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defrogITEM: Saad Mohammad Ali – an Iraqi immigrant and a volunteer at charity group World Relief – is advised by his manager that he should apply for a paying job with them as an Arabic-speaking caseworker job, seeing as how he’s been working to help settle Iraqi refugees and speaks the language.
World Relief says no, because he's a Muslim and they only hire Christians.
That’s no surprise, of course. Lots of faith-based organizations in the US do this. What’s worth mentioning is that World Relief gets about 70% of its funding from the US govt, thanks to President Junior Bush’s executive order many moons ago – during his first week in office, in fact – as part of his “compassionate conservatism” agenda to ensure that religious groups can get federal grants. Because that’s what fiscal responsibility is all about.
[Not that all this is entirely Bush’s doing – President Obama has actively kept the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) running, despite saying during his campaign that he opposed the ability of faith-based groups to discriminate in their hiring practices. To be fair, he did rename it the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP). I’m just saying.]
So the question, as ever, is whether tax dollars should be used to encourage discrimination on religious grounds – which is a question worth asking, as we’ve covered the truism that many Christians have taken the Freedom of Religion clause of the First Amendment to mean they can discriminate against Muslims, gays and anyone else they’re afraid of as long as they do it for religious reasons.
The other question worth raising is whether a faith-based charity group is qualified to work with Muslim refugees when they’re willing to reject qualified people with invaluable language skills (a minimum requirement, I would think) on a technicality. (Unless he or she is willing to work for free. Then it’s perfectly okay.)
Then again, I guess if the Pentagon can do it, anyone can. So who am I to be critical?
Underqualified,
This is dF
World Relief says no, because he's a Muslim and they only hire Christians.
That’s no surprise, of course. Lots of faith-based organizations in the US do this. What’s worth mentioning is that World Relief gets about 70% of its funding from the US govt, thanks to President Junior Bush’s executive order many moons ago – during his first week in office, in fact – as part of his “compassionate conservatism” agenda to ensure that religious groups can get federal grants. Because that’s what fiscal responsibility is all about.
[Not that all this is entirely Bush’s doing – President Obama has actively kept the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) running, despite saying during his campaign that he opposed the ability of faith-based groups to discriminate in their hiring practices. To be fair, he did rename it the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP). I’m just saying.]
So the question, as ever, is whether tax dollars should be used to encourage discrimination on religious grounds – which is a question worth asking, as we’ve covered the truism that many Christians have taken the Freedom of Religion clause of the First Amendment to mean they can discriminate against Muslims, gays and anyone else they’re afraid of as long as they do it for religious reasons.
The other question worth raising is whether a faith-based charity group is qualified to work with Muslim refugees when they’re willing to reject qualified people with invaluable language skills (a minimum requirement, I would think) on a technicality. (Unless he or she is willing to work for free. Then it’s perfectly okay.)
Then again, I guess if the Pentagon can do it, anyone can. So who am I to be critical?
Underqualified,
This is dF
