<p>They are “letting” her D visit on their terms. They do not, however, let their daughter dine or stay over her D’s house. Do they not value exposing their child to alternate cultures and beliefs? Perhaps an appropriate meal would be prepared for her as a guest. Are the unrelated men in their household more trustworthy than those in her friends home?</p>
<p>Harvestmoom-I don’t see where the other family is not reciprocating? The girls spent lots of time at both homes, but there are just certain points beyond which D’s friend cannot go for religious reasons. Aren’t we about freedom of religion in this country?</p>
<p>We are not Muslim, so we eat pretty much whatever. D’s friend eats certain foods cooked in certain ways, and cannot eat others. I had a Jewish friend in HS, she did not eat pork and kept Kosher-she didn’t eat at my house either. But I spent many an afternoon at her house, and she at mine. How is that different? </p>
<p>What I see is a traditional, African Muslim family welcoming a white, secular teenager into their home, despite the fact that she wears clothing that would not be acceptable in their country and eats food that they do not feel is proper. I see them letting their D do “western” things like play tennis and go kayaking, not to mention go to college at all when many girls in her homeland would be getting married and having babies. </p>
<p>Marian phrases it well-it’s just what works for this family, their D and mine. I feel the better for having met D’s friend. Obviously her family approves of D or she wouldn’t be allowed there-sounds accepting to me.</p>
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Or, you could have turned the lights off and on for her, which might have worked fine. I think some of these points are well taken, when we are talking about specific practices that won’t mesh. But that’s not about race, or really even about religion per se.</p>
<p>I would also note, just in passing, that if you have religious practices, like dietary laws, that are designed to distinguish your group from the heathen, the unbelievers, or gentiles, or whatever, you shouldn’t be surprised when the heathen, the unbelievers, or the gentiles feel that you’re sort of looking down on them.</p>
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</p>
<p>Very true. Last night I felt like Beyonce’s performance exemplified America’s oppression of women. I’m sure others found it to be an example of women’s progress in America.</p>
<p>" They do not, however, let their daughter dine or stay over her D’s house."</p>
<p>Would you say the same thing if this girl was an Orthodox Jew? Or a conservative Christian? I’m not up on Muslim meals, but I would guess that if it was possible for me to have cooked an appropriate meal, she could have stayed for dinner. But I never offered. And honestly, a LOT of kids my D knew in HS, and some my younger D knows now, do not do much sleeping over, for a lot of reasons. Some parents are just over-protective that way.</p>
<p>The church I work at hosts a group of homeless women and kids every quarter and for our most recent turn, several of the families were Muslim. Church volunteers provided the food, and one restriction was no pork. Should we have just ignored that and forced these women to eat it so as to suck it up and acclimate to our culture? Should have forbid them from praying Muslim prayers in our church? Oh, and should we have changed the SHELTER’S rules and allowed single men volunteers to do the overnights, even though they’re not allowed usually, for ALL of the women’s peace of mind?</p>
<p>I don’t get your apparent desire to force our (non)religious beliefs on my D’s friend. The friend’s family never forced my D to pray or to cover up. Why should I have not respected the friend’s family’s practices?</p>
<p>“Obviously her family approves of D or she wouldn’t be allowed there”.</p>
<p>I guess I am discerning a sort of moral higher ground that they have taken - your D has to measure up somehow to their standards.</p>
<p>"Also, if a Caucasian parents said that they did not want their daughter to room with me because I’m black, who cares? "</p>
<p>Wow. There are a lot of people who would care. We (the USA) have travelled a long way down the road to get out of a segregated society. In private life, you can do what you want, put in our public institutions, we cannot tolerate reversion to segregation. We have paid too high a price and we have a ways further down the road to travel.</p>
<p>Alexissss: Youre playing game of words, having fun shading the truth. But in reality youre so busy trying to be clever that your ignoring the oppression of millions of women under Sharia law. For you it’s a game. For them it’s a sad reality.</p>
