Detrimental effects of Islamic dress - Women deficient in D

[kinnison]

Sarevok, strangely enough it appears from what you're saying that wearing of the more extreme forms of Islamic dress is actually more common in Britain (nominally not a Muslim country) than in Bangladesh (which is). Particularly in places like Preston and Bradford, wearing of hijab is virtually universal among Muslim women and the niqab is also quite common. I haven't seen a burkha yet, though I wouldn't be surprised.

As for Islam being hard work; well, again in places with high Moslem population in Britain the convention appears to be for prayer facilities to be provided at places of work, usually after threats of legal action on the basis of "discrimination". This also involves Moslem employees downing tools several times per day and disappearing off into said room for a few minutes. Needless to say, this is not terribly popular among non-Muslims - but expressing such an opinion is likely to get one arrested, or at least fired.

I work for myself, and I am nominally Christian. I wonder, if I was working for someone else, what the reaction would be if I "got religion" and insisted on breaking off work and praying at the prescribed times:
Matins (at sunrise)
Prime (during the first hour of daylight)
Terce (at the third hour)
Sext (at the sixth hour)
None (at the ninth hour)
Vespers (at the end of the day)

I suspect that I'd be fired so fast my feet wouldn't touch the ground. And I live in a country that is supposed to be Christian.

[kinnison]

Sorry about the second post; I tried to edit my last one but the board wouldn't let me.

Wearing of clothes wildly inappropriate to the conditions is by no means restricted to ethnically south Asian people in northern climes. We Brits were famous for insisting on the wearing of confining, heat-retaining clothes with poor sun protection in India, for example - and this had some potential health consequences, such as heatstroke and sunburn.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This might be extended to clothing as well. After all, it's usually taken hundreds of years to work out what clothes are best to wear.

[PainRack]

As it happens, I run a store selling natural health products and supplements, and as such I often get asked questions that wouldn't be asked of most, and get told some fairly embarrassing things - doctors are probably rather familiar with this. Anyway, a year or so ago the wife of the owner of this store (who at the time helped out quite often) happened to tell me that she had cystitis, which is usually greatly helped by drinking (and therefore excreting) large amounts of water. As it happens, it was Ramadan, so the obvious solution was not available. In other words, permanent damage was being risked for the sake of religious dogma.

Actually, their religious dogma allows people who are ill to skip fasting and simply make up for it later on. For those who are severely ill, even this religious observation is omitted

Perhaps you should had advised them on this aspect of their religion.

[kinnison]

PainRack: Perhaps I didn't know that. Said woman told me herself that she was prohibited by doctrine from drinking water during the hours of daylight during Ramadan. Perhaps it isn't my place to presume to instruct someone else in the minutiae of their own religion. Perhaps cystitis isn't considered illness enough to break the fast. Perhaps she accepted the word of some elder - undoubtedly a man - about the matter. The last is my favourite explanation.

Actually, it was not stated by her or anyone else that she was the shop owner's wife, and I have not seen her recently. Maybe she was some other variety of relative. It really doesn't matter.

[PainRack]

PainRack: Perhaps I didn't know that. Said woman told me herself that she was prohibited by doctrine from drinking water during the hours of daylight during Ramadan. Perhaps it isn't my place to presume to instruct someone else in the minutiae of their own religion. Perhaps cystitis isn't considered illness enough to break the fast. Perhaps she accepted the word of some elder - undoubtedly a man - about the matter. The last is my favourite explanation.

Actually, it was not stated by her or anyone else that she was the shop owner's wife, and I have not seen her recently. Maybe she was some other variety of relative. It really doesn't matter.

Or to put it simpler, a lot of people gives excuses when no such excuse is needed.
While saying believing in a religion is stupid, there's also the fact that many of those who do believe in religion ARE stupid. There would had been no religious instructions preventing her from breaking fast if she was ill. She was just dumb enough not to have known this.

I would like to point out that in her case, simply pissing urine shouldn't have been enough.A doc would probably have wanted to prescribe her antibiotics.

[Broomstick]

If you're convinced that breaking a dress code can't earn you a slit throat or stoning in certain areas of the Muslim world, than you apparently see different news feeds then I do.

We aren't talking about "certain areas of the Muslim world", we're talking about south eastern Michigan, where I grew up and where I continue to visit and have frequent contacts. We are NOT talking about Iraq, Afganistan, Egypt, Bangladesh, or even Great Britain. If I recall correctly, there have been more honor kilings in the Buffalo, New York area than in SE Michigan.

