When I was young, I was trained by my parents in the etiquette of the handshake, which went something like this: A man extends his hand when he meets another man for the first time, and the other man is expected to shake it. The failure to extend one’s hand, or to shake an extended hand, is considered hostile and insulting.
A man does not extend his hand to a woman, but waits to see if she extends hers. If so, he shakes it. A woman’s failure to extend her hand is not necessarily an indication of hostility, but may in certain circumstances be an expression of coolness or displeasure on the part of the woman, depending on the context.
Such were the rules fifty-odd years ago in the USA (and possibly the rest of the Anglosphere). The rules in Germany and Switzerland are different, however: a woman is usually expected to shake hands in the same circumstances that a man would, and in some cases (e.g. with doctors and teachers), the handshake is considered mandatory.
Rules are important to Germans, so a Muslim man’s refusal to shake a German woman’s hand can cause serious problems. Below is video report on the latest such incident. Many thanks to Egri Nök for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
The following report from Junge Freiheit about the same incident was also translated by Egri Nök:
Private School
Imam refuses handshake and lodges complaint against teacher
BERLIN. A Muslim father refused to shake hands with a female teacher in the Pankow district of Berlin. The educator from the private Platanus School accused the man of lack of respect and misogyny, and ended the conversation. The father, who had been at the school for a discussion about his son, lodged a criminal complaint against the teacher, RBB (public radio) reported.
Prior to the conflict pupils had been roughhousing, for which the imam’s son had received a written warning. The boy’s father, Imam Kerim Ucar, a devout Shiite from Eastern Turkey, after several academic talks between the school and the mother, had according to the broadcaster been invited to the school, too.
Hand on the heart
Even as he entered the conference room, Ucar made it clear that for religious reasons he could not shake a woman’s hand. According to the couple, the teacher asked the imam four times to offer his hand. The gesture was a German custom and a vital affirmation of respect, she explained.
Ucar rejected the request politely but firmly, and put his hand on his heart, which in his religion is the highest possible testimony of respect for a woman. Subsequently the teacher allegedly became loud, and ended the talk.
School contract cancelled
The school declined to comment on the incident, but intends to remain in dialogue with the family. The parents cancelled the schooling contract, retained a lawyer, and lodged a criminal complaint for insult and violation of the dignity of religion.
This past spring, a similar case in Switzerland caused worldwide headlines. Teachers in the Swiss canton Baselland can now insist that Muslim students must shake hands, the educational administration of the canton decided. Despite freedom of religion, schools may “demand a handshake and use the sanction options of the educational law,” the authority stated. The equality of man and woman, and integration, were more important than the pupils’ freedom of religion.
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | The situation that happened in the school, between a | |
| 00:04 | father of a pupil, and the teacher, or school director, | |
| 00:09 | is a power play, because the woman assumes | |
| 00:14 | that the person is misogynistic, | |
| 00:17 | and the man possibly assumes | |
| 00:21 | that the woman does not respect his religion. And both sides insist on being right. | |
| 00:27 | So it is unmistakably a power play. | |
| 00:32 | Because in the school, religion should have no place, | |
| 00:36 | and there is no law on the books that a person must greet the teacher or anyone else with a handshake. | |
| 00:43 | Both Sunnis as well as Shiites, the conservatives, | |
| 00:47 | refuse, absolutely do not want to do this, because | |
| 00:51 | a woman means sin, and they want to remain pure. | |
| 00:56 | This is a power play about piety. | |
| 01:00 | But those are very old ideas, that basically | |
| 01:04 | do not fit into our times anymore, because the prophet did not live in Germany. | |
| 01:09 | And God is not so primitive that he, | |
| 01:13 | in the end, would judge people by whether they extended a hand or not. | |
| 01:20 | This is not my own opinion; many Islamic theologians say so, too. |
I was once in a workshop about dealing with clients and we were all told that you always shake their hands when meeting them for the first time. One girl up the back said, ‘But a lot of my clients are orthodox Jewish people and if they so much as touch me they’ll have to go and say prayers for hours.’ Not being able to shake hands with infidels or gentiles, or especially the opposite sex, isn’t an exclusively Muslim thing. I don’t think this is quite the right issue to be concerned about.
We must be concerned about all the small things because they add up to one big thing – Islamic imperialism over all other societies.
It is the death of a thousand cuts and the way all societally destructive forces have moved forward in the past few generations. ‘Let us have just this one little thing’, ‘just respect us in this small item’, ‘we need special treatment only in that minor matter’. Soon it is ‘we want this’ then ‘we demand that’ and a society is hostage.
Better to stop it at the small things. As the saying goes ‘Once the camel has its nose under the edge of the tent, its body will soon follow’. There’s another saying associated with that one: ‘It’s a wise rule to resist the beginnings of evil.’
THE Problem is not to handshake or not. The problem is that imam was invited to colonize Germany after colonizing Turkey. And why should a chaste, pure, vestal teacher offer her hand to be defiled by a filthy Pirate follower in the first place.
