was the same before.


Ah, but was it enforced?


2) Does Islam really permit a woman to be a bus driver?

Yes. There is no Quranic basis to prevent women from driving; most "sharia" laws have no Quranic or Hadith origin.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by Cleon

Yes. There is no Quranic basis to prevent women from driving; most "sharia" laws have no Quranic or Hadith origin.

Sharia isn't part of Islam?

To say that a religion consists only of its scriptures is more Protestant than Muslim (or Catholic or Jewish or etc).

[Agammamon]

How is discrimination or preventing religious expression to require the hat to be worn over the head covering? The religious law only requires the head and face to be covered.

[Martin]

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred
Sharia isn't part of Islam?I'm working largely from memory here, so take it for what it's worth. But my understanding is that Islamic law is supposedly somewhat fluid, capable of adapting to circumstances. Much of Sharia law is nothing more than jurisprudence cooked up in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It can, I believe, be changed by consensus. The trick is in getting the fundies to recognise the legitimacy of that consensus.

[Cleon]

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred


Sharia isn't part of Islam?

To say that a religion consists only of its scriptures is more Protestant than Muslim (or Catholic or Jewish or etc).

It is and it isn't. The complicating factor is that there's no Muslim Church; no central body making decisions. There are, however, a number of schools of thought and institutions that have varying degrees of influence; the only times they have enforceable power is when they have state power (a la Afghanistan, Iran, etc). If the Catholic Church makes a decision, that decision goes for all Catholics. If a particular sheikh or imam makes a fatwa, it's only good for followers of that particular individual or institution. Unless, of course, they have state power.

Sharia is very fluid. Whenever a fatwa is issued, it becomes part of that school's sharia. Some schools are older than others; some are newer. There isn't any one sharia; there are many. And that's why it becomes problematic. For example, in Afghanistan the Taliban (radical Sunnis) had it as part of their sharia that women had to wear a burqa (total body covering). In most parts of the Arab Sunni world, they ask for simply a hijab (hair covering), many times they don't even require it. In some places women can drive and hold jobs; in others, they are forbidden.

So yeah, "sharia" as a concept is part of Islam, but there are varying shades of what sharia is.