I think covering up your face willfully is an antisocial act by definition. It may be legal, but it’s kind of violating the unwritten rules of America’s social contract. Human beings are highly visual creatures and the human face is a key component of our social interaction. We are so fixated on the face that we can actually see facial expressions conveying emotions in simple lines like the smiley face, or even random patterns of clouds in the sky. Facial expressions mean so much, and to hide them is zeroing out a hugely important form of communication.
Everyone knows this, including the Muslims who do it. The men in those cultures don’t wear masks, do they?
The Muslims or other adherents who wear just headscarves, they don’t bother me. There’s a big difference between covering up the hair and covering up the entire face.
There are many occasions when shaking hands is expected and refusing to do so is commonly considered disrespectful. I would expect Westerners in Middle East countries not to show others the soles of their feet, which in many ME countries in on a level with giving someone the finger. I would similarly expect Mideasterners to accommodate Westerners in such matters when they are in Western lands.
The idea that shaking hands between men and women in the West is acceptable is only rather recent. The practice is far from common. Many older people or those from cultures which maintain tradition and formal behavior do not do it in the West. Handshaking at greetings is not my cultural tradiation either and I expect that to be respected. I don’t think a Muslim has less rights than me.
Anyone who has a problem with someone not wanting to touch their body has boundary issues. The line in the sand for etiquette: you don’t touch people without their permission, you don’t try to force other people to touch you.
You ARE allowed to refuse to shake hands with anyone you don’t want to shake hands with. Who said you weren’t?
You are free to shake or not shake anyone’s hand, and they are free to shake or not shake your hand, and you are free to feel however you like about whether someone shakes or does not shake your hand, and they are free to feel however they like about whether you shake or do not shake their hand.
Are we all clear here?
Feel however you like. You can look down on people who still eat food from their home country, and dress like their home country, and practice the relgion of their home country, celebrate the holidays of their home country, speak the language of their home country, and whatever else they do from their home country. Nobody can stop you.
Or are you saying that nobody should be allowed to criticize you if you look down on them? Or are you saying that they can criticize you, but you’ll look down on anyone who criticizes you for looking down on them? It’s getting awfully meta here. Who’s demanding what from who?
It’s a simple fact that the better you fit in to your adopted country, the smoother your life in the adopted country will be. If you move to China and can’t learn Chinese, you’re going to have a tough time because you’ll be dependent on your friends/family/neighbors who speak Chinese to help you navigate the outside world. If you insist on eating hamburgers and pizza and bread and butter, you’re going to spend a lot more on food than if you eat rice and noodles. If you dress in clothes that Chinese people find weird, they’re going to think you’re weird. And so on.
So do whatever you like when you move to China. You live your life they way you want, and I’ll live my life the way I want, and Achmed will live his life the way he wants, and we’ll each pay the consequences and reap the rewards of our respective decisions.
I think you’re missing the point here. Particularly in business settings, shaking hands is very much expected, and refusing to shake a proffered hand is very bad etiquette and a mark of disrespect. Any Muslim male would have to be incredibly dense not to know that women in the business world, and in many other settings, will be offended by his refusal to shake hands with them. If he has a problem with that, then he probably shouldn’t be here in the first place.
Or, he can explain why he won’t shake hands, and hope that people won’t be offended, but not be suprised if they’re offended anyway, and realize that because he won’t conform to American business custom he’s going to fall behind others. Just like, if the local custom is to buy prostitutes and pay bribes to your business associates, and you as an American and Christian don’t want to do that, you’re going to have trouble fitting in. That doesn’t mean you’re obligaged to pay for prosititutes and pay bribes if you don’t want to, just because that’s the local custom. But don’t be suprised when you find that not conforming to local custom has a cost. And if you expect everyone else to conform to your foreign business practices, get used to disappointment.
We’re talking about etiquette here, not law. Certainly you have the right to refuse to shake anyone’s hand, but in many settings refusing to do so will make you a boor.
As for the rest of your post, diversity undermines community, and you can have only so much diversity before all sense of community is lost. A group of people who have too little in common in terms of shared ancestry, history, customs and traditions, religion, language, folklore, concepts of law and politics etc. etc. is not a nation but a group of strangers who merely happen to inhabit the same geographical area.
