Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Multicultural volunteer team
I am now part of a multi-cultural volunteer group that mentors high school students from disadvantaged communities in Chicago. We meet at a local high school once a month to discuss how our mentoring relationships are going as well as building a strategy to grow the program. We have a really talented group, but our last couple of meetings turned out to be problematic in terms of how the group interacted with each other. I think the discomfort in the group was due in large part to a Muslim woman who chose to wear a face veil.
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Why was that an issue?
I’m not really sure. I think it just threw people off. They didn’t expect her to conform to those norms in Chicago. So I think they didn’t know how to react. A guy from France in our group commented later that he had a problem with such religious symbols in schools.
I’m not surprised that your French colleague responded that way. There is an interesting article based on the Gallup Poll that shows that the face veil is a contentious issue between Europeans and Muslims living in Europe. Most Europeans believe that in order for Muslims to integrate into European society, they should remove the face veil. In fact, in 2004 the French parliament banned headscarves in French public schools. You can read more about it on the BBC website:
French scarf ban comes into force
There's also an interesting article in the Financial Times that concluded that over 60% of French believe religious symbols should be excluded formt he workplace:
Britons 'more suspicious' of Muslims
I think that does help me to understand my colleague’s comments, but how do I reconcile this? I’ve never been in a situation where someone’s religious beliefs from another culture that is so different than ours influenced the social environment. I feel like the group needs to get beyond this. We have really enjoyed each other’s company and look forward to our monthly meetings. Not only am I am forming some great friendships with group members, but when our meetings are productive, we really do make a difference in mentoring our high school students. I've already noticed a decline in productivity, which I'm afraid will hurt our overall mission of helping our students get into to college.
A few members have already stopped coming.
The Gallup information intrigued me, so I went to their website and found some more data that could help you. Gallup asked people in 134 countries if “religion is an important part of your daily life.” For countries representing the Muslim world, those responding yes ranged from 99% in Indonesia to 74% in Iran. What do you think the response was in the US? 68%...pretty close to Iran, so the value of religion in our daily lives isn’t that far off, but there are differences.
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