What happens at Harvard certainly does not stay at Harvard, as demonstrated in late January this year when the College's agreement to create women-only gym hours for Muslim women students made national headlines. The news coverage, of course, was far out of proportion to the issue itself: whether men's access to a lightly used university athletic facility should be barred for six hours a week. The debate on the blogosphere was hot and vicious, some of it reflecting deep fears of multiculturalism. Wrote one conservative Christian blogger, "This is just the first step in surrendering, and that surrender will ultimately involve everything it means to be an American."

While it's easy to blame such responses on Islamophobia or knee-jerk Harvard-hating, the issues at stake—Islamic law, women's rights, and religious accommodation—are not easily resolved. As a Muslim and former graduate adviser to the Harvard Islamic Society, I find my own sympathies surprisingly mixed.

The first problem in considering the gym debacle is how to frame it. The University is, of course, private, so none of the First Amendment issues of religion in the public square apply. "The question in this case is not about what's legal—it's about what is the right thing to do," says Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.–based program focused on freedoms of speech, religion, and the press.

To Haynes, a 1975 graduate of Harvard Divinity School, the accommodation on the gym hours is a positive one. "It shows Harvard is committed to liberty of conscience, which is a core principle of American democracy," he says. "The fact that they are willing to look for a reasonable accommodation says to Muslim students: 'We care about you being a part of this community.'"

Kevin (Seamus) Hasson, chairman of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public-interest law firm in Washington, D.C., pointed out two years ago in a speech defending the right of pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions that honoring freedom of conscience is often "inconvenient" for the majority. "It may be inconvenient with military operations if somebody's not willing to fight, [or] if somebody's not willing to take an oath or get vaccinated," he said. "But overall, conscience and moral principles are good things for society."

Knowing that the inconvenient truths of conscience are hallowed American traditions, then, I want to be someone who defends conscience, and of course I feel for my Muslim brothers and sisters at Harvard, who, like Muslims elsewhere, face a lot of hostility toward their religious beliefs. Wearing a headscarf or dressing modestly is a struggle, and Muslims deserve support. But at the same time, I hesitate to endorse the College's decision as a symbol of religious accommodation. Where will the line be drawn when it comes to religious law and Islamic law in particular? And is comfort the same thing as conscience?

A commenter at the Boston Herald website wrote on the topic: "Harvard isn't accommodating Muslim women, many of whom already work out at the co-ed gym with no trouble. Harvard is accommodating the fundamentalists who believe in separation of the sexes and that women can't be in the company of men who aren't family members." Now, women who wear headscarves or prefer women-only spaces are not wild-eyed fundamentalists. If they are like the Muslim women I knew at Harvard, they are smart, independent, and thoughtful, even while exploring and upholding their faith.

But their insistence on modest dress and a certain level of sex-segregation does refer back to classical Islamic law, and there is no getting around the fact that some aspects of that law are problematic, especially when it comes to women. What if, for example, Muslim male students requested gym hours when they could exercise without the presence of women? Such a request would seem repugnant on the face of it, yet it would be undergirded by the exact same interpretation of Islamic modesty that the Muslim women have referred to. Should the College grant such a male request, on the same basis that they have granted the female request?

Bloggers and online commentators have painted other troubling scenarios: What if a group of conservative religious students were "uncomfortable" living in a dorm with openly gay peers and requested homosexual-free housing? Or sex-segregated classrooms? What if Orthodox Jewish men did not want to share chairs with menstruating women and asked for men-only chairs?

For Haynes, these slippery-slope scenarios are not scary: Each must be worked out on a case-by-case basis, relying on the principle of "reasonable accommodation," he says. In other words, if it's going to cost a lot or have a heavy impact on others, the answer is no. To Haynes and those who support the women-only gym hours, the burden on other students is not so large that it outweighs the benefits of making life easier for Muslim women.

But if conscience and religious conviction demand accommodation, then I wonder if the issue here rises to the level of conscience. As the Boston Herald commenter pointed out, Muslim women at all levels of religious observance are free to use all the Harvard athletic facilities, and of course many do. Might it be more comfortable for them to be able to work out in more revealing clothes, or to know that a guy isn't checking them out (or vice versa)? Obviously the answer is yes, or they wouldn't be asking. But does that increased comfort level really rise to the level of conscience? In this case, I think not.

