What sounds like a satire written by an exaggerated cabaret artist is a bitter reality at a school in Calgary, Canada. During the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, children who were not fasting were simply forbidden from eating in the school canteen. A canteen – mind you, the place that serves its own purpose after eating – was quickly converted into a “food-free area”. You rub your eyes.
Eating forbidden: When inclusion becomes exclusion
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Fairview School management had informed parents that parts of the cafeteria would be designated as food-free zones during lunch breaks. For students in grades 4 to 6, the ban only applied to the first half of the break in certain areas. But for the older years 7 to 9, they went one step further: they were allowed to eat in the dining room during the entire lunch break prohibited. Where should the hungry children go? This initially remained open.
Particularly piquant: On days with bad weather – and as we know there are quite a few in Calgary – the entire common area should become a food-free zone for all students. In its statement, the school politely thanked them for their “continued collaboration in promoting an inclusive and caring school community.” So inclusion by excluding non-fasting children from eating. George Orwell would have delighted in this Newspeak.
The responsible school authorities reacted with a statement that was hard to beat in terms of diplomatic meaninglessness. It noted the possibility of “taking religious needs into account in everyday school life” and explained that schools could make adjustments during “special cultural and religious occasions.” At the same time, it claimed that “no changes” had been made to the designated lunch break areas. How this statement fits with the apparent conversion of a cafeteria into a food-free zone remains the authority’s secret.
This is not an isolated case: the problem is also known in Germany
Anyone who believes that such excesses of misunderstood consideration are a purely Canadian phenomenon is seriously mistaken. At a comprehensive school in Kleve, North Rhine-Westphalia, a teacher instructed her students during Ramadan to “turn away” while eating so as not to “provoke” fasting Muslim classmates. Parents also reported that their children were harassed and excluded. The school ministry in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Düsseldorf district government wanted to investigate the incident, but significantly saw “no fundamental problem”.
No fundamental problem? If children in a western country are no longer allowed to eat their lunch without any worries because a religious minority is fasting, then that is definitely a fundamental problem. It is a problem of proportionality, of cultural self-abandonment and of a tolerance that has long since mutated into submission.
Tolerance as a one-way street
Imagine the opposite case: a school in a predominantly Muslim country prohibits fasting children from staying in the cafeteria so that the non-fasting students do not feel disturbed while eating. Unthinkable. And yet in the West it is precisely this one-sided consideration that is sold as an expression of “inclusion”. It is an inclusion that only works in one direction – and that punishes those children who do not adhere to religious dietary regulations.
What is happening here is symptomatic of a society that willingly throws its own cultural foundations overboard so as not to “hurt” anyone. Those responsible do not seem to care that the needs of the majority are systematically placed behind those of a minority. Parents who protest against this are fobbed off with empty phrases about “diversity” and “cohesion”.
It would be time for Western societies – whether in Canada or Germany – to return to a simple principle: Religious freedom means the right to practice one’s faith. It does not mean the right to impose one’s own religious rules on others. Anyone who fasts does so of their own free will. Anyone who is not fasting has every right to eat in a school cafeteria. Point.
But as long as school authorities and ministries shy away from confrontation and prefer to take the path of least resistance, such cases will increase. The gradual erosion of Western values and self-evidence – it does not begin in parliaments, but in school canteens.