<p>“Very true. Last night I felt like Beyonce’s performance exemplified America’s oppression of women. I’m sure others found it to be an example of women’s progress in America.”</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that Betty Friedan was neither the costume designer nor the choreographer of that halftime show.</p>
<p>“I don’t get your apparent desire to force religious beliefs on my D’s friend.”</p>
<p>I don’t see that anywhere in any of my posts.</p>
<p>Really? As much as the West looks down upon and speaks ill of conservative cultures. Calling them backwards and not progressive. Close minded. It isn’t good to project your feeling like a heathen onto another. </p>
<p>@bay
I found her performance degrading. Others feel she’s embracing her sexuality. Such is life.</p>
<p>Harvest-perhaps I’m reading you wrong, but it seems like your quibble is with my family accepting D’s friend as she is, and being OK with her not eating at my house or sleeping there, and my own D going over there and not having such restrictions. The opposite would be to insist the friend practice “western” and secular things that go against her religion-eating food that is not blessed and/or is not allowed according to her beliefs and insisting that they’re wrong to not allow her to sleep at our house.</p>
<p>These are deeply held religious beliefs that I have no business judging or trying to change. It has nothing to do with higher moral ground. They’re not asking me to cover up my D, and I’m not questioning their choice to not eat pork, among other things. </p>
<p>I do have my reservations about the treatment of women by SOME fundamentalists of several religions. But that doesn’t affect whether I let D and her friend get together for an afternoon of girl talk and TV or whatever. And it seems that our way of life wasn’t so “immoral” as to stop the friend’s family from letting her so the same.</p>
<p>Edited to add-in case this isn’t clear, D is no longer in HS and both girls are over 21 and free to do as they choose, and do not live at home. D’s friend is still a practicing Muslim, D is still a good friend of hers.</p>
<p>@soso
And the truth in America is that many women are oppressed by the expectation of them to be a dilly vixen solely existing for men to gaze upon.</p>
<p>And I’m not clever. At all.</p>
<p>I know some women are actively treated horribly in some Muslim countries, but I think that’s isolated extremism and not indicative of the religion’s core beliefs. Some might call the Bible mysogynistic sans having a proper understanding of it and only going by its irrational loud mouthed adherents.</p>
<p>OK, let me admit my then 6yo dau had problems with friends’ families for being Protestant in a Catholic school. Nothing wrong with her or our attitudes. Bday party invs, playdates. sleep overs, etc. At first I focused on the unfairness. Then realized the parents simply preferred the kids of other families.they already knew thru their parishes, related activities and family or neighborhood connections. Do I lambaste all Catholics? Stereotype? No. </p>
<p>But I find it hard to digest the seeming attitudes of some posters. You want your definition of fairness but that seems to include sharp comments against other groups. An allowance for your own intolerance. Based on your idea they are shamefully intolerant or have unacceptable practices. I find it stunning. The willingness to generalize. </p>
<p>We can dislike what the other gal’s family enforced without turning this so ugly.</p>
<p>I think you are reading me wrong. The example you used with the group coming to your church - of course you should serve them appropriate meals and do your best to uphold their particular traditions. The difference is that they trusted you to do so, and also expressed a willingness to experience other beliefs and cultures by coming to your church. I guess I am just not for blanket restrictions that can imply that others are not going to do the right thing. And that is true whether it is with meals, or sleep overs or anything else. Religious beliefs can often veil harsh judgments.</p>
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<p>Since I’m the one who brought up intolerance and tolerance, I will address this.</p>
<ol>
<li> I don’t care what anybody does. I happen to have muslim friends and christian friends and jewish and hindi and buddhist and wicca, for that matter. I don’t “tolerate” it. It’s not my job to tolerate or not tolerate someone, and I think THAT is the issue, for me.</li>
</ol>
<p>I do not agree with anybody who sees anybody as a second class person. That is all fundamentalist religions, some social conservatives and oddly, too, some liberals.</p>
<p>Nobody is asking my opinion on it. I will fight for their right to practice how they want, speak how they want, and be who they are. I will not, however, tell my daughters that a culture which believes women are less than is a culture I want in my life or one I personally agree with. Tolerance of intolerance in the name of tolerance is not useful to me, as a woman. </p>
