Doctor introduces disposable headscarves to UK hospital

[SummerMadness]

Doctor introduces disposable headscarves to UK hospital[/B

A Muslim junior doctor spearheaded the introduction of disposable sterile headscarves for hospital staff to use in operating theatres.

Doctor Farah Roslan, who wears hijab herself, first had the idea during her training at Royal Derby hospital following infection concerns related to her headscarf, the BBC reported.

The hospital trust believes it is now the first hospital in the UK to introduce the new headscarves and hopes it will be rolled out nationally.

Roslan, who hails from Malaysia and lives in Lincolnshire, was a medical student with University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS trust when she first had the idea.

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

In America, the use of disposable head covering has been in use for decades in surgical areas.

 

[dzheremi]

Hahaha. That's exactly what I thought, Handmaid.

But now it's a Muslim doing it, so it's so newsworthy! (Well...to "The New Arab", sure...)



Wake me up in 100 years, when the narrative is transformed to that Muslims invented this out of their abundant piety, resourcefulness, and intelligence, and then had it cruelly 'culturally appropriated' by the eternally barbaric and regressive non-Muslims...

 

[Occams Barber]

In America, the use of disposable head covering has been in use for decades in surgical areas.

I think you'll find that disposable head covering is used in operating rooms all over the world - not just America. The point of the article is the design of a disposable hijab-like headscarf which is more appropriate for Muslim women.

@dzheremi
Why do you find it surprising that the New Arab published an article directly relevant to Muslims?

OB

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

I think you'll find that disposable head covering is used in operating rooms all over the world - not just America. The point of the article is the design of a disposable hijab-like headscarf which is more appropriate for Muslim women.

@dzheremi
Why do you find it surprising that the New Arab published an article directly relevant to Muslims?

OB

Really!? A head covering in the operating room is a head covering.Why should it have religious specification. Are people now going to be required to wear their religion on their heads in the surgical arena? Give me a break. What is inappropriate about the disposable head coverings that are currently in use?

 

[comana]

Really!? A head covering in the operating room is a head covering.Why should it have religious specification. Are people now going to be required to wear their religion on their heads in the surgical arena? Give me a break. What is inappropriate about the disposable head coverings that are currently in use?

It’s been awhile since I was in an OR, but I never saw disposable head coverings that would meet the same coverage requirements that many Muslim women adhere to.

 

[Occams Barber]

Really!? A head covering in the operating room is a head covering.Why should it have religious specification. Are people now going to be required to wear their religion on their heads in the surgical arena? Give me a break. What is inappropriate about the disposable head coverings that are currently in use?

Why get all worked up about this?
Some Muslim women feel that the current range of surgical headgear is not suited to Muslim standards of modesty so this young lady designed something more suitable. Sounds reasonable to me.

OB

 

[Chesterton]

The point of the article is the design of a disposable hijab-like headscarf which is more appropriate for Muslim women.

Sounds reasonable to me.

I'm curious, as an atheist, why do think the headscarf is appropriate for Muslim women, and that this is reasonable?

 

[dzheremi]

@dzheremi
Why do you find it surprising that the New Arab published an article directly relevant to Muslims?

I don't. I guess you missed the bit in parenthesis.

 

[Occams Barber]

I'm curious, as an atheist, why do think the headscarf is appropriate for Muslim women, and that this is reasonable?

It's appropriate for Muslim women because Muslim women deem it to be appropriate. This is their judgement - not mine. It's reasonable because, as far as I know, there is no reason to find it objectionable.
OB

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

Why get all worked up about this?
Some Muslim women feel that the current range of surgical headgear is not suited to Muslim standards of modesty so this young lady designed something more suitable. Sounds reasonable to me.

OB

I am not "worked up" about this. I am just stating the fact that disposable head covering in the operating room is standard and (as you pointed out) in use world wide.It has been standard for decades. Will hospitals now be required to provide these religious specific disposable headscarves? They will add cost you know. Will non muslims be required to use them or restricted from using them? I see a range of what if's that this can cause.

 

[Occams Barber]

I am not "worked up" about this. I am just stating the fact that disposable head covering in the operating room is standard and (as you pointed out) in use world wide.It has been standard for decades.

Head covering is standard but styles of cover vary. This headscarf is simply another variation.
surgical head cover - Google Search

Will hospitals now be required to provide these religious specific disposable headscarves? They will add cost you know.

I suspect hospitals will decide if they choose to supply them or not. It will probably depend on demand. I have no idea if these headscarves will cost more or less than existing models but obviously someone wearing one of these headscarves will not be using up one of the other models.

