Sharia Comes To Harvard

Islamofascism will not need to kill Western Civilization because we're hellbent on committing suicide on the altar of multiculturalism. As Power Line reports:

As of January 28, according to Abbie Ruzicka's Boston University Daily Free Press report, Harvard has imposed women-only swimming hours at its Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center. Harvard adopted the women-only hours after members of the Harvard Islamic Society and the Harvard Women's Center petitioned the university for a more comfortable environment for women. Ruzicka's account makes clear the Muslim impetus of the policy:

Harvard Islamic Society's Islamic Knowledge Committee officer Ola Aljawhary, a junior, said the women-only hours are being tested on a trial basis. The special gym hours will be analyzed over Spring Break to determine if they will continue, she said.

Aljawhary said that she does not believe that the women-only gym hours discriminate against men.

"These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms not because they don't want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way," she said.

Michael Graham's Boston Herald column comments:

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

Graham tracked a Harvard spokesman down and elicited the usual obfuscatory blather:

When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”

By banning all men from the facility, right?

“It’s not ‘banning,’” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”

Graham is unfortunately, to borrow a phrase, a voice crying in the wilderness.

Liberalism and multiculturalism: the poisons that will kill us all unless we stop drinking the tainted Kool-Aid.

UPDATE: I see the brilliant Mark Steyn has commented on this madness.

Well put. And thus "progress" comes full circle. In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

Every society has culturally self-segregating groups - the Amish and whatnot. But they're usually in small numbers somewhere out on the edge of the map. In Europe and Canada, the self-segregating group happens to be the principal source of population growth, which presents a profound challenge to societal cohesion. America does not face the same scale of problem, but nevertheless "sharia creep" ought to be resisted before it becomes remorseless. The rest of Michael's column goes on to explain why that doesn't happen: at Harvard and elsewhere, bigshot Saudi princes waving gazillion-dollar checks are in effect buying silence about one of the central questions of the day - Islam's relationship with the west.

Liberalism is suicide.