Are there religious fuckwads in the SE. Michigan? Yes - but they're hardly restricted to just Muslims. I know it defies belief for some of you, but Muslims run the spectrum from raving fanatic to completely secular. Saying every woman who wears a hijab is oppressed, beaten down, and treated like shit is like saying every woman who wears a cross is a baby-factory like Mrs. Duggar. SE Michigan is NOT "the Muslim world" although, of course, there are quite a few Muslims living there. There are not roving bands of religious police strong-arming women into headscarves, even within the Muslim community (there is also a very strong Arab Christian community here, which, to be frank, has the same range of religious nuttery as the Muslims).

So, let's distinguish between women who are beaten into submission, and women who choose to wear a headscarf because they choose to, not because father beats them. There are families where different women choose or do not choose to wear the hijab, or who choose to wear it at different times. For those women, rather than slapping the label "Oppressed Idiot" on them, I'd rather seek ways for them get the vitamin they need without forcing them into choices they find distatseful at best. And, AGAIN - read the fucking study. Forcing the women to walk around bare-headed is not going to solve the problem because the fucking problem is that SE Michigan does not have an environment where dark-skinned people will get enough natural sunlight year round. The stupid thing? Rather than fuck with their diet, getting a goddamned sunlamp will do MORE to alleviate this problem, at lower long-term cost, without getting anyone in an uproar.

One more time for the slow - this is NOT a problem of Muslims, it's a problem of darker-skinned humans living in areas of low sunlight, or where the climate demands most of the skin be covered for significant parts of the year. That applies not only to Muslims but to all religions and atheists, too. That's why we started putting vitamin D in milk in the first place, why kids used to be forced to swallow cod liver oil, and so on. Now, we realize it's not just a matter of preventing rickets (which is on the rise again, as pointed out) but also keeping adults healthy.

[Kanastrous]

The OP specifically dealt with Muslim women.

Jeez, Broom, get down off the fucking pulpit. Nothing I wrote was out of line with the OP; in case you weren't aware Muslim women exist all over the world, not just in your little precious corner of Michigan, and Islamic dress is an issue affecting a significant proportion of those women, whether they are in Dearborn or Kabul.

I don't know why you chose to get your panties in a twist over this, but give it a fucking rest. The title line is 'muslim women,' the OP is 'muslim women,' the article quoted is 'muslim women;' if you have a problem with that go chew on the author of the Op and stow the self-righteous affronted bullshit someplace else.

You can PM me if you have anything else you specifically want me to see; I'm outta here.

[Broomstick]

The study involved concerned Muslim women in south eastern Michigan, which is a definite subset of "Muslim women" in general. As already mentioned in other posts, in some parts of the world Muslim standard "modest attire" is not a problem in regards to vitamin D. In other words, this is at least as much a problem of inheritance and environment as culture. Women of other religious, such as highly Orthodox Jews and some of the fundamentalist Christian sects impose very similar dress codes in terms of skin coverage, and probably have the exact same problem. Limiting this scope of this to "Muslim women" is putting blinders on to a larger problem of nutritional insufficiency. The study makes it clear that women in this group who don't wear the hijab have only slightly better (and still woefully insufficient) levels of vitamin D.

Why do I have my panties in a twist? Because I find the "Hur, hur - Muslims are misogynistic and beat their women!" tone in this thread to be repulsive. It's kneejerk prejudice that pops up every time the word "Muslim" appears on this board. Because the idea no woman could possibly choose to wear a traditional headscarf of her own free will and that should be forcibly removed is also repulsive and just as coercive as forcing women to wear them. Allowing people a choice means allowing them to make a choice you don't agree with. Given that, in this case, removing that choice would NOT cure the problem - vitamin D deficiency - it can not be justified.

[Broomstick]

Let's take another look at the original article, shall we?

Arab-American women living in southeast Detroit whose conservative dress limits their exposure to sun should be taking a vitamin D supplement to boost their dangerously low serum levels, according to a study published by Henry Ford Hospital researchers.

As I said, this is a very restricted subset of Arab-Americans, which more properly should be identified as Muslim Americans because, you know, there is also a very large Christian Arab population in the same region.

