Hi Friends and Patriots,

Here is some information that is relavent to the situation at Swift, where
Muslim workers were fired as a result of walking off the job during last
Ramadan:

Muslims in the Workplace

By Mary Christina Love

Septiembre 9, 2008

Most reputable organizations want to balance corporate, client, and employee
needs. In light of such considerations, special interest groups within
organizations may wish to take advantage of a modern employer’s goodwill
policies. While efforts are usually made to grant reasonable requests, some
desires can be unsettling and counterproductive. Muslims are special
interest groups who willingly, unwillingly, knowingly, and unknowingly
follow a supremist ideology called Islam. The ideology calls for its
adherents to ask for special favors in the workplace with regard to but not
limited to prayers and fasting when their numbers are large enough. Their
desires and demands could be relevant to wishes regarding gender
segregation, food preference, personal hygiene, client involvement, and
product handling.

I practiced Islam for a few years and surprisingly I learned that Muslim
prayers are not obligatory when work, circumstances, or other situations
make it inconvenient or otherwise inappropriate. Muslims are not required to
pray anywhere or anytime when it is not common or convenient. That includes
and is not limited to during school and work hours. It is quite acceptable
and very common for them to make up missed prayers at home, even in the
Middle East. Unperformed Muslim prayers can accumulate days upon days if
necessary. Muslims simply cannot do them in advance of their prescribed
times. Indeed, Muslims may choose to go to great lengths to pray in out of
the ordinary places because of peer pressure and prestige. It is a good way
to separate themselves from the other employees, to gain special
recognition, demonstrate a perceived piousness, and set precedent for
supremist sharia law. Spending several months in the Middle East as a
practitioner of Islam, I saw neither a public, or private “footbath.”
Instead, sinks and showers in the home were the acceptable mode of ritually
cleansing oneself before prayer. Interestingly, I learned that a Muslim can
even use dirt instead of water to wash before praying if clean water is not
available.

With regards to fasting, a Muslim does not always have to fast, for similar
reasons as above. Fasting, unlike to praying, does not have to be made-up.

Organizations and institutions should carefully weigh what is the best
interest in relation to permissiveness, expense, safety, client needs, and
compatibility with regards to loyal employee customer, and community
responsibilities.

Footbaths may require an unnecessary expense for a superficial, ritualistic,
and superstitious practice, while prayer time and space may require
inconvenient expenses and scheduling, as well as perceived supremist
gatherings. Gender segregation can cause unnecessary design consideration,
and procedures and product handling can be unnecesarily offensive to
valuable customers and clients as well as co-workers.

With regards to fasting during Ramadan, the break-fast time is at sunset.
This means that food, beverages, smoking, and sexual activities can only be
enjoyed during the hours of darkness. It does not mean that one must eat at
sunset. It means they cannot indulge in the aforementioned during the
daylight hours, or prior to sunset to correctly follow a ritual. Another
feature of fasting is waking early to eat a meal before the sun rises, which
can lead to fatigue, dizziness, weakness, irritability and disorientation
later in the day.

An organization must determine if it is productive to accommodate employees
who are weak with hunger and thirst, and drowsy from rising before sunrise
to eat. Faithful employees who do not require special needs will justifiably
resent giving in to non-procedural supremist demands that change daily and
yearly. And most significant and overlooked is the reality that the special
concessions are dangerously irreversible, and lead to further demands once
initial weakness is shown and indulgence is made.

Since the promulgation of Islam is an unspoken objective behind most Muslim
special interest wishes, employees and organizations should carefully
anticipate the outcome and the necessity of requests that are merely an
effort to gain further ground for the ambitious totalitarian ideology.

Omar Ahmad, the founder of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, CAIR,
said “Islam is not in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become
dominant.”

Host country’s lack of knowledge about Islam allows incoming and existing
Muslims to ask for special policy, procedure, and concessions that are not
genuinely necessary for religious practice, while the actual reason for
special requests is to expedite Islam’s ‘peaceful’ growth and spread Islam
within an unknowingly naïve and benevolent host society. Though employers
may strive for workplace amiability, giving in to Muslim requests for
special privileges is dangerously irreversible. A concession is a victory
for Islam, and history shows that Islamic victories lead to larger, less
diplomatic and more comprehensive victories. Once gained, new victories are
not easily reversed, as decisions for reversal provide Muslims an assumed
‘right’ for retribution.

And for final consideration, once procedural precedent is set, Muslim
employees within other organizations will attempt to follow suit, and
demands for special privileges will increase promptly and proportionally,
causing a systematic risk throughout our country’s policies, institutions,
and organizations.


Susan
ACT! Alaska
ACT! For America Chapter
www.actalaska. <http://www.actalask a.us/> us

 

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