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Female Muslim Medics: Hygiene Rules Violate Our Religion
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http://atheism.about.com/b/2008/02/14/female-muslim-medics-hygiene-rules-against-our-religion.htm
Female Muslim Medics: Hygiene Rules Violate Our Religion
Of all the attempts by religious believers to get exemptions from standard laws and regulations, those involving the health and safety of others — usually those not part of the same religious tradition — are the worst. It's bad enough if a person wants to risk their own health or life for the sake of religious superstition, but it's utterly deplorable that they would put anyone else at risk.
Even worse is when this comes from people who are ostensibly part of the "healing" profession — people who are supposed to be caring for the health and lives of others. Who is willing to take a chance on a nurse who refuses to follow standard hygienic rules because baring her forearms is "immodest" and therefore against her religion?
Minutes of a clinical academics' meeting at Liverpool University revealed that female Muslim students at Alder Hey children's hospital had objected to rolling up their sleeves to wear gowns. Similar concerns have been raised at Leicester University. Minutes from a medical school committee said that "a number of Muslim females had difficulty in complying with the procedures to roll up sleeves to the elbow for appropriate handwashing".
Sheffield University also reported a case of a Muslim medic who refused to "scrub" as this left her forearms exposed. Documents from Birmingham University reveal that some students would prefer to quit the course rather than expose their arms, and warn that it could leave trusts open to legal action.
Hygiene experts said last night that no exceptions should be made on religious grounds. Dr Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said: "To wash your hands properly, and reduce the risks of MRSA and C.difficile, you have to be able to wash the whole area around the wrist. "I don't think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally."
Dr Charles Tannock, a Conservative MEP and former hospital consultant, said: "These students are being trained using taxpayers' money and they have a duty of care to their patients not to put their health at risk. "Perhaps these women should not be choosing medicine as a career if they feel unable to abide by the guidelines that everyone else has to follow."
Source: Telegraph
If I lived in an area where Muslim nurses didn't wash their hands and wrists as completely as other nurses, I'd be sorely tempted to ask every nurse if they were Muslim and consider refusing to be treated by them — even though doing so could easily be seen as little more than anti-Muslim bigotry rather than a rational concern for my own health. At the very least I think I'd be justified in asking if they were Muslims and, if so, if they washed their hands in the correct manner — and then refusing to be treated by them if they said "no" to the second question.
Somehow, I don't think that Muslim leaders or Muslims in the healthcare profession want to see such questions become routine, but who is going to argue that patients should put themselves at increased risk of infection simply to avoid hurting the feelings of people who think that bare forearms for the purpose of washing is "immodest"?
I think that the "Islamic Medical Association" might. They released a statement insisting that "No practising Muslim woman - doctor, medical student, nurse or patient - should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow." Traditional Muslim rules on modesty for women are not only silly and misogynistic, but they might pose health risks for other people. I say that if any practicing Muslim woman believes that washing completely should be sacrificed so that she doesn't have to bare her arms below the elbow, then she probably shouldn't be practicing medicine or be a nurse.
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"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." -General George S. Patton
Psalm 82-8: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You inherit all the nations.
