Another case of a Muslim who won’t do his work for some crazy religious reason comes to us today in, among others, the UK’s tabloid Daily Mail.
This chap’s been at it before, too, it seems.
He’s a 32-year-old dentist called Omer Butt, who’s telling female patients that they have to veil their heads if he’s going to operate on them, and male patients to remove gold jewellery.
He says he wants to prevent Muslim patients from committing some sort of religious sin, so is he insisting on the dress code only for those who follow his religion? It would seem so, but it’s still outrageous, since there are Muslim women who have nothing to do with their fellow religionists’ outmoded and repressive ideas of women’s places in society.
One tells the Mail how she’s spent a year looking for a dentist in the area. And, for those readers outside the UK who aren’t familiar with our National Health Service (NHS), we are entitled to free healthcare at the point of asking.
However, the great and good have always, for reasons that are more to do with saving money than with logic or in the interests of healthcare, put dentists in a different category, and, if you can’t claim an exemption, you get cheaper treatment than if you went private, but you still have to pay.
If it were an ingrowing toenail you’d get treatment for nothing. If it’s a problem in the mouth, you have to pay. It’s all healthcare.
Because we have an incompetent buch of morons in charge at Westminster, we’ve been without dental places – even private ones – in some areas, and many, your humble blogger included, have had to wait years to get one. Yet the NHS is paid for out of our taxes.
This goes some way to explain why a government that can give banks billions of pounds but can’t fund a decent dental service has caused the woman mentioned above to have had to wait for a year to get to see a dental practitioner.
Right, with that out of the way . . .
This chap Butt should, as an NHS dentist, not refuse his services to anyone unless there are exceptional reasons. A patient causing disruption, for instance, could well be a suitable case for eviction.
But, as far as we know, these patients were not causing disruption, upsetting staff, performing extreme morris dancing in the waiting room or fondling Kalashnikovs
Butt was in trouble a couple of years ago for something similar. He’s up before the General Dental Council, and the case is continuing.
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Friday, 8 May 2009
2 comments:
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If he's an oral surgeon there may be valid reasons for jewelry removal. But in this case he's just a religious wing nut with a very appropriate name.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds a little like a practice a medical student told me about a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteHis training hospital had close links with a Christian medical group through one of the tutors. At the time they were starting to get more Muslim medical students, and both the tutor and his group seemed to suggest to trainee doctors of all faiths that if only they were to go for appropriate specialisms - e.g. pre-natal care - then by exercising the 'conscience clause' they could ensure religious views on, say, abortion, were imposed on overstretched NHS services because patients could not get access to other doctors in the limited time available.
Thankfully,that tutor has retired and has since died. But you can see how the seeds of an idea he planted could be taking effect on a generation of medical professionals now a rung or two up the ladder.