Footbath plans spur religious debate

LOS ANGELES -- When Majed Afana needs to pray while attending classes at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, the 19-year-old Muslim will usually duck into the campus library's bathroom, strip off his shoes, and awkwardly strain to wash his feet in the sink.

Water often pools at his feet, he says, making it slippery to balance on one foot. Some of the sinks have started to pull away from the wall, in part from years of use by others like him, who according to their faith, must clean their feet prior to praying five times a day.

So when the school recently approved installing two footbaths in a pair of new unisex bathrooms, to accommodate the needs of both male and female Muslim students, the local Islamic community started planning ways to raise the estimated $25,000 cost.

But the university told them not to bother; it would pay for the footbaths.

"I think it's great," said Afana, a pre-med student at this commuter school, where about 11 percent of the 8,700 students reportedly are Muslim. "What we've been doing all these years has been dangerous and can be a safety hazard."

The university says it's tapping student infrastructure fees for the unisex bathrooms, which will also have diaper-changing stations and facilities for mothers to nurse infants, because this is an issue of the school trying to make its bathrooms safer and improve its plumbing, not endorsing religion or promoting Islam. And while the fees are part of the school's general fund, the money is paid by students, not taxpayers, and is often used for campus maintenance and general construction.

"We see this as a reasonable accommodation to a customary practice of a growing number of our students and visitors on campus," Gallagher said.

The plan, however, has raised the ire of critics, who have been flocking to area conservative weblogs and Michigan radio talk shows to rail against the plan. They insist that such efforts are giving Muslims preferential treatment over other faiths.

"Plumbing? You must be kidding. That's an after-the-fact justification for something that is being done for the purpose of meeting a religious demand," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.

"You start permanently changing your architecture for one religious group, you have to do it for all. After all, what's the difference between a footbath used as part of a ritual, and a fountain that can be used for a baptism?" asked Lynn.

Yet groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union who are usually advocates of separating church and state are giving the plan an approving nod.

Though the plan raises a red flag because it's illegal for schools to use public funds to install religious symbols such as crucifixes, ACLU of Michigan officials said, the question of whether Muslim prayer rugs or foot baths fall into the same category remains fuzzy.

"We have never encountered a situation where the motivation seems to be a response to a practical cleanliness and safety issue," the ACLU of Michigan said in a statement. The university first considered the idea of installing the footbaths two years ago, when school officials learned that students and visitors were using regular sinks to clean themselves prior to praying.

Gallagher said the practice was "causing a lot of wear and tear on the library bathroom" and a second facility near the school's two "reflection" areas -- small, fairly barren rooms where students gather to relax and hang out. Muslim students often meet there throughout the day to pray, as do Christian organizations, Gallagher said.

What's happening in Dearborn, a suburb of about 96,600 west of Detroit, is part of a growing national trend, as a number of public schools and universities are changing the ways they meet the needs of Muslim students.

At least nine universities in the United States have rooms on campus dedicated to Muslim prayers, and more than a dozen schools have either installed footbaths like the ones being proposed in Dearborn or are in the process of constructing them, according to Farhan Latif, a University of Michigan graduate student and adviser to the Muslim Student Association at the Dearborn campus.