Colleges and universities used to be known for being academic institutions. Most were talked about for the caliber of their professors, the achievements of their students, or the novel new ideas that developed there. Now though, one school is making the news for a much different reason. Rumor has it they’ve got some pretty unique bathrooms.
The University of Michigan-Dearborn is planning to spend about $100,000 to upgrade two student bathrooms on its campus. About a fourth of that money ($25,000) is going to finance new “foot-washing stations,” which the University claims are needed to accommodate Muslim students who ritually wash their bodies – including their feet – up to five times every day before prayer. I’m all in favor of cleanliness, but this idea is a little concerning.
A spokesman for the school, Terry Gallagher, reportedly explained the policy by calling the new foot-washing stations “an accommodation to a significant portion of our student body and their friends and visitors in accordance with our mission.” It’s a good sound bite – even if it isn’t true.
The U-M Dearborn mission is fairly typical for a modern college or university. They aspire to be a “student-centered institution committed to excellence in teaching and learning.” To get there, they try to be “responsive to the changing needs of society; relevant to the goals of our students and community partners; rich in opportunities for independent and collaborative study, research, and practical application; and reflective of the traditions of excellence, innovation, and leadership that distinguish the University of Michigan.” That’s all well and good, but there’s an important piece missing if the mission is going to be used to justify these new renovations. You’ll note nothing in it that says anything about providing special accommodations to select students groups on campus.
The driving force behind the renovations wasn’t fulfilling the school’s mission at all. According to Gallagher, the foot-baths are actually the result of “years of ongoing negotiations with the Muslim Student Association [MSA].” If you haven’t heard of them, the MSA is a national organization with more then 1,000 university chapters across the country. They’ve actually been the topic of a few news stories recently, most notably a 2004 article by the Chicago Tribue highlighting their ties to the international Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood helped establish the MSA back in 1963.
If the MSA doesn’t ring a bell, the Muslim Brotherhood should. They’re the “world’s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group and an organization with a violent past in the Middle East.” With a reputation like that, you shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that they advocate for some very unpopular ideas here in the United States. For example, while most of us think of the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of American democracy, they preach that religion and politics cannot be separated at all. Instead, they believe that all governments should be Islamic. They also champion martyrdom and jihad as a means of achieving their goals.
Alarmingly, the Chicago Tribune reports that the group currently has the United States in its cross-hairs. One of the Brotherhood’s goals is apparently to create an Islamic United States of America. They don’t plan on just overthrowing the U.S. government though. In fact, members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. Instead, their plan is to convince as many people as possible to convert to Islam, so that someday a majority of Americans will look past the Constitution and support a society governed by Islamic law.
There is some good news. Ties between the MSA and the Brotherhood have supposedly diminished over the years. The Islamic Society of North America (the umbrella group for the Muslim Youth of North America and the Muslim Students Association) reports that, while the Brotherhood helped form both groups, their overall influence has now been limited.
I hope that’s true, but it doesn’t exactly put me at ease. Even while ties to the Brotherhood have supposedly diminished, the MSA is currently attempting to create a new alliance – this time with another well known group: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In fact, coordination with CAIR is one of the main goals of the MSA’s new Political Action Task Force (PATF). That’s a curious development when you consider that CAIR membership has fallen by more than 90% in the last 6 years. The MSA is attempting to jump on board, even while most American Muslims appear to be abandoning ship.
CAIR has some interesting affilitations too, and they’ve been the subject of some scrutiny themselves in recent months. Last year, group membership plummeted, falling from more than 29,000 members in 2000 to fewer than 1,700 in 2006. At the same time, their annual income from membership dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000, to just $58,750 last year. Curiously though, CAIR spending reached nearly $3 million last year. It’s not exactly clear where this extra money came from, but the New York Times has reported that at least some was from “donors closely identified with wealthy Persian Gulf governments.” Apparently, international ties between all these groups haven’t dissipated as much as we’ve been lead to believe.
With all of this going on, it sounds to me like we might have a much bigger problem on our hands than a few foot-washing stations on a university campus – although it might not seem that way to the students and Michigan residents who have to pay for them.