<p>If I go to Saudi Arabia, I am not allowed to drive a car and I had better be willing to cover my head, and this and worse can be said about many fundamentalist countries. Here if you want to cover your head and forbid your women to drive, and they let you, you can still do it. I am “for” freedom, but I don’t have the slightest respect for any beliefs in which women are not afforded the same freedoms and rights as men.</p>
<p>Would you say, “Well, you just have to tolerate that your friends’ white supremacist family does not believe blacks are equal to them. And, if they don’t want to be around our family, well, we need to tolerate and respect that?”</p>
<p>So, I don’t respect it. I hold it in contempt. </p>
<p>As you know, my feelings are rarely so anti anything. I am, however, anti repression of women. Nothing less. It is, for me, a basic of freedom that all women are free as well. I mean, who is tolerant of the white supremicist view that blacks are less than whites? SHOULD we be tolerant of that view? Why is it okay if it is women?</p>
<p>To me there is no difference.</p>
<p>We’re getting this story third hand and like the old game “Telephone” with each telling things can get changed. I don’t doubt for one instant that there are parents AND students who would not want to room with those of a different race, economic bracket, religion, nationality. Those prejudices are still well and alive. Most colleges won’t tolerate this sort of thing when making roommate matches, but indirectly they do by allowing students to pick or request specific roommates, or make some sort of request that would favot a match with someone similar. For freshman year, less likely, but thereafter most kids have a lot of leeway in picking who their roommates will be and who will not.</p>
<p>It is not unusual for certain religions, nationalities and ethnic groups to want their kids to live with their own kind. Some times the reasons are pragmatic. Living with a kosher roommate can be tough when you share kitchen privileges. Makes it a lot easier for such folks to live with those with like restrictions. Certain religions and cultures are such that it makes it a lot easier to stick with the tenets with like roommates. It often is not so much a bigotry about others as it is about making it easier to live a certain way within religious and cultural beliefs shared. But, yes, that preference can lead into discrimination or prejudice when one breaks it down to what one is saying in having such preferences. At any college one will still see racial, nationality, religious groups clustering together in terms of living arrangements and friendships.</p>
<p>“Very true. Last night I felt like Beyonce’s performance exemplified America’s oppression of women.”</p>
<p>I was wondering where the clothes were. :D</p>
<p>or for that matter the lyrics…</p>
<p>"or for that matter the lyrics… "</p>
<p>LOL!</p>
<p>My Orthodox Jewish h.s. classmates could not eat at my house because my Mom (being an Irish Catholic) did not keep her kitchen kosher. And she cooked everything in butter. </p>
<p>Did my Mom get upset or call them racist? No. </p>
<p>If I was at their houses, I would not be eating meat on Friday. We got it. </p>
<p>Leave it be for God’s sake & quit bringing stuff like sharia into it. The parents are afraid of: </p>
<p>A. their daughter will be made uncomfortable &/or her reputation will be tarmished by others bringing boys into the room, which they know non-Muslim girls will do even if they are not sleeping with them. And their own parents are probably carrying on & assuring them that all American students do as much & worse. </p>
<p>B. I would not be surprised if they have notions of their own about “American” students not being very studious. If the only “knowledge” they have of American students is “16 & Pregnant” can you blame them?</p>
<p>C. They could very well be worried that a non Muslim roommate will not understand or make fun of their baby’s need to stop all & pray several times a day, eat halal, etc. they also may well be dead wrong about the supposed ignorance of the potential roommate, but you know parents. </p>
<p>Give it a rest, folks. The daughter is going to have to navigate life with non-Muslims in her workplace, friends, neighbors, etc and she also has to deal with her folks. She is actually going to manage. </p>
<p>If the girls still really wanted to room with each other and the Caucasian girl is a clean-living gal, I would suggest the Pakistani girl tell her parents there are less than devout Muslim girls on campus who do some of the very things they fear (there are I bet you) and the girl she wants to room with is not like that at all, and she will be “safer” with her friend than some of the other characters at the school. Then have an introductory dinner and see if they can warm up.</p>