No it isn’t. I am an American. I was born here and I have lived here exclusively since 1997. I own and operate several businesses. I interact with small and large companies all the time and the only people who have ever had a problem with the fact that I don’t shake hands with men have been men who had very contemptable attitudes about women (and other minorities). If anything is dense, it would be rejecting skilled and value business partners and passing up opportunities because some one refused to compromise their morals for someone else’s whims.
The first rule of etiquette is do not ask people to violate their religious beliefs for individual whims. Certainly if it is absolutely necessary such as certain types of physical examinations or procedures beliefs about no-gender contact can be set aside. Almost all religions including Judaism and Islam allow for this. But to insist that someone perform a ritual of meaningless value that violates their beliefs is the height of bad etiquette.
You wrote the book on etiquette or something? When a Muslim refuses to shake hands with a Jew, are you this complacent about it? You sure seem to have an awful lot of ironclad rules here, and these remarks:
–would seem to indicate that there’s something else going on here besides a simple concern for etiquette.
I don’t quite follow how a university installing some new plumbing fixtures imposes such an unreasonable burden on you. Do you own and operate your very own university?
As to daily prayer, if we’re still talking universities, there will certainly be large free periods when students can do whatever the hell they want (within the bounds of the law and the university’s code of conduct). If there’s a particular hour of the day when the prayers must be said; well, college students are typically pretty much responsible for setting their own schedules (picking which classes to sign up for), so it will be up to the devout student to arrange his schedule so that he’s free at the magic hour. In a secondary school setting, things would be a little more complicated, but from what I recall of high school, there were free or semi-free time periods throughout the day–homeroom, lunch period, five-minute blocks between classes and (IIRC) a longer ten-minute block mid-morning.
I certainly agree that no one should have the power to “refuse to allow the Holocaust be taught in school”. Again, this applies equally to home-grown anti-Semites as it does to immigrant ones.
I’ve had plenty of etiquette courses. It was actually a requirement of the scholarship that put me through my undergraduate degree (which was history included plenty of research and study into etiquette). I don’t care why someone doesn’t want to shake hands with someone else. The reason is absolutely immaterial to me. The important issue is physical contact should be mutual, not forced on someone.
I actually think about this a lot because my plan is to leave the United States for good in 5-7 years for the Philippines. I am not a filipino but I have spent some time in the Phils and know some tagalog but am not fluent.
There are already cultural things that I KNOW as an American I will never adjust to. It is the norm to call your boss “Sir (first name)” in work environments. I absolutely will never take part in this. To me “sir” is how you address someone who has been knighted, or a stranger you are trying to be cordial to that you don’t know their name. Calling your boss “Sir (first name)” is WAY too much deference for my tastes and I won’t do it, and if I ever become someone’s boss I will insist they don’t refer to me that way.
It was the third time I was in the Philippines before someone told me that wearing shorts is “totoy” which means childish. I realized every male but very young boys and poor people when in public wears slacks. Pretty bizzarre to me considering how uncomfortable it is, but I was pretty embarrassed it took me so long to realize it. On this issue I do compromise my comfort because I want to be taken seriously, so I only wear shorts around the house in the Philippines now.
Hmm, other customs… filipinos eat with a fork and spoon and use the spoon the way Americans would use a knife. This is incredibly awkward to me, and even if everyone else at the dinner table is using a fork and spoon, I ask for a knife because I just can’t adjust. No one cares, thankfully!
Oh, and it’s really REALLY hard to get wait staff to give you enough ice in the Philippines, they look at you like you’re crazy when you want more than two cubes in a full glass. I usually compromise on this because it’s not worth the incredulous look when I want 5-10 icecubes.
I go native in a lot of ways though. I try to speak tagalog as much as I can, I bathe filipino style using a bucket and ladle, with NO hot water (took a long time to get used to!), and I’ve had to grudgingly learn how to barter (at least where I am from, bartering is almost unheard of, and it makes me very uncomfortable to do).
I can’t say where the line is. But I have very little sympathy for immigrants who want to change the laws of the land…if you don’t like a country and it’s laws and customs, don’t move there. Expect to get treated differently if you refuse to fit in IMO.
And here you are arguing that we all should adopt your preference.
Also, while you are trying to rationalize (poorly, in my opinion) your choice of Muslims as the main culprits is somewhat interesting. I’m guessing you probably were quiet about nuns and members of other religions and cultures but somehow you were compelled to sound off now that Muslims as a vast and monolithic “other” are so easily attacked for anything. To me, your “debate” only shows a latent bigotry that you need to deal with and not ask society at large to define new laws.
