Recently, a prominent American physicist and former science policy committee member of President Obama’s 2008 campaign, Lawrence Krauss, stirred up some serious controversy at University College London last weekend when he stormed out of a debate hosted by the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA). The primary reason was because men, women and couples in the audience were segregated.
This occurred when security staffers had attempted to escort three men out of the event after they endeavored to sit with the single women in the audience far in the very back of the auditorium. Seeing that, Krauss became quite indignant and demanded firmly “Quit the segregation or I’m outta here.”
“Intolerant!” yelled one spectator as Krauss left. Other members of the audience were also angry and accused him of anti-Muslim bias.
According to Islamic custom, men and women pray often separately in mosques to preserve modesty. Whey they do not, the women are behind the men or in rows adjacent to the men so that the men cannot get a view of the women’s bottoms. That is the reasoning behind this practice, although who is to say that men’s bottoms are not also distracting?
But I digress. The main reason Krauss was so irate was because this was a public space in a secular institution. In response to a woman who later said she was uncomfortable sitting among me, his reply was that although he respected her feelings, she was “in a public arena and not in a mosque, not in a private event.”
Krauss has previously done a debate with an Islamic group in Australia which “worked out fine,” Krauss told The Telegraph, a prominent British newspaper. His main theory about why the gender segregation was allowed for this event was due to British politeness.
It is not in the British cultural norm to offend others nor to fight back when those eager to protest whenever they felt “their cultural norms are not being met,” according to Krauss. “People are not only afraid to offend, but afraid to offend a vocal and aggressive group of people.”
Krauss’s opinion on the issue is that it “is the obligation of people who don’t feel comfortable with that to decide how they are going to mesh with broader society, not the other way around.”
Is that too much far? Is there any way to achieve balance between respecting religious customs while maintaining a “tolerant” environment? Does it have to be completely secular? Were the IERA asking for too much? Are they really as “aggressive” as Krauss says?
The University College London has since banned the IERA from holding events on campus.The debate was titled “Islam or Atheism: Which Makes More Sense?”
http://news.yahoo.com/physicist-walks-gender-segregated-debate-london-university-215023206.html
http://www.pewresearch.org/2007/12/03/religion-and-secularism-the-american-experience/