Researchers found that all 87 women involved in a small study showed vitamin D levels averaging 8.5 ng/mL (nanograms per milliliter) for those who wore western dress to 4 ng/mL for those who wore the hijab, modest dress with a headscarf. A healthy vitamin D level is 30 ng/mL or higher.

Again, note that even those women in this group NOT wearing the hijab still had dangerously low levels of vitamin D. Clearly, the hijab, while an aggravating factor, is not the main problem here.

"When people live where the weather is colder and they are more covered with clothing, they depend on their diet for their vitamin D," Dr.

This applies to EVERYONE living in southeastern Michigan. Before the days of fortified foods, even the palest Euopeans were at risk of rickets and vitamin D deficiency, and it's still a problem.

"Our findings are consistent with those of similar studies in other parts of the world and underscore the point that there are pockets of individuals who are at risk for culturally mediated health problems," Dr. Hobbs says.

Funny, this is the ONLY part of the article even attempting to apply this to the rest of the world, and it takes an extremely broad tone that in no way limits this to vitamin D, women, Arabs, Muslims, or anything else.

More than 490,000 Arab Americans reside in southeast Michigan, the largest population anywhere outside the Middle East.

Although, as not pointed out, not all of those Arabs are Muslim. The area is also home to the largest Christian Arab population outside the Middle East. But, of course, all Arabs are Muslim [/sarcasm]

For the study, researchers looked at Arab-American women in the city of Dearborn, a southeast Detroit suburb in which Arab Americans comprise one third of the 100,000 population.

My goodness - it's really not even southeastern Michigan, it's just Dearborn!

Sunlight exposure is the single most important factor in producing vitamin D in the body. For example, sun bathing for a period of time will produce 10,000- 20,000 international units, a measure of vitamin potency, or the equivalent of 100 glasses of fortified milk.

So, as I suggested before, why the fuck aren't we suggesting sunlamps to these people instead of dairy products they can't digest or pills?

Dr. Hobbs says Henry Ford is launching an awareness campaign to educate the Arab American community in Dearborn about the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and offer options for addressing the problem.

I like this - instead of dictating to people they're offering options. Treating them as if they were intelligent adults instead of people who are too stupid to be allowed free will. Unlike some people here, who remain convinced, apparently, that all Muslim women are stupid and uneducated. Yes, some of them are - the same can be said for any other random collection of women, of any ethnic or social grouping. Sometimes you can get better results from cooperation rather than coercion.

[kinnison]

PainRack: Perhaps I didn't know that. Said woman told me herself that she was prohibited by doctrine from drinking water during the hours of daylight during Ramadan. Perhaps it isn't my place to presume to instruct someone else in the minutiae of their own religion. Perhaps cystitis isn't considered illness enough to break the fast. Perhaps she accepted the word of some elder - undoubtedly a man - about the matter. The last is my favourite explanation.

Actually, it was not stated by her or anyone else that she was the shop owner's wife, and I have not seen her recently. Maybe she was some other variety of relative. It really doesn't matter.

Or to put it simpler, a lot of people gives excuses when no such excuse is needed.
While saying believing in a religion is stupid, there's also the fact that many of those who do believe in religion ARE stupid. There would had been no religious instructions preventing her from breaking fast if she was ill. She was just dumb enough not to have known this.

I would like to point out that in her case, simply pissing urine shouldn't have been enough.A doc would probably have wanted to prescribe her antibiotics.

Yes, a doc probably would. Although mild cystitis is self-limiting, and excessive use of antibiotics is one of the primary causes of low-grade ill health in the Western world, or at least the Anglosphere, and occasionally indirectly causes lethal disease such as MRSA septicaemia.

A natural healing practitioner (and there are some with medical or medical-equivalent - in terms of difficulty and relevance - qualifications) would probably suggest, or prescribe if allowed, greater intake of fluids, probably something alkalinising such as potassium citrate or sodium bicarbonate for the symptoms and possibly something like goldenseal for the actual bug. And he would almost certainly suggest intake of probiotic bacteria. Of course, if the infection gets worse despite the mild treatments then stronger drugs should be held in reserve. Note that cystitis is fairly often caused by fungi (such as thrush) for which antibiotics are completely useless.

Sorry for the derail, but one of my buttons got pushed. More directly related to the OP; vitamin D supplements of some sort are obviously the easiest way to solve this particular problem, and they are both cheap and effective. I suspect that the main reason for problems like this is ignorance, combined with a lack of interest in women's health on the part of the people in such communities who make the decisions - all of them being men. The solution to problems like that is education.

