stone_cold

When Lee Williams saw a parent-and-toddler session advertised at his local pool, he thought it was the perfect chance to teach his young daughter to swim.

Arriving at the leisure centre already in her swimming costume, two-year-old Darby was desperate to get into the water.

But she was left in tears when staff said they were not allowed in the pool because the session was for Muslim women and their children only.

Mr Williams, 34, bitterly criticised Manchester City Council yesterday after it admitted that advertising for the session, on its website and on leaflets, had been misleading. 'I can understand why Muslim women need to have this kind of session, but the council should not be advertising it as parent and toddler,' he said.

'They made out I'd got it wrong, but I had checked on the council's website for the times.'

The incident happened at Abraham Moss Leisure Centre in Crumpsall. Mr Williams, a delivery driver from Blackley, had seen the parent-and-toddler session being promoted on the council's website and a leaflet.

But when they arrived, reception staff told Mr Williams he could not swim with Darby because it was a women-only session and they would have to come back later. Despite his protests that he had specifically checked the time of the session, the staff were insistent.

It was only when he telephoned the council to complain that he was told the session had been privately booked for Muslim women.

According to Islam, women are forbidden from exposing their bodies to any man but their husband.

A spokesman for Manchester City Council apologised to Mr Williams. He said: 'We were sorry to hear that he had been turned away. We are ensuring that our website is updated and staff are briefed so this does not happen again.'

The incident is the latest in a series of rows between local authorities and the public over swimming lessons for ethnic minority groups.

In December last year, Croydon Council in South London came under fire for running Muslim-only sessions at one of its leisure centres.

Non-Muslim members of Thornton Heath leisure centre were angry that they could not swim during the Muslim-only sessions on Saturdays and Sundays unless they obeyed the strict dress code.

For men, this involved wearing shorts which kept the navel hidden and were extended below the knee, while women bathers had to wear a swimming costume which covered their body from the neck down to the ankle.

Similarly, Wolverhampton Council and South Lanarkshire local authority have also been criticised for operating women- only swimming for Muslims.


Swim centre bars two-year-old girl because she isn't Muslim | News | This is London

But, apparently we will have to bear the blame of alienating muslims, or may Sir Ray can sum it up any better.

Grim

Tax supported religious bigotry and sexism ought to make for a real nice law suite and settlement.

Bluesman

FIGHT.

THIS.

NEVER give in to this kind of thing. NEVER tolerate this kind of discrimination. NEVER knuckle under to having your culture and customs thrown over for somebody else's, because they refuse to assimilate.

It's worth fighting over. He should've barged past them, got in the pool with his daughter, and anybody that didn't like it could leave. OUR tradition says NOTHING about the misogynistic crap that keeps the sexes so segregated and unfriendly with each other that they can't be in the same pool at the same time. What a bunch of medieval BS!

BLATANT discrimination. NO!

Go when you want, wear what's appropriate for YOUR custom, and don't pay any dam' attention to what anybody else wears, because it's not any of your dam' business. NO!

Go to HELL, and I'm going swimming! I'll wear my usual swim trunks, and if anybody objects, I'll object to what THEY wear, as I find all that sniffy moral superiority holding itself up as the ONLY 'moralistic' way as VERY offensive, and where does THAT leave us? NO!

Sex AND religious discrimination? NO!

This is TOTALLY unacceptable.

__________________
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- George Orwell

dave lukins

Do they have Muslim only beaches?Where do they swim when on holiday?do muslin women never go out and see men in shorts in summer?This has gone too far!! I take it on "muslim women only"days ,the male members of staff have the day off with FULL PAY

Kassad

Nifty -- wonder if sessions could be privately booked for any other religious reason.

Asim Aquil

I do agree a bad advert was made with the parent-and-toddler session, but it was basically a womens-only pool and here we have this man fighting for his right to jump in with the ladies just because he has a kid with him.

C'mon, take her to another co-ed pool! I'm darn sure she wasn't barred because its for MUSLIM women, it was barred because a man wanted to accompany a young woman.

Some Muslim women consider showing their hair as nudity, and this man wants to see them in bathing suits? Do you not see a problem in this like a normal person not charged with a political agenda?

Bluesman

When I lived in Maryland, I used to go to the beach with family and friends. We'd see there the Muslim men wearing the most absurd Speedos, and their women bundled up in all-black head-to toe stuff, looking for all the world like ninjas at the North Pole.

None of my business, but it used to provoke the hell out of me. It is nothing but oppression, it has the stink of a display to the rest of the world of how very pious everybody is, and I found the whole thing to be very in-your-face.

I'm sorry, but I'm about to betray a prejudice here: if any of my friends converted to Islam, and insisted that THIS sort of behavior was required, I could not be friends with them anymore.

A story:

When I was at NCO Academy, one of the guys in my class (appointed as class leader, by the way) was an American Muslim. He was VERY observant: we had to start class late every day after lunch, because that call-to-prayer time was not 'movable', like some others, and he'd go out back with his prayer rug, come back in and we'd get going.

Never thought much about it. Graduation day came, and I was meeting the families of all my classmates for the first time. When I was introduced to Mrs. Sadiq, I put out my hand, smiled and said, 'Pleased to meet you.'

