SCOTLAND NHS: NON-MUSLIMS MUST OBSERVE RAMADAN

From National Review (scroll down):

There’ll be no more skirlie in Scotland this summer, at least not during business hours. The National Health Service in Glasgow and Lothian has suspended the act of eating during the holy month of Ramadan. Doctors and health workers are not to lunch at their desks, where they may run the risk of insulting — tempting? — their fasting Muslim colleagues. (For who can resist the scent of minced and boiled sheep offal?) A more caring government might have mandated that the Scots eat haggis all hours of the day, which could only make fasting easier. Now, no order was given concerning the Jewish fast on Yom Kippur, also coming in September, but then that’s not really the point. Making a society “Islam friendly” won’t help Muslims fit in any better — and that’s precisely the point. Gestures like this one mean that Scottish Muslims won’t have to learn how to function in a pluralist society, but can continue their self-ordered segregation, living apart even as they live within — an imposition at best, and, as Glaswegians saw in June, ever a looming threat.