Will non muslims be required to use them or restricted from using them? I see a range of what if's that this can cause.

Why would non-muslims be required to use them?

I find it hard to understand why you find this headgear so objectionable. Is it because it's 'Muslim'?
OB

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

Doctor introduces disposable headscarves to UK hospital[/B

Good, It's the least we could do for Muslim women, that save lives. Hopefully America will start using these.

 

[dzheremi]

I don't think "what ifs" are a good reason to oppose this or not allow it (and I, like OB, don't see why it would change what the non-Muslim wears), but I also think that this is a step backwards in general.

In early centuries of Christianity, there were several canons established by local synods or bishops which governed the interaction of Christians with Jews and Pagans, because at the time there were real questions about where the lines should be drawn in areas with a mixed population where Christians were probably still in the minority. These were decidedly negative toward both non-Christian populations, and are today often used a cudgel by atheists and more 'progressive' (read: anti-hierarchical) Christians and Christian denominations to beat on Christians of the Orthodox and Catholic (and any other) Churches to whom these canons may have applied.

Over time, of course, these sorts of canons tended to become obsolete because most pagans either converted or retreated to the last bastions of their religion as Christianity spread to more and more of any given society (same as would happen to Christians ourselves with the arrival of Islam into Christian areas some centuries later), and Christians went into certain professions that were previously either disallowed to them or just not filled with them. The 'traditional' professions to which Christians often aspired once they were able were things like medicine, law, and philosophy -- i.e., those dealing with cooperating with God in healing, judging rightly, and educating. In that kind of environment, asking "Can/should I go to a Jewish or Pagan doctor?" isn't all that relevant; it might not even make sense anymore.

What I see in things like this 'advancement' or whatever you want to call it is a potential return to a state of affairs where such canons would become relevant again, not because Christian bishops will decide that their flock cannot go to Muslim doctors (obviously, 90+% of my Church in particular lives in Egypt...they're going to be going to Muslim doctors, and there's nothing anyone can do about it even if they wanted to), but because the doctor's or nurse's "Muslimness" will be on such display that they might think to ask the question, thereby opening up a religious fissure in a place where it is least helpful...

And before anyone thinks that's crazy, because of course Muslims are held to the same standard in providing medical care as anyone is, so there's no danger in going to a Muslim healthcare provider for anything (which is obviously the case in the west; there's a Bosnian Muslim hijabi who works at my local pharmacy, and she's perfectly professional and pleasant), or else why wouldn't you see a bunch of Muslim doctors killing Christian patients or something, let me remind you that in other places that are not the UK, places like Egypt in which the religious divide is highly visible and sharpened by the Muslim side, you do sometimes see, for instance, attacks on hospitals or other medical centers known to be connected to the Coptic Orthodox Church or individual prominent Copts (who are found in the medical professions at a rate that far exceeds their number in society overall, as you'd as expect given the above; our current patriarch, HH Pope Tawadros II, for instance, has a degree in pharmacy and actually managed a state-owned pharmaceutical company prior to dedicating himself to religious life). Searches for it right now are being crowded by more recent terrorist incidents at other hospitals in Egypt, but I remember a few years ago there was a report of some kind of cardiology center that was giving free heart surgeries to children which was attacked by an angry Muslim mob because its main benefactor and I think at least some of the medical staff were Copts, and some Muslims took that to be a stealthy way for Christians to proselytize their Muslim children (somehow...because, y'know, "I saved your life, so believe in Jesus" is a totally normal thing that all Christian medical professionals say ), and reacted quite badly. To free heart surgeries.

So I do see a danger in raising the religious profile of the nurse, surgeon, etc. It is remote, but then the idea that Muslims would be all over Britain to the point of having stories like this seemed remote until a few decades ago, so I don't think it can be discounted entirely that things could go that way, especially in a social/political environment where when doing anything but praising the Islamicization of non-Muslim societies gets one labeled a bigot, censured, possibly jailed, etc., which as I understand it is the case in the UK in some ways.

 

[Occams Barber]

I don't think "what ifs" are a good reason to oppose this or not allow it (and I, like OB, don't see why it would change what the non-Muslim wears), but I also think that this is a step backwards in general.

In early centuries of Christianity, there were several canons established by local synods or bishops which governed the interaction of Christians with Jews and Pagans, because at the time there were real questions about where the lines should be drawn in areas with a mixed population where Christians were probably still in the minority. These were decidedly negative toward both non-Christian populations, and are today often used a cudgel by atheists and more 'progressive' (read: anti-hierarchical) Christians and Christian denominations to beat on Christians of the Orthodox and Catholic (and any other) Churches to whom these canons may have applied.

