The Next Offensive

I actually caught wind of this in the Washington Post this morning, then tripped over the Omaha World Herald story while working on the previous post. It seems that the next offensive by islamists against American values has begun. No, not the Minneapolis airport cab drivers or the flying imams. This is at a meat packing plant in Nebraska. And CAIR is in it up to their eyeballs. WaPo:

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say.

The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a complaint to be filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The petition compiles testimony from at least 44 workers who had planned to sign the complaint during a meeting Sunday. The signing was changed to a later date because of a logistical problem.

Jama Mohamed, 28, said he was fired in June for leaving a production line to pray. Supervisors would not allow him a break, he said.

The allegation is that Swift won't let them simply walk off the production line. Omaha paper:

"That is a significant number of employees, and there is not much of a way to accommodate that consistent with keeping the production online," Donald Selzer said.

The complaint reprises concerns that boiled over in May, when 120 Somali workers abruptly quit when they were not allowed to pray at sundown. About 70 of them returned to the plant a week later, but union officials worried the issue would resurface as sundown inched later each day through the spring.

Later sunsets run past evening breaks meant to keep workers from long stretches on production lines.

"For three days it was all good and we were praying — there was no hassle, no interference, nothing at all," Ali Schire said through an interpreter. Schire, 30, said he was among the 70 who quit and later returned.

"All of a sudden after three days . . . they were suspending people, they were firing people," Schire said. "Some of the people even had to give up praying at all for fear of being fired."

Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said: "They are treating (the Somalis) like criminals now — anyone who prays is a criminal."

Lovely name for an activist. The Swift people have a production facility to run. People walking off the line – for any reason – cause major disruption and can make the line shut down entirely. As far as I know, there is no requirement for employers to accommodate religion, merely not to discriminate against it. Certainly, this accommodating would give Muslims rights in the workplace that no other religion enjoys. I also understand that it is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim to say the prayer silently to himself when conditions dictate it. (I'll try to find a reference to that if I can).