Word: worked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ratchet up conflicts at first - by sending more troops to Afghanistan and perhaps pushing new sanctions against Iran - to gain the diplomatic muscle to cut deals that don't look like abject American defeats. It's a risky strategy, since there's no guarantee that the bigger sticks will work, and if they don't, pulling back will be even harder. But it's a gamble Obama may have to take. The harsh truth is that the U.S. is significantly weaker in the Middle East now than it was in 2002. For close to a decade, our adversaries have...
...while these controversies attract attention, there are also efforts to work out solutions to living with religious differences in Europe. Take a recent book by French anthropologists Dounia and Lylia Bouzar, Is There Room for Allah in the Workplace? The book offers legal guidelines on how work-religion conflicts might be examined, as well as practical suggestions on resolving them. "Paradoxically, as the question of the visibility of religious practice crops up regularly in the media, it remains a total haze in the professional world," the book notes. (See pictures of Islam's soft revolution...
...Previous research indicates that almost a third of French companies are grappling with how to respond to requests from Muslim employees for prayer breaks, Islamic holidays, halal options on cafeteria menus and adapting work assignments to take into account the effects of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. In their study, which involved over 350 interviews with employees and managers from dozens of companies, the Bouzars found most bosses have tended to improvise reactions to such demands, producing two contrasting excesses. "Managers have tended to either adopt laxity, reasoning 'We've got to accept their differences and avoid perceptions...
...what happens when Muslim employees ask for a prayer area at work? Or when a female staffer wants to wear a headscarf while representing her firm to clients? Or a devout male staffer refuses to shake hands with or meet with women colleagues? First, the authors stress, bosses should deal no differently with religious demands from Muslim workers than with those from Christian, Jewish or Buddhist staff. "Evaluate Mona as you would Martine," Dounia and Lylia Bouzar write. (Read "Berets and Baguettes? France Rethinks Its Identity...
...authors also tell bosses "the question you mustn't ask is 'What does your religion say?'" since answers to that will likely be subject to interpretation, and in any case aren't relevant to the work setting. Instead, the study recommends managers analyze how a request will affect objective professional considerations on a series of measures: security, hygiene, performance ability, organization and business interests, as well as the risk of religious employees engaging in proselytizing (or appearing to do so) through their expression of faith. If the impact is small, then a boss should agree to the request...