Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he’s protecting Texans from religious discrimination. Then, in the same breath, he told Fox News which religions don’t matter.
Abbott recently threatened to pull grant funding from the DFW International Airport after it revealed plans to add Islamic ablution stations for pre-prayer washing. He made the same threat against Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, where such a facility already exists. It’s still there, for now, but DFW announced it was canceling its plans shortly after following an “accelerated review” of the proposal.
“These ablution facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion,” Abbott said in a statement. “That is illegal.”
Accommodation v.s. Religious Discrimination
Here’s the thing: there’s a difference between accommodation and discrimination. In fact, Houston Mayor John Whitmire made exactly that case in defending IAH’s facility.
“The ablution room and adjoining prayer room are open to all travelers, employees and stakeholders with access to Terminal D, regardless of faith,” Whitmire said in a statement responding to Abbott’s letter. “Nobody receives preferential access, and nobody is excluded.”
Wudu is an Islamic ritual that involves washing the hands, arms, face, and feet before prayer. This is a mandate of the Muslim faith, and as one Houston chapter director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, put it to local reporters, “Every bathroom is a wudu station.”
Serving a Need
It’s not just a practical accommodation…
“People washing their feet in standard bathroom sinks creates soaked, slippery floors and breaks the counters,” conservative activist Ryan Fournier said of the project on social media. “Low-level wudu basins keep the restrooms dry and safe for everyone.”
It also serves a very real need at one of the world’s highest-trafficked airports. While there’s no data tracking the faith preferences of travelers, it’s important to note that Islam is the second largest and fastest-growing religion in the world, according to the Pew Research Center.
Calling these washing stations discriminatory is like calling wheelchair ramps discriminatory, which exist only to serve a need – not exclude anyone else from use.
Yet Abbott insisted otherwise in a Fox News interview.
“If there are special facilities allowed for those who are Muslim, there must also be special facilities allowed for Christians, for Jews and literally dozens – if not hundreds – of other religious faiths of people going through our airport, and that’s just not feasible,” Abbott said.
Now, this isn’t just misleading. He’s wrong. Each of DFW Airport’s five terminals has had an interfaith chapel for decades, staffed by ministers from a range of faiths. The airport describes the spaces as open to anyone who needs a “quiet moment or a connection to your faith.”
Sounds pretty feasible to me!
Religious Freedom in Name Only
Of course, these “anti-Muslim political stunts” aren’t new from Abbott or his party, which has rallied against countering the “Islamification of America.” A Republican Muslim at the GOP Convention was asked to leave by fellow delegates at the state convention this past June. Abbott has designated CAIR a terrorist organization, has gone after the city of Grand Prairie over a Muslim holiday celebration, and pushed school districts to cut ties with the Houston Islamic Games.
And in the same Fox News interview, Abbott told viewers exactly why Islam is different: “… these other religious faiths don’t have the same application over the course of the history of the state of Texas, and hence, do not need to be recognized either in our schools or on the Texas Capitol grounds like other religions.”
That’s the whole argument, in his own words. Not neutrality. Not equal treatment. A ranking of which faiths belong in Texas and which don’t – according to the governor.
Texas has been here before. State-sanctioned lines drawn around who gets full access to public life have never held up, legally or morally, no matter how they’re dressed up by politicians. Abbott says he’s defending religious freedom. He’s using state power to decide which religion doesn’t belong.
What’s actually discriminatory here, governor?