Sadly, an opportunity was missed here. As liberal Muslim blogger Ali Eteraz has pointed out, women-only gyms are very popular, as demonstrated by the popularity of the Curves franchise, and the Muslim women at Harvard could have saved a lot of grief by building a meaningful coalition with other female students, both religious and nonreligious, who want a comfortable women-only athletic space at Harvard. Instead they made their request on the basis of adherence to gender norms of Islamic law, norms I hope, in the end, that Harvard will not endorse through accommodation.

I suspect I know the conservative Christian blogger the author refers to who says this is the first step in surrendering all that means to be an American. I agree with him but also disagree because this is not the first step, it has already advanced a few steps.

Cultural shifts do not happen overnight. Muslims need not worry that they will be segregated overnight. But it will happen slowly but surely if they insist on being separated. The irony is that those who appear to be the friends of Muslims - the ultra liberal, ever apologetic, left wingers - are their enemy in the long run.

By encouraging Muslims to remove themselves symbolically, and in this case physically, from the mainstream of America in the name of 'accommodating the Islamic belief system', all that will happen is a gradual segregation of Muslims.

A hundred years from now Muslims in America might be lamenting the fact that their forefathers(and mothers) chose to discard the lessons of American society and instead adopted medieval customs of an alien society.

Andrea - thanks for the article. As a Muslim woman I too have very mixed feelings about this issue and your and Ali’s articles helped me understand why. It’s the fact that these women appealed to a very conservative/traditional view of Islamic law which I also find incredibly problematic especially when it comes to gender relations. Not only can non-Muslims not relate to that perspective, but many Muslims don’t even subscribe to that viewpoint! Why pit yourself against the mainstream when you can get exactly what you want through a more relate-able approach? Ali Eteraz was absolutely right, these women made a HUGE mistake trying to use religion to get what they wanted. They should have joined forces with other women, both religious and non-religious, and appealed to people’s common understanding that many women would prefer women-only gyms for broader reasons. I think these women did way more harm than good for American Muslims. Why couldn’t someone at smart Harvard have made them aware of that?

Actually, I suspect (only a suspicion), very smart people at Harvard did this intentionally with the idea of showing how even the most progressive among you are no better the the primitive ones.

I don't think having single sex gym hours is a matter of comfort. I think it is a matter of inclusion. In the end, there is no Qur'anic evidence for Muslims having to segregate themselves from homosexuals (your example, not mine). But there is for men and women to be separate.
So the answer would be no, it would not be unreasonable for men to request the same accomodation, as modesty is a reciprocal and mutual requirement in Islam.
Sarah3 has got it all wrong. These women did not make the case for single sex gym hours only because they are Muslim. Muslims are not the only people on this earth to need a help in creating and maintaining healthy opposite sex relationships. Muslim women used each other to build a case simply because that is who they no--not because they would be fundamentally opposed to such a coalition.
Weisskopf would like to believe that there are no inherent problems with men and women and their relation to each other in American society. And yet all the statistics say other wise. Inferring that women would rather be in the company of other women is primitive...I guess he'll have to explain that one to me.This is all just a matter of perspective--Muslims do not see it as being removed, but rather in participating--those women would likely not go to the gym at all if not for these hours. That is inclusion, not removal!

humanitarian - i'm not saying that these women were fundamentally opposed to forming a coalition with non-muslim women. if anything they would have been happy to do it if someone else had approached them. it's the fact that didn't do it, despite how overwhelmingly important it would have been to their case and to the bigger picture, that bothers me tremendously. they didn't see doing it as important enough to break out of their comfort zone (which apparently ends with the MSA) and approach women's organizations on campus. It would not have been that hard for God's sake!

humanitarian, if you are defending them by saying that they just went to women they knew, who happened to be Muslim, then you are defending their laziness and their inability to see the bigger picture. there was absolutely no need for them to make this a muslim issue, which is what they in fact did because of their myopia. doing so has only perpetuated the idea that muslims and america are a bad fit, and that non-muslims cannot relate to muslims' needs. if they had considered the bigger picture, they should have simply made this a woman's issue and appealed to women across the board. that would have allowed the general public to understand that muslim women's needs are not so far off from other women's.

Sarah
You're acting as if coming from a religious framework is archaic or somehow unacceptable. I don't think that it is laziness that prevented Muslims women from approaching women's organizations, I think that they knew, just as I suspect, that they would get more of a response by framing their request in a religious manner. Asking for things "as a woman" rarely gets you much in the U.S. Just look at the health care and the child care system! As a matter of fact, sometimes asking for things in that manner automatically means you will be shut down, for exactly the reasons stated in the article--some start asking where there are not men's only hours, without realizing that men are subjected to the same sexual standards that women are. I think it is extremely important to also consider a person's viewpoint, but this matter has more to do with how women are often on the losing end in America of social circumstance.