Of course, it also doesn't help that mainstream medicine would seem to want to make everyone think that going out in the sun without factor 50 or a burkha is inviting as much trouble as if you decided to drink polonium. Yes, the sun can do damage. So can water. Most people don't advocate that everyone stops drinking because of that.

[xerex]

Fascinating (and somewhat bewildering), I had no idea that even water was to be avoided during Ramadan. And here I was thinking no meat on Fridays for Catholics was a trial.

just in daylight hours.

[Broomstick]

On a related note, last night on the news when I was still in Detroit there's been another study that says 60% of even Caucasians in the Detroit area are vitamin D deficient - and also pointed out that getting sufficient D from diet alone was almost impossible.

So that leaves either supplements or sunshine for EVERYBODY, regardless of ethnicity or even attire.

[Feil]

Sarevok, strangely enough it appears from what you're saying that wearing of the more extreme forms of Islamic dress is actually more common in Britain (nominally not a Muslim country) than in Bangladesh (which is). Particularly in places like Preston and Bradford, wearing of hijab is virtually universal among Muslim women and the niqab is also quite common. I haven't seen a burkha yet, though I wouldn't be surprised.

As for Islam being hard work; well, again in places with high Moslem population in Britain the convention appears to be for prayer facilities to be provided at places of work, usually after threats of legal action on the basis of "discrimination". This also involves Moslem employees downing tools several times per day and disappearing off into said room for a few minutes. Needless to say, this is not terribly popular among non-Muslims - but expressing such an opinion is likely to get one arrested, or at least fired.

I work for myself, and I am nominally Christian. I wonder, if I was working for someone else, what the reaction would be if I "got religion" and insisted on breaking off work and praying at the prescribed times:
Matins (at sunrise)
Prime (during the first hour of daylight)
Terce (at the third hour)
Sext (at the sixth hour)
None (at the ninth hour)
Vespers (at the end of the day)

I suspect that I'd be fired so fast my feet wouldn't touch the ground. And I live in a country that is supposed to be Christian.

Do people at your workplace usually get fired for downing their tools several times a day and disappearing off into a small room for a few minutes several times a day?

And if so, do you and your coworkers prefer diapers, or catheters?

[kinnison]

Feil, bio breaks are a physiological necessity. Bowing in a general Easterly direction and mumbling is not.

Perhaps I should have said "several EXTRA times per day".

[Junghalli]

How long does it take to get through the prayer routine in Islam?

If it's only a couple of minutes, I don't see the big deal. It's equivalent to a couple of extra trips to the bathroom.

[Broomstick]

Based upon my experience working with Muslims....

Most of the prayer requirements can be satisfied before or after work or during normal lunch or coffee breaks. Ramadan was really the only time it seemed significant, and since they weren't eating lunch the usual practice was to take several short breaks instead of a long one midday - in other words, they had no extra break time and worked just as many minutes as everyone else. There were one or two days requiring absence, but most religions have similar requirements so, again, nothing especially problematic. Prayer rugs were stored with coats, bags, and other personal items. In some work locales if there were significant numbers of Muslims they might reserve a conference room during Ramadan for daily prayers (scheduling it just like any other meeting time) but at other times they just wanted a little personal space/no interruptions for a brief period of time.

In other words, this was never a big deal, or a problem, unless some bigot non-Muslim got his/her panties in a twist over it. I found it considerably LESS disruptive than the omnipresent Jesus-freaks in the work environment.

As for Ramadan eating rules - it's basically nothing by mouth from sunrise to sundown, BUT - children are except, ill people are except, travelers are exempt, and people with chronic health problems who would be harmed by such abstinence are exempt. So, for example, someone needing medication would be within the rules to take it, and any required water to wash it down. Diabetics for whom fasting could cause serious health problems would be exempt, although they would probably stick to small, simple meals and eat away from other Muslims (not really cool to eat in front of people who aren't, at least not in an obvious way). Even healthy adults don't always make it through the day - the point being it's supposed to be difficult and an exercise in self-discipline. Most Muslims I've known have blown the occasional Ramadan fast day, just as a lot of Catholics don't quite make it through Lent without succumbing to temptation and plenty of Jews occasionally cheat on the kosher eating rules. I've no doubt there are some idiot fanatic Muslims who are draconian when it comes to the rules, but Islam is hardly an exception in that way.