Muslim medics

I was going to blog about something entirely different, but here goes. I went into the medics' common room about an hour ago, and there were two people sitting there having a passionate debate. It turned out that one of them was the author of this article (I know how you like to ignore these links of mine, but this is definitely worth reading, especially if you're at Manchester Uni, and even more if you're a medic) and the other was a brother on the Islamic Society committee . It's about the 'hijab squad' and 'beard brigade' who refuse to integrate with anybody - and the fault appears to lie with the Isoc.

She made some interesting points, as it IS true that Muslims don't integrate that much, but the difference is that it's more obvious when they don't because of hijabs, beards or simply because most of us are Brown. However, to put it in the national student medic press is a bit Much. She might get people talking about it, but I don't see how it's going to force people to make friends with each other. Most medic friendships are forged in the pub or at MSRC events etc; most Muslims have good relationships with individual non-Muslims but socially, there is a huge gulf which prevents total integration. Yet nobody suggests the MSRC organise a 'Muslim-friendly' event, such as a picnic or quiz or alcohol-free dinner.

What is more galling about the whole thing is that shortly after I went downstairs to the computer room I heard some 4th years saying 'There's a massive argument going on upstairs..its Anisa and guess who? one of the muzzies!' Like that's good for dawah. I wanted to go up and tell the brother to back off a bit or discuss it somewhere else, but there wasn't much that could be done at that stage.