Humanitarian - can you please give some examples illustrating your statement: "Asking for things "as a woman" rarely gets you much in the U.S. Just look at the health care and the child care system!"

If you want to say that women are not getting what they want in terms of women-only gyms, then how do you explain the proliferation of Lucille Roberts and Curves gyms around the country?

Women wanting to work out only in the company of other women is nothing new here. I highly doubt the university would have resisted allowing for this if a coalition of women from different backgrounds asked for this. In my university, women asked for women only swimming hours and got it without a problem. What makes you suspect that framing it as a woman's issue would have been an obstacle?

I think coming from a religious framework in this particular case IS a problem given the social circumstances of Muslims in America. I think there's a smart way to promote our needs in a society that sees us as alien, and there's a dumb way. The dumb way is to separate ourselves further and selfishly work only for our own interests, as if we expect America to accommodate us but don't care to reciprocate the gesture. The smart way is to identify those needs we have that we share with other Americans, and to form coalitions that transcend religion/culture/etc in order to get what we want together. In that way we are contributing to the greater good of society And getting what we want.

For example, Islamic Relief doesn't just help Muslims but rather works to help Everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim. While many Muslims care only to send money to Palestine, Islamic Relief is sending volunteers to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They are sending a positive message - that we are a part of American society and should therefore care for our fellow Americans regardless of their religion/race/class/etc. This has led to their recognition as positive contributors to our society, and that has done more to break down barriers than a lot of other PR situations Muslims have gotten themselves into, including this gym controversy. It's important that we relate to others rather than separate ourselves.

Well, maybe we are reading a different article, but I thought that it said that they created women's only hours at the request of Muslim women. Not Muslim-women only gym hours.
We probably don't need to get into a debate about women in America. That would take too long and would fall outside of the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, that I disagree with you.
I know a lot of women, proliferation or not, who will not work out at Curves because the company donates large sums of money to political campaigns and PACS who are known to be actively involved in anti-women issues, such as pro-life movements. If that doesn't state my position, I don't know what else would.
I do agree with you that there are smart ways of doing things and dumb ways. I just don't agree that this was necessarily dumb just because it was done in a religious framework. Muslims necessarily view life from a religious standpoint because Islam is not just a bunch of rituals and practices and beliefs. The rules, such as the rule that undoubtedly prompted these particular women to ask for such accomodation, are there to encourage good behaviour and protect society from its own ills. America for one, could absolutely benefit from separating its sexes a bit more, seeing as how it is, amongst the 13 industrialized nations, #1 in HIV infection genital herpes infection, teen aged and unplanned pregnancy, etc. Everywhere we look, sex is everywhere. It is women who bear the brunt of an oversexed nation, hands down.
I guess I just don't mind people looking out for others interests, even if some see it as separatist. Small price to pay as far as I am comcerned.

It looks like we're pretty much reaching the point where I suppose we have to agree to disagree, which is fine, but I just wanted to say a few more things. Forgive me if I go off topic or zoom out too much, but I'll try and reign it all in. Regarding your comment:

"Well, maybe we are reading a different article, but I thought that it said that they created women's only hours at the request of Muslim women. Not Muslim-women only gym hours."

The end result may be that all women can use these hours, but that's not what I'm discussing, nor what the article is discussing. I'm analyzing the means taken towards that end, and the future implications of having used these particular means, as is the article.

Regarding this comment:
"Muslims necessarily view life from a religious standpoint because Islam is not just a bunch of rituals and practices and beliefs. The rules, such as the rule that undoubtedly prompted these particular women to ask for such accomodation, are there to encourage good behaviour and protect society from its own ills."