Don’t expect jihadis to descend from their high horse. If they do they won’t be worshiped as they are in the west.
Salome, a question: who are these “clients” with whom you were dealing?? Just curious, because when I was a social services supervisor, the word came down from on high that we were to refer to them as “consumers”. Ugh. It may have been closer to the truth, but the heads above actually thought it was an improved euphemism for “those on welfare”…don’t know what it is now, but I kept on saying “clients”. However, I assure you that had anyone in our office dared to say “one girl up the back” – they’da been shot for the use of “girl”…now it must be even hairier.
The young woman in question was in legal practice. And, at my age, she was a girl.
Oh, I don’t disagree with you at all on “girls”…it’s those girls who have hissy fits if you call them that. When my mother was in her 70s she called her bridge night, “going out with the girls”…or in Dublin English, “gels”…
I’m glad to hear the people in question really were “clients”. As in paying clients.
As for the original problem, handshakes are something we’d be better off without. Unless you can wash your hands afterwards. The surest way to pick up illnesses, whatever is going around, is to NOT wash your hands frequently.
Indeed, Dymphna. I remember reading Jacques Barzun, I think it was, remarking that it was contradictory how westerners eschewed the common cup only to spread disease with abandon by shaking hands.
Well, you can worry about illnesses or you can take a lot of Vit. C daily and appreciate the feeling of another’s human’s hand in yours.
It IS something to be concerned about! Women’s rights are the first to go, and women are in the greatest danger, especially when customs that exemplify equality are not respected.
Shaking hands = equality. It is very important in German life and I cannot imagine a Germany, where women would be treated as “unclean” or something “lesser”, who is not deserving of the very human gesture of a handshake.
In a normal world, you would laugh these things off as a little quirk. Buddhist monks for example are not supposed to touch women either. Suing people is not normal though, and please note that it is not the teacher suing the parent; it is the parent suing the teacher. A parent who was invited because their kid was beating up other kids!
Germany is seeing this attack over “little” things on a broad front, and in all cases, it is adherers of the Religion of Peace making a fuzz and suing the state to gain some sort of privilege.
For example:
– exemption of school girls from sports; from swimming, from field trips
– being allowed to swim in layers of clothes in public baths, when everyone else must wear designated bathing clothes (for hygienic reasons, so the bath don’t have to use quite that much chlorine in the water)
– banning of pork in school lunches and in work canteens
– the admittal of hijab-ed teachers in kindergartens and public schools, while display of religious and ideological symbols is not permitted for everyone else;
– the admittance of hijabed judges-in-spe (!)
– suing public schools to provide prayer rooms
– Muslim men demanding their wife only be examined by female physicians, while the average German citizen is lucky if they find a physician at all, with waiting times around 6 weeks.
So even though I agree that under normal circumstances, it would be silly to get your knickers in a knot over someone’s quirk, I feel like that normal circumstances do not apply here, rather it being part of a broad strategy to intimidate non-Muslims.
Meh, assimilate or go back where you came from. Simple rule, right?
Exactly what I was thinking as I listened to the interview.
“Respect” for the culture to which the family has “fled” for refuge should be the point here, not special considerations for their tender feelings. If the father wanted his Shiite feelings catered to, he’d’ve been better off back in eastern Turkey. (But he probably claimed he was “Syrian” to get past the borders.)
Jihadis/ They won’t assimilate they won’t go back: Reason:
THEY were invited. and we in the west cannot live WITHOUT them. Muslims are our gods in the west.
A Thai Buddhist monk won’t touch a woman either.
I think we have to see the nuance:
Some Jews, Buddhist monks, some strict Christians “avoid” women not because they despise them, but to suppress the natural eruptions of intuitive animal feelings. Jews, monks and Christians have tremendous respect for women because they (women” have feelings just like themselves.
In the case of jihadis/muslims women are considered unclean, temptresses, and slaves. Even they consider themselves slaves to allah. Not “our father who art in heaven..”
The last thing jihadis think of in this world is that women have feelings just like men.
I also avoid termagants, hags, threw unless it’s tames, and harridans. And feminists who are radicalized and excessive. But respect those who have a sense of justice.
++++ to correct myself ++++
threw unless it’s tames, = unless they are tamed
As a guest in a host’s house I must try not to give offence to my host.And thus when I enter a house I ask “would you like me to remove my shoes or keep them on?”
Chinese friends and Finnish friends ask me to remove my shoes.The Chinese friends supply me with a pair of comfortable “visitors’ slippers.The Finnish friends ask me if I would like slippers or if I am comfortable in my socks.American friends from Arizona ask me to keep my socks and shoes on.In every case I naturally comply with my host’s wishes.
A little consideration is necessary when you get invited into someone else’s country or someone else’s house.
The considerate guest is made welcome ,wherever he goes and receives repeat invitations.
Good manners cost nothing and oil the wheels of social intercourse.
The imam if he could not bring himself to show due respect to the teacher could instead have brought his wife along to shake the teacher’s hand .Instead he deliberately escalated the situation.
