Christian Nadia Eweida is appealing against a ruling which cleared British Airways of discriminating against her by asking her to stop wearing a cross at work.
Today is the day that Nadia Eweida finally goes back to court against British Airways in the dispute over BA asking her to stop wearing a necklace cross at work. Here is a Press Association piece:
Devout Christian Nadia Eweida is appealing against a ruling which cleared British Airways of discriminating against her by asking her to stop wearing a cross at work.
Miss Eweida, 58, from Twickenham, south-west London, wants the Court of Appeal in London to overturn a November 2008 decision by the Employment Appeal Tribunal that she was not a victim of religious discrimination.
The tribunal was told she went home in September 2006 after failing to reach a compromise with managers over the visible display of the plain silver cross on a chain around her neck.
The following year, the airline changed its uniform policy and Miss Eweida, a Pentecostal Christian who works in customer services at Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, returned to work.
I thought the article below to be a sensible approach from Shami Chakrabarti, who is the director of the human rights group Liberty who are representing Nadia. He looks at the different approaches society can adopt towards religion and identifies a common sense approach to this particular case. The argument is that if other faiths are permitted to wear religious paraphernalia, as they were at BA, and this does not constitute a health and safety risk, then it is wrong to discriminate against one particular expression of faith.
TimesOnline – Freedom must apply to all faiths and none
Today Liberty returns to court. After the victory last week of personal privacy over blanket stop-and- search powers in the Court of Human Rights, we go to the Court of Appeal to protect freedom of thought, conscience and religion from unjustified intrusion and prejudice.
You may remember the story of Nadia Eweida, the British Airways check-in worker who was banned from wearing a small cross on a chain. This modest manifestation of her faith was as important to her as a turban or hijab to other workers. Yet the airline accommodated these other items without, perhaps, embracing the underlying values that would have protected Ms Eweida and anyone else from the blundering assertion that “rules is rules is rules”.
After a public outcry that included secular, religious and political voices from across the spectrum, the airline modified its uniform policy. But not before Ms Eweida had been off work for months without pay, and crucially, without accepting the ethical and legal principle that would protect her and others of all faiths and none in the future. Worse still, BA instructed an international law firm strenuously to resist her claim of religious discrimination.
What followed was an extremely disappointing employment appeal tribunal that found no discrimination, because “Christians generally” do not consider wearing a cross as a religious “requirement”. This fundamentally misunderstands the idea of individual rights and freedoms, which do not depend on how many people agree with your conscience or speech. It also opens up secular courts to lengthy arguments as to what is a theological necessity. Making windows into men’s souls is as pointlessly complex as it is dangerous.
Predictably, this case and others like it, have provided fuel for the fire of those wanting to portray tolerance and the laws of non-discrimination as inherently anti-Christian, or as skewed in favour of some communities and not others. Public confidence as well as individual justice demands that liberal values be applied with an even hand.
It seems to me that any society has three choices in dealing with this small question of religion.
I’m glad that he mentions the fact that this case provides ‘fuel for the fire’ for those that want to jump on the – ’society is anti-christian’ – bandwagon. This particular case may be an example of Christian prejudice, but I have seen far too many embarrassing examples of Christians pushing this line too far and claiming discrimination at every turn, which simply backfires against the Christian community and portrays Christians as wanting a special status above others and causes resentment. One example that springs to mind is in the medical environment, when religious paraphernalia can constitute a serious health and safety risk.
Some Christian groups are looking for discrimination under every rock, but as in this case, when it looks apparent that there is real discrimination, then the case should be fought with vigour.
If you have stumbled onto this blog and are not a Christian, get yourself a hot drink, pull up a comfy chair and then tuck into the following article written by one of the best in the business:- All Of Grace by Charles Spurgeon
Tags: Christianity, Law, News
January 19th, 2010 at 10:14 am
I am not religious. As I understand it Sikhs, for example, are required by their religion to wear turbans. Are Christians required by their religion to display crosses?
January 19th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Hi Adrian, the answer is simply no and this is the reason why the appeal tribunal rejected the discrimination claim.
So in one sense, this moves beyond a ‘religious discrimination’ case and moves into an ‘individual rights’ arena.