First of all, this whole idea of calling Islam "a lifestyle, not just a religion" can be problematic when taken to the extreme. It's fine to view life through a religious lens if that's what you believe, but when dealing in a non-Muslim society, the inability to step back from religion at all and see things in a more universal light is exactly the reason why non-Muslims cannot relate to Muslims. Why is it that for Muslims, Everything has to be cloaked in "Islamic" terms, as if the universal ideas of justice or goodness cannot be remotely understood without injecting Islam into the discussion? That doesn't make any sense to a non-Muslim, and only projects this holier-than-thou attitude that alienates us. Non-Muslims have a sense of goodness too (which often overlaps with Islam’s), that doesn't depend on the Quran, and so how do you expect them to relate if we claim that only Islam has "the right" sense of justice or goodness? You yourself said that these segregation rules, as you understand them, are there to encourage good behavior – is that not an idea that transcends Islam? Why can’t Muslims appeal to that? There are undoubtedly non-Muslims who would agree. Not all of them will, sure, but not all of them have to… (in fact, many Muslims themselves would disagree, which is another issue altogether)

Dr. Sherman Jackson and Tariq Ramadan often illustrate this point using a story from the Seerah, in which the Prophet (saw) asserted that he would have joined a certain coalition (if it still existed when he made this statement) of polytheistic tribes whose purpose was to protect weaker tribes from being bullied. He had actually joined it as a young man with Abu Bakr (ra), and even after becoming Prophet, he wanted to bring his followers to join it. It had been a secular coalition, in the sense that it was not founded on religious belief. It was simply founded on the idea that it is good to protect the weak. The Prophet was not trying to Islamize the idea of this coalition, he was saying that Islam agreed with their sense of justice, a sense that transcended religion, and therefore he would have wanted to join the cause if he could. That to me is a beautiful example of the Prophet's ability to relate to others, whether or not religion was given center stage in the matter. Relating it to the gym issue, I think it would have been more in line with this lesson to join other women who felt that it was better for them to exercise in the company of women only, rather than Islamize the issue. We don’t always need to do that, and it’s not always in our best interest to do so. The overall damage that is done in the long run by alienating ourselves is a Very big price pay as far as I'm concerned…

I agree with you that America has its own set of gender-related social ills, as do Muslim countries. I personally don't agree that traditional Islamic ideas of gender roles are the answer, but, for those who do, you can't on the one hand try and convince America that Islam is relatable and can provide answers to these problems, and then on the other hand project a holier-than-thou attitude that claims that only by accepting the Islamic worldview can you truly understand how to promote goodness. Not gonna happen…

what a coincidence - altmuslim just posted an article by Dr. Jackson that I think does a great job expressing what I've been trying to say about the importance of properly integrating ourselves into American society (or rather the American story, as he describes), the benefits of doing so, and the harms of not doing so.

"Thus far...Muslims remain outside the American story, which is why, despite their positive contributions to society, they seldom enlist empathy when they are jailed, deported or discriminated against."

Now we are getting somewhere Sarah.
"First of all, this whole idea of calling Islam "a lifestyle, not just a religion" can be problematic when taken to the extreme. It's fine to view life through a religious lens if that's what you believe, but when dealing in a non-Muslim society, the inability to step back from religion at all and see things in a more universal light is exactly the reason why non-Muslims cannot relate to Muslims."
I totally agree. But I think education is the only way to solve that. There are many Muslims who are not afforded an education beyond grammar school in this world. Do we expect them to take on a holistic world view when they are even more limited in some cases than Americans are in theirs? I would argue so.
Where we disagree is this: you think that using Islam as a reason to argue for or against something means you are separating yourself from non-Muslims in a negative way. I do not see it as a negative--in fact, what if what happens say, at that Harvard gym, is that women start to use the gym in those hours, and then see that Muslims, and maybe even Islamic values, did something GOOD for them? Separate then doesn't seem so bad, as long as by separate you mean distinct and not closed minded. I have a very world-oriented view, so perhaps I missed that part of your argument.
I'm enjoying this debate and much appreciate that it is so far very intellectual and not at all offensive or rude, thanks Sarah!

Thanks to you too Humanitarian. I'm enjoying this debate as well. My apologies for the late reply.

Re:
"There are many Muslims who are not afforded an education beyond grammar school in this world."

That may be true, but I'm talking about America specifically, where Muslims in general are far more educated than average Americans. They certainly have the capacity to develop and live by a holistic worldview, and I don't think that's asking too much at all.

I don't think women who may start using the gym will necessarily see it as "Muslims did this for us. Islam IS great!" Demanding women-only space/women-only gyms is nothing new to this society. It's not necessarily an Islamic value, it's a value held by many women in this country, and many of those women just happen to be Muslim.