My wife and daughter prefer to see a female doctor.But they make their preference known to the doctors’ receptionist.
They don’t take an appointment with a male doctor only to tell him they refuse to be examined by a man.
Instead they wait for an appointment with the female doctors.
One can either take the opportunity to take offence at one’s hosts customs and traditions or one can simply stay away and not expect to foist one’s customs and traditions on one’s unwilling host.
Integrate or push off to wear you came from
If my friend invites homeless drug addicts to come live in his house and they trash his house I don’t blame the drug addicts. I blame my friend for making poor choices as to who he invites into his home.
Muslims are making entirely rational decisions in accepting our invitations to live in the West. Their lives are improved immensely and they notice that there seems to be no limits to our desire to accommodate them, even when they behave poorly.
Don’t blame the Muslims. We are the problem.
Well, those who invited the moslems in.
Most of us would have more sense than to invite our enemy of 1400 years into our countries.
Shelagh, I don’t know your cultural background (Irish?), but your wife and daughter need to get over themselves. Their attitude to male doctors is, frankly, offensive and antdeluvian.
Your point about being a good guest is absolutely correct. I heard a Polish worker, who’d been in the UK for several years, being interviewed on a BBC radio programme about immigrants some time back. He said, if you’re a guest in someone’s home, you don’t start rearranging their furniture.
Mark, your socialist indoctrination is showing…anyone has the right to request the doctor of their preference. There’s nothing wrong with stating that choice. And if you’d ever been privy to some of the callow sexist humor of male residents, you might change your post-deluvian reaction…”disgusting” doesn’t begin to describe it.
I much prefer a female gyn and have had more than my share of chauvinists, especially when I was at the mercy of military doctors during my first pregnancy. Their awfulness was followed closely by the sneering indifference of Nurse Ratchet during the long hours of unmedicated labor. Toward what I now realize was the end of my first stage of labor, I got up to go to the bathroom by myself since they didn’t answer the bell. On the way back to my bed, I vomited and then fell into the slosh of vomitus on the floor. Boy did I get a chewing out! And zero help getting up off the floor or changing my gown…
Had I been an officer’s wife, I’ve no doubt my treatment would have been markedly different.
The whole miserable experience Did NOT make me a fan of socialized medicine. ObamaCare merely solidified the lessons learned as a young woman.
I feel sorry for today’s doctors. They don’t serve their patients, they are slaves to the burden of paperwork. My current doc looks sad when I see her now. The doc whose place she took retired quickly once reality hit – and she had been a big fan of that obscene twin to The Lisbon Treaty…just as dense and impossible for normal people to read. Since it went into effect, Obama has added 20,000 pages of bumpf…
…Native Americans tried to warn their fellow Americans how bad government-run medical care would be. In fact, those tribes who make lots of money from oil and/or casinos use their proceeds to purchase private medical and dental care.
I’ll be a liar if I deny my exquisite Schadenfreude at this predicament of the multi-cult. Whose custom or culture is more deserving of the “greater respect” in this self-inflicted dilemma? 🙂
anon61,
We are NOT the problem! The muslims are the problem. Please try to keep up.
I don’t recall inviting any muslims into America. I know it is a German custom to shake hands but who invited the muslims in? Oh, it was Angela the Great Merkel.
Germs are too much feared these days — as soon as you get on a bus or a tram, you have germs.
Good manners are always a good idea, but when you mix incompatible cultures, the results are not so good, something we are seeing every day. Back in my youth, when we came to America, we adopted American customs. That is how it is supposed to work.
I pity Europe, but they have forgotten their history. Here (USA) the muslims are still a minority and they know that people don’t like them much, unless most people have forgotten about the father who beheaded his daughter for going on a date (Minnesota), or the husband who beheaded his wife (New York) although I don’t remember why, possibly infidelity, but that’s why we have divorce here.
But muslims really don’t need a reason! I’m in a bad mood and you are talking too much, so off with your head! Alice in Wonderland but not in a book. In real life and real blood.
I’m sure there are many more stories of this kind of violence — oh, the man who beheaded his female coworker in Oklahoma for no good reason.
So unless they behave, I would say get out, go back to your hellhole, or face deportation. That is just my personal opinion, since I live in the middle of nowhere (and I like it like that). Also my information is based on sites like this one, plus the news and the newspaper. But I always end up thinking, May God help us.
I’m glad you didn’t invite any Muslims in. I didn’t either.
The “We” I’m referring to is the collective “we”. We in the democratic West, in Sweden, Germany, the US etc. have created this mess for ourselves. Our political elites are pushing this agenda but they, and those who support them, are part of the “we”.
Everything about Muslim behavior in the West was entirely predictable. A healthy West would never have embarked on an insane mission of mass Muslim immigration in the first place, let alone let it reach this level of disaster.
It’s not the Muslims who are the problem.
I reluctantly engage in the culture of handshaking purely for health reasons. Having had a spouse who worked in a PICU it is understandable. People accept an elbow bump with amusement. I, for one, feel I am also respecting others well being. The eyes are a better window to the spirit.