Over time, of course, these sorts of canons tended to become obsolete because most pagans either converted or retreated to the last bastions of their religion as Christianity spread to more and more of any given society (same as would happen to Christians ourselves with the arrival of Islam into Christian areas some centuries later), and Christians went into certain professions that were previously either disallowed to them or just not filled with them. The 'traditional' professions to which Christians often aspired once they were able were things like medicine, law, and philosophy -- i.e., those dealing with cooperating with God in healing, judging rightly, and educating. In that kind of environment, asking "Can/should I go to a Jewish or Pagan doctor?" isn't all that relevant; it might not even make sense anymore.

What I see in things like this 'advancement' or whatever you want to call it is a potential return to a state of affairs where such canons would become relevant again, not because Christian bishops will decide that their flock cannot go to Muslim doctors (obviously, 90+% of my Church in particular lives in Egypt...they're going to be going to Muslim doctors, and there's nothing anyone can do about it even if they wanted to), but because the doctor's or nurse's "Muslimness" will be on such display that they might think to ask the question, thereby opening up a religious fissure in a place where it is least helpful...

And before anyone thinks that's crazy, because of course Muslims are held to the same standard in providing medical care as anyone is, so there's no danger in going to a Muslim healthcare provider for anything (which is obviously the case in the west; there's a Bosnian Muslim hijabi who works at my local pharmacy, and she's perfectly professional and pleasant), or else why wouldn't you see a bunch of Muslim doctors killing Christian patients or something, let me remind you that in other places that are not the UK, places like Egypt in which the religious divide is highly visible and sharpened by the Muslim side, you do sometimes see, for instance, attacks on hospitals or other medical centers known to be connected to the Coptic Orthodox Church or individual prominent Copts (who are found in the medical professions at a rate that far exceeds their number in society overall, as you'd as expect given the above; our current patriarch, HH Pope Tawadros II, for instance, has a degree in pharmacy and actually managed a state-owned pharmaceutical company prior to dedicating himself to religious life). Searches for it right now are being crowded by more recent terrorist incidents at other hospitals in Egypt, but I remember a few years ago there was a report of some kind of cardiology center that was giving free heart surgeries to children which was attacked by an angry Muslim mob because its main benefactor and I think at least some of the medical staff were Copts, and some Muslims took that to be a stealthy way for Christians to proselytize their Muslim children (somehow...because, y'know, "I saved your life, so believe in Jesus" is a totally normal thing that all Christian medical professionals say ), and reacted quite badly. To free heart surgeries.

So I do see a danger in raising the religious profile of the nurse, surgeon, etc. It is remote, but then the idea that Muslims would be all over Britain to the point of having stories like this seemed remote until a few decades ago, so I don't think it can be discounted entirely that things could go that way, especially in a social/political environment where when doing anything but praising the Islamicization of non-Muslim societies gets one labeled a bigot, censured, possibly jailed, etc., which as I understand it is the case in the UK in some ways.

\

It's a reasonable presumption that a Muslim doctor or nurse who chooses to wear a hijab style surgical head cover in the operating theatre, would also wear hijab outside of the theatre. If the doctor/nurse normally wears hijab in public then wearing a similar cover in theatre will have little impact on further raising her religious profile. Time in theatre is limited and there is no general public exposure.

Even if this were not the case I fail to see why awareness of the religious inclination of a doctor or nurse is an issue. My doctor is a turbanned Sikh working in a practice with cross wearing Christian doctors and a patient load including Muslims in hijab. I don't see the problem.

I will concede that being a Copt in a Muslim majority country may give you a different perspective - but that is not the norm.
OB

 

[dzheremi]

\

It's a reasonable presumption that a Muslim doctor or nurse who chooses to wear a hijab style surgical head cover in the operating theatre, would also wear hijab outside of the theatre. If the doctor/nurse normally wears hijab in public then wearing a similar cover in theatre will have little impact on further raising her religious profile. Time in theatre is limited and there is no general public exposure.

It certainly raises it in the context of the hospital where it is happening. We're not talking about outside on the street.

Even if this were not the case I fail to see why awareness of the religious inclination of a doctor or nurse is an issue. My doctor is a turbanned Sikh working in a practice with cross wearing Christian doctors and a patient load including Muslims in hijab. I don't see the problem.