I could make the same da'wah argument by saying that if Muslim women had made a coalition with other women, then an even more substantial relationship would have formed among those women that would have impressed non-Muslims more. If some women are impressed by these Muslim women as a result of this fiasco, I think that's a very rare and haphazard after-effect, not anything substantial that will help in the long-run as much as coalition-building would have. In our MSA, we always asked ourselves - how can we collaborate with other groups - and that led to lasting relationships that gave us far more weight, respect, and positive recognition than doing stuff solo would have.

Seeing as we live in a country that separates church and state, that at least attempts (not always successfully, of course) to keep religion out of the public space, that should be taken into account when deciding whether to make something like this gym issue a Muslim issue or a women's issue. I still stand by what I said before - that making it a woman's issue would have accomplished the same goal minus the uproar.

In all fairness, I'm not trying to say that we as Muslims should never use our religious values to demand certain things. Sometimes our needs are very specific and really cannot relate to other people's, but I think that when they can relate, we should use that to our advantage and use that to connect with our fellow Americans. My main point is that making that connection is the smartest move we can do for ourselves in making our positive mark on society, and can only do good for us and our image. I don't seeing always separately ourselves as helpful to our cause, and that's where I suppose you and I must agree to disagree.

Sarah
Always nice to find a good person to spar with ;)
On with it:
I agree with you, if you contextualize your argument with 'America specifically, where Muslims in general are far more educated than average Americans", however I would assert that this is still a fairly hard thing to presume. Most of my friends are Muslim women, granted, the majority of them are not "American". Most of them would find it very difficulty, just logistically, to reach out to other women since they simply don't know many of them.
I would also like to point out that American women, like many others in the world, are complicit in their own oppression (in this case, using the female figure as capitalistic advertising material) and re-enforce it by seeing oppression in other women. Many American women would not hesitate to condemn the action on any groud, Islamic or not. Of course, many would not condemn it.
I definitely agree with you. I'm just saying that the degree to which you can and are able to relate to people really depends on who you are and where you're coming from, and that we should not be exclusive by writing off women who are entombed in their own cultural and sexual limitations, especially new immigrants and those who practice culturally conservative Islam. They are the ones who would most benefit from such inclusion after all.
Cheers-

Humanitarian,

I hope you've been well.
The image I had of the women who demanded these women-only hours was that they were for the most part American-raised and relatively well-adjusted in American society, as most Muslim women in Ivy League colleges are. If you want to talk about women who are recent immigrants, then yes you're right, the issue is quite different. But I would think that those women would join forces with American Muslim women, who could in turn join forces with other women they are connected to, to get what they want. I don't imagine immigrant Muslim women doing something like this all on their own.

As for the "American women being complicit in their own oppression" statement - I think it's a bit overstated, and very much a matter of perspective. Plenty of women in America choose not to buy into the sexual objectification of women in the media, and they have the option of expressing that choice. Are they complicit in their oppression?

I think all cultures grossly objectify women, most definitely including Muslim cultures, and this is a topic we could go on forever about, but isn't relevant. What concerns me about you bringing it up though - and correct me if I interpreted what you said incorrectly, which is very possible - is how you relate the idea of women being complicit in their own oppression to these same women taking issue with women-only hours. You seem to be implying that because they are complicit in their oppression, they are happy with co-ed gyms and would condemn segregated ones, as if that "oppression" is linked to gym gender-mixing. It's one thing to say that the media objectifies women and many women buy into that, but it's quite another to relate that to co-ed gyms. In my experience attending my university gym and an LA Fitness, gym-goers tend to mind their own business. There may be the occasional checking out, but that occurs in any co-ed situation. I don't think segregation in gyms would necessarily prevent objectification or oppression, because I don't think there's a correlation any more than with co-ed classes or work environments.

Years before I became a Muslim, I worked out regularly in a co-ed gym, amd I definitley felt uncomfortable on occasions.
I did not consdier myself complicit in my own oppression, because I was not.
But the bottom line is, working out at a gym is not a necessity, it is a luxury.
It would not have been so hard to get a coalition of women together to address the desire of the sisters to work out sans men.
Surely, intelligent girls, attending Harvard- should have some awareness that asking for preferential treatment on the basis of religious needs- would exacerbate their "otherness" and if full inclusion and respect are the product of their efforts- they should have taken the words of Charles Haynes, (a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.–based program focused on freedoms of speech, religion, and the press) to heart.

'We care about you being a part of this community.'"

And responded by saying, "We want to be a part of this community" and acted on that inclusion by - including other women there in their bid for some men free workout time.

Besides, 6 hours a week? How do they all work their busy schedules around that?