TSgt Sadiq said, 'She's forbidden to shake your hand. But she's pleased to meet you.' She never said a word, and didn't look up. I was VERY uneasy about the whole thing, and I felt different about Sadiq from that moment on. I felt like asking both of them, 'Are either of you aware that that's not what we do here? That it's customary to take the hand that's offered in friendship, and to NOT take it is considered rude, even hostile? Do you know [to him] that I think you're an oppressive beast, and that you [to her]consider yourself his property?

But that's all a private matter, even though it leads to an alienation of Muslim from All Others, and from male and female, which is bad enough. The subject of the article, however, is the use of public facilities to segregate a preferred group from another. And not just ANY group, but one that holds itself superior to the Main Body of Culture, the NATIVE customs, if you will. Well, that offends me, and I'm damned if I would EVER let myself be denied my rights so that another's may be exalted.

It's worth fighting about, and folks...that day gets closer all the time.

astralis

hear, hear. there is a difference between respecting other beliefs and cultures and bending over to them. ridiculous!

__________________
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Bluesman

I have a HUGE problem with it.

It is NOT in the Western tradition or custom to have to bundle all females into a tent-cloth to avoid the visual contact of a male. That is what us enlightened Westerners refer to as SILLY, and MEDIEVAL, and REALLY, REALLY OPPRESSIVE AND MISOGYNISTIC, and for God's sake, can't you all just grow the hell up and join the rest of us in the 21st Century already?

I am appalled that you think the solution is for the man to just go the hell away and find another pool that thinks like, well, EVERYBODY ELSE in the country about something so universal, except for that slender minority of intolerant and primitive types that simply cannot get over themselves enough to mind their own business.

It's not a women's-only pool, and if it were, I'd have a problem with that, too. It's a COMMUNITY pool, and this man is presumably a member of that community. Whoever has a problem with the arrangement of NON-DISCRIMINATION based on sex or religion needs to lace up their boots and move out smartly, and if any women simply cannot bear to have any man but their husbands see them in bathing togs, BUY YOUR OWN DAM' POOL, and do with it whatever your silly superstition demands.

joey2

Damn i joined my towns swimming club when i was in class 6, there were many beautiful ladies.My dad was quite famous there...

we normally had ladies/gents seperate session for learners [6.30 to 7.00 for females then 7.00 to 7.30 for males] but in the big pool [where pro peoples comes] people used to come as they wish to practice.

T_igger_cs_30

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I don't work here ...I am an analyst!

omon

in the gym i used to go to in brooklyn, there were hours, when jewish girls only were alowed to enter pool area. nobody, even jewish men were alowed to enter, even lifeguard had to be a girl.

Bluesman

Does anybody see why I've about had it with ALL religion?

Lunatock

Well Fahd (me) is obviously not TSgt. Sadiq. In my case I would of just started my own lunch about four minutes later than everyone else.

And it's no big secret that I've worked with a model who dyes her hair orange (big no-no in mullahville), shook her hand when we met & parted ways, And like all he models I've worked with she is either dating or married to someone.

Plus I thought working with un-single women meant about as much as snapping a pic of this guy, who is wearing a wedding ring.

Asim Aquil

That might be so in a beach in Saudi Arabia where the Burkha is enforced, in Maryland it's voluntary. How is it oppression when the woman chooses to not be nude infront of you? The Burkha is not an Islamic requirement but women still observe it in non-Arab societies since its the level of conservatism that they have.

The position that they are oppressed women because of a burkha (by default, without knowing anything about them) is absurd. It's just a level of conservatism. The same Arab women do wear bikinis in abundant numbers in Arab countries too. They choose to. They still call themselves Muslim and are not renegades from Islam. They just have a different opinion about conservatism.

I would insist that this sort of behavior be allowed on a voluntary basis. Anyone insisting the forceful removal of a woman's clothing wouldn't be a friend of mine just as much one who forces any clothing on them.

I find it hard to believe that you guys HAD to do that. Or did you (the majority) just allow him to do so?

I studied in an American uni in Sharjah and no one was allowed to do so. Some of the professors allowed the students to walk in late during the prayer timings when it really couldn't wait an hour (which is just one evening prayer, which mostly has a 30 mins timing before the sunsets, which is over an hour in America during the summers because of longer days). The rest of the prayers have gaps of several hours to pray and can be done whenever.

Never thought much about it. Graduation day came, and I was meeting the families of all my classmates for the first time. When I was introduced to Mrs. Sadiq, I put out my hand, smiled and said, 'Pleased to meet you.'

Hey a British raised Prime Minister of Pakistan refused to shake hands with Mark Waugh (Aussie cricket team capt) all on her own. She politely explained that she should not touch another man than her husband. Of course that was REALLY just PR but thats pretty much how it is.

Your classmate's wife would not be forbidden by her husband but by whatever cultural/religious followings of hers. By the same logic he shouldn't be shaking hands of women either.

One thing though most westerners are real bad at meeting with the easterners wives! My mom usually meets my dad's colleagues (mostly American or non-Muslim) with a quick handshake gesture. Since most of them usually go for the hug and kisses on the cheek. My mom's a very modern woman, sports a very short hairstyle, business woman, and even she has issues with the way they westerners don't make the cultural adjustments.

Of course if I was Mr. Sadiq, I'd let my wife speak on her own behalf just as my dad doesn't call the shots as to what my mom should do in social situations like those.

I'm pretty sure the article is flawed. A non-Muslim mother accompanying a kid wouldn't have met the same issues as did a father.