Yesterday I posted a story as part of the links & News of the day, an item about universities in the UK and gender segregation at lectures.
I had another listen to it today and noticed what was said at just after the 50 second mark. (link should bring you right there.)
Did you hear that? The BBC reporter actually said:
“…the muslim right to segregate trumps women’s right to sit where they want”.
Get that?
The BBC reporter made the statement that there is such a thing as a ‘muslim right’, which of course there is not, and this fictitious right actually trumps the real right of women to choose where they want to sit.
For clarity’s sake there is no such thing as a collective right. If Jews for example want the right not to eat pork or work on Saturday, then they have the individual right to not order pork or cook it or eat it which may mean they have to change jobs etc. and they have the individual right not to work on Saturday, which again, may mean they may have to change jobs as some companies may be open Saturdays and it would be grossly unfair to non-Jewish employees to force them to work more saturdays to accommodate a Jew who chooses not to. However that Jewish person has the individual right to choose a job or career that doesn’t require working on the Jewish sabbath. He does not have the right to force others to not eat pork or work on Saturdays. These is because there is no collective ‘Jewish right’. Only how people make choices within the parameters of their own rights.
What this BBC reporter has said is tantamount to treason if such a thing was still a crime in the UK, as they are inventing laws which actually undermine the most fundamental in free societies. That of individual rights which cannot and must not be “trumped’ by imaginary collective rights to bully those who do not adhere to those religious principles.
Muslims have, and always have had in free societies, the right not to sit together. If some bearded clam and his burka clad slave want to attend a lecture together and sit apart they are already perfectly entitled to do so. But to force this on the rest of the population and claim it is a right? Well that would be like forcing non-Muslims to not have pork as a menu option in a publicly funded school because it offends muslims just to be near it. And that, we all know, could never happen. Right?
I wonder how Rosa Parks would do in today’s United Kingdom. I suspect I know.
Eeyore for Vlad Tepes