Islam is not like these other religions that you have listed. And Australia must be very different than America, as I've never seen a medical doctor who wears a cross while practicing his craft. There are hospital chaplains, but that's a different matter.

I will concede that being a Copt in a Muslim majority country may give you a different perspective - but that is not the norm.
OB

That's not the perspective I'm bringing to begin with. My point is that in the past the person's religion could have been an issue, and then we entered a time of secularization in most western countries so that now we have situations like the one you describe at your doctor's practice. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I just know it's not a secular thing, and the more you have religious Muslims asserting their religion all over public spaces, the more you're going to have problems because people in secular societies generally don't like it when a distinct group belonging to a particular religion is seen to be asserting itself on a religious basis within secular institutions (i.e., this is a "Muslim hospital" or whatever).

For a modern day example of this dynamic in America, where I live, you need only look at the conflict between the so-called "Muslim Community Patrol" (an adjunct to the NYPD, I guess? I don't live there, but that seems to be what they see themselves as) in Brooklyn, New York and some gang members in the area who take exception to the patrol's attempted usurpation of the job of keeping order in the public space in the name of protecting the honor or whatever of a local Muslim woman who had been the subject of some nasty comment from a local non-Muslim teenager:

Is this a good thing or not? I think decidedly not, because the conflict between the secular rights of people to disrespect Muslims in any way that is legal to do (i.e., it may not be nice, but it's usually not illegal to say something awful to someone on the street) and the "Muslim Patrol"'s need to defend the norms of their religion (where such a thing is not allowed at all) appears to be leading to a potential armed conflict between the Muslim community and a group of gang members. This is a situation that most likely would not have arisen at all if there had not been a "Muslim Community Patrol" in the first place. It is not their job to police society according to Islamic norms, since it's not an Islamic society to begin with.

I am not attempting to say that this situation maps on in any way directly to the situation of a hijabi in the OR; obviously it does not, but the same tension between secular society and the religious duty of the Muslim is in both examples. The hijabi feels the need to wear her headcovering everywhere, including in the OR, and so invents this thing. Some people are not comfortable with that because they don't want religion or the Islamic religion in particular to be manifest in all levels of a secular society.

For the record, I don't care what this lady in the UK does; I only care that she can do her job. I just think that if we're going to have more and more observant rather than secular Muslims promoted as the faces of the Islamic communities in Western societies, we ought to be able to recognize the reality wherein eventually it will mean having Islam the religion more and more publicly manifest, with all that this entails. You can't really say "Good for you for having your hijab on at work, but don't start asking for Islamic prayer rooms at the same facility and times off to use them" or whatever. It's going to be a process of asking for more and more and more, and getting it because apparently there are different (looser) standards when it comes to secularism for Muslims in particular than there are for everyone else. This Muslim nurse in the UK gets praised for inventing an OR-compliant hijab, while Coptic Christians in the same country have to go before the European Court of Human Rights in order to be allowed to wear a small cross necklace around their neck at work, because it supposedly violates the "corporate image" British Airways (which already allowed Muslim stewardesses to wear hijabs) wanted to present.

Huh. I guess British Airways wants to be a Shari'a-compliant airline. Even though I don't live in the UK, I don't want that, just like I wouldn't want a specifically Islamic hospital (although having no interest payments on your late hospital bills would be pretty nice). Other people may say similar things about Catholic hospitals in the west. (The Coptic Hospital in Cairo was nationalized in the 1960s under Nasser and is now run by the state, so it's not really 'Coptic' except in its founding.)

The difference here is between people who are okay with concessions because there's nothing in the practice that impacts the job, and people who are not because of what it says about the increasing Islamic religiousity in the west. The idea was once that people would come to the west and imbibe its values and become (more) secular, but this might or might not be happening, depending on where you look and how you evaluate the evidence. Again, I personally have no problem with this particular example, but I could see it creating a problem in the future in so far as it could establish a kind of precedent of the next thing that would be more inherently disruptive and discriminatory towards non-Muslims. (Say if Muslims established some kind of patrol for themselves somewhere to make sure you weren't acting un-Islamically in your own secular country, and nobody did anything about it even though it's a gross violation of the secular public space because you weren't allowed to say anything about what Muslims do without all kinds of new "phobias" being attached to you...)

 

[Occams Barber]

It certainly raises it in the context of the hospital where it is happening. We're not talking about outside on the street.



Islam is not like these other religions that you have listed. And Australia must be very different than America, as I've never seen a medical doctor who wears a cross while practicing his craft. There are hospital chaplains, but that's a different matter.



That's not the perspective I'm bringing to begin with. My point is that in the past the person's religion could have been an issue, and then we entered a time of secularization in most western countries so that now we have situations like the one you describe at your doctor's practice. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I just know it's not a secular thing, and the more you have religious Muslims asserting their religion all over public spaces, the more you're going to have problems because people in secular societies generally don't like it when a distinct group belonging to a particular religion is seen to be asserting itself on a religious basis within secular institutions (i.e., this is a "Muslim hospital" or whatever).

For a modern day example of this dynamic in America, where I live, you need only look at the conflict between the so-called "Muslim Community Patrol" (an adjunct to the NYPD, I guess? I don't live there, but that seems to be what they see themselves as) in Brooklyn, New York and some gang members in the area who take exception to the patrol's attempted usurpation of the job of keeping order in the public space in the name of protecting the honor or whatever of a local Muslim woman who had been the subject of some nasty comment from a local non-Muslim teenager:

Is this a good thing or not? I think decidedly not, because the conflict between the secular rights of people to disrespect Muslims in any way that is legal to do (i.e., it may not be nice, but it's usually not illegal to say something awful to someone on the street) and the "Muslim Patrol"'s need to defend the norms of their religion (where such a thing is not allowed at all) appears to be leading to a potential armed conflict between the Muslim community and a group of gang members. This is a situation that most likely would not have arisen at all if there had not been a "Muslim Community Patrol" in the first place. It is not their job to police society according to Islamic norms, since it's not an Islamic society to begin with.

I am not attempting to say that this situation maps on in any way directly to the situation of a hijabi in the OR; obviously it does not, but the same tension between secular society and the religious duty of the Muslim is in both examples. The hijabi feels the need to wear her headcovering everywhere, including in the OR, and so invents this thing. Some people are not comfortable with that because they don't want religion or the Islamic religion in particular to be manifest in all levels of a secular society.

For the record, I don't care what this lady in the UK does; I only care that she can do her job. I just think that if we're going to have more and more observant rather than secular Muslims promoted as the faces of the Islamic communities in Western societies, we ought to be able to recognize the reality wherein eventually it will mean having Islam the religion more and more publicly manifest, with all that this entails. You can't really say "Good for you for having your hijab on at work, but don't start asking for Islamic prayer rooms at the same facility and times off to use them" or whatever. It's going to be a process of asking for more and more and more, and getting it because apparently there are different (looser) standards when it comes to secularism for Muslims in particular than there are for everyone else. This Muslim nurse in the UK gets praised for inventing an OR-compliant hijab, while Coptic Christians in the same country have to go before the European Court of Human Rights in order to be allowed to wear a small cross necklace around their neck at work, because it supposedly violates the "corporate image" British Airways (which already allowed Muslim stewardesses to wear hijabs) wanted to present.

Huh. I guess British Airways wants to be a Shari'a-compliant airline. Even though I don't live in the UK, I don't want that, just like I wouldn't want a specifically Islamic hospital (although having no interest payments on your late hospital bills would be pretty nice). Other people may say similar things about Catholic hospitals in the west. (The Coptic Hospital in Cairo was nationalized in the 1960s under Nasser and is now run by the state, so it's not really 'Coptic' except in its founding.)

The difference here is between people who are okay with concessions because there's nothing in the practice that impacts the job, and people who are not because of what it says about the increasing Islamic religiousity in the west. The idea was once that people would come to the west and imbibe its values and become (more) secular, but this might or might not be happening, depending on where you look and how you evaluate the evidence. Again, I personally have no problem with this particular example, but I could see it creating a problem in the future in so far as it could establish a kind of precedent of the next thing that would be more inherently disruptive and discriminatory towards non-Muslims. (Say if Muslims established some kind of patrol for themselves somewhere to make sure you weren't acting un-Islamically in your own secular country, and nobody did anything about it even though it's a gross violation of the secular public space because you weren't allowed to say anything about what Muslims do without all kinds of new "phobias" being attached to you...)

I think we live in two very different countries.
OB

 

[Speedwell]

I think we live in two very different countries.
OB

I feel the same way. Unfortunately here we have to share the same geographical space.

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

Why would secular people care if a Muslim woman wears a head scarf ?The only people, that seem to care . Are the ultra right Conservative Christians.

 

[Speedwell]

Why would secular people care if a Muslim woman wears a head scarf ?The only people, that seem to care . Are the ultra right Conservative Christians.

Or a slightly different style of disposable head covering than other medical personnel? I don't get it.