Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Marc, so if the plant happens to employ a majority non-christians then it's ok to fire christians that insist on celebrating easter mass or christmas rather than reporting for work?

Posted by: Janne | September 13, 2008 9:47 AM

When I was working in a market research company, we had an employee who was training to be an Imam. This prompted a lot of interested questioning by us non-Muslims (with only one hostile example, to my knowledge). Anyway, the conference room was used by this man to pray in at the proscribed times and nobody minded a bit. He usually did better at call rates anyway, despite the prayers.
I agree with Adam - it's just good manners to accommodate others, he didn't insist on us eating halal, we didn't mind him praying, simple as that. -DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | September 13, 2008 10:31 AM

What would the Army do with muslims who refused to eat or work during daylight hours during Ramadan?

Posted by: Axis of Weasel | September 13, 2008 10:47 AM

Weasel, that's about the same as asking what the army does with Jews on their holy day, or Christians on Christmas or Easter. It isn't a big deal.

The army makes (some) accommodations for all sorts of odd or not so odd rituals and practices -- they probably don't give pork MREs to Muslims, for example, and probably even have kosher MREs, vegetarian MREs, etc.

And (most) religions make some accommodations for all sorts of practical constraints. Muslims have all sorts of exceptions to the Ramadan rules -- sickness, the elderly, pregnancy, etc.

Now interestingly, AFAIK Ramadan traditionally involves a cease-fire so that both sides don't desecrate their most sacred month. This still happens now and then, but apparently even Mohamed himself fought a few battles during Ramadan (according to wikipedia).

Posted by: kevin | September 13, 2008 11:23 AM

DaveL:

I think your status as an unbeliever is prolly safe.

Where, oh where is moronroberts? He can't pass up this sort of battle. GOD knows what might happen if all of the heretics, infidels and unbelievers were shown the same courtesies routinely extended to mainline AMERICAN christian faiths.

Posted by: democommie | September 13, 2008 1:13 PM

Axis of Weasel asked,"What would the Army do with muslims who refused to eat or work during daylight hours during Ramadan?"

Either make accomadations or discharge them. It's a little known fact that when the US had a draft there were exemptions for men whose religious based lifestyles conflicted with military life.

Posted by: Bill in NC | September 13, 2008 2:12 PM

I don't claim any great knowledge of religious practices, however, I don't think this is close to being comparable.
Catholics (again in my limited experience) give up eating some food (or beverage) for Lent, usually something like chocolate covered ants or quinces stuffed with quail, or some-such. But they can eat at anytime in the day or night, just not those (voluntarily) prohibited foods, any other foods are fine. Thus they never go really hungry during Lent.
Muslim don't eat (or only bread and water) during the day during Ramadan, however after sunset they can eat what they like.
They simply asked for their break to be moved. They are not getting any less work time and besides it would improve productivity because the workers' blood sugar level would be improved. I don't see how Lent and Ramadan are comparable nor can I see the workers' request as being unreasonable. -DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | September 13, 2008 2:33 PM

Oops, my bad. I'm confusing the days of abstinence, which is concerning the consumption of meat products, with the days of fasting. Catholics are supposed to eat a piscetarian diet every friday.

My bad.

Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | September 13, 2008 2:36 PM

I thought the infallible Pope released (oops) one of his predecessors made a mistake. So now it's OK not to eat fish on Friday, you don't actually get condemned to Hell. But what about those who broke the rule BEFORE it was changed? Did Vatican II see them upgraded to heaven?* - :) DJ
*Thanks to Father Dougal for this puzzler. "That would be an ecumenical matter".

Posted by: DingoJack | September 13, 2008 2:50 PM

I've got to say that the Muslims are expecting a ridiculous amount of accommodation. If you won't handle pork, don't apply for a job in a store that handles pork product. Let God provide if that presents a problem for you. If you're a devout Jew and want to keep the Sabbath, don't apply with available hours on Saturday. Same for the Christian that doesn't want to work Sundays. Etc. I don't get why they wouldn't ask these questions on a job interview and say no thanks to a job that was in opposition to their religious views -- except the answer is obvious. The amount of accommodation for Muslims seems to be getting to the extent of bending over backwards and kissing their ass. If they needed a break time of 7:30 any time of the year, they should have asked before taking the job if they had that option. Not expecting the whole damned line to stop for them. The Christians took a job that did break for Christmas and now are expected to have to change their breaktimes to accommodate religious bullies?

We're taking tolerance to extremes that Muslims are taking advantage of politically -- worldwide. I'm sorry but we do need to consider what's happening in other countries. We don't think we should give them the option of shariah courts but we should change a breaktime or give them a private room for prayer. I vehemently disagree.

Posted by: T's Grammy | September 13, 2008 4:51 PM

Sorry for the double post.

Posted by: T's Grammy | September 13, 2008 4:54 PM

As I understand it, the Muslims also wanted to pray five times a day. You can't stop a line like that. You can swap workdays in advance.

Posted by: Phil | September 13, 2008 6:20 PM

Quoth DingoJack:

They are not getting any less work time...

besides it would improve productivity because the workers' blood sugar level would be improved.

I don't see how Lent and Ramadan are comparable nor can I see the workers' request as being unreasonable.

Brianna Castillo, a non-Muslim JBS Swift worker told the Tribune Friday, "The Somalis are running our plant. They are telling us what do to."

Joe Rios, a day-shifter for nine months at Swift, said he felt the Somalis were asking for special treatment and "taking advantage of our kindness" in America. He said "most of us" at Swift are Catholic and observe a month of Lent each year without seeking work concessions based on religion.

"I think it's either you want to make money and work and put your prayers aside or you stay home," he said.

This should not be viewed in isolation.  These acts are coordinated through CAIR, which is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (as is the ISNA) and has had several former officials convicted of terrorism-related offenses.  The aim of the Muslim Brotherhood is "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

If Christian Identity had such a stealth program to subvert the Constitution, Ed would be all over it (he already is all over the attempts to subvert science education), but his skepticism seems not to extend to non-Christian dogma or demands.  IMHO, he (and DingoJack, and many others here) are way too trusting of the Muslims.  If you want a secular and free society, you have to defend it from ALL threats and subversion, not just those from sects of the majority religion.  Freedom-lovers giving sympathy for members of a religion with a 13-century record of violent conquest and oppression is almost certainly a mistake.

Article links in next comment, to avoid the trap.

Posted by: Engineer-Poet | September 13, 2008 9:59 PM

Engineer-Poet -

It's unreasonable because the Muslims will not reciprocate when it's anyone else's practices or holiday.

Posted by: Taz | September 13, 2008 10:59 PM

I'm torn on this one. I would certainly support any reasonable accomodation, but production lines in processing and manufacturing plants can't reasonably be stopped in such a manner unless the whole line changes. If the workers agreed together to shift the break for the entire line to the later time, management would probably support the change. It's a damn shame that the coworkers here don't seem to have that kind of respect and consideration for each other. And I'm by no means unilaterally condemning the non-Muslim workers for bowing up and rejecting the idea. It sounds to me as if there's considerable animosity on both sides.

Our oldest daughter is teaching sixth-graders. One of the girls in her class is observing Ramadan; not only has she encouraged this child to explain the sacred month and its observance, but the kids in the class who had planned to have birthday parties during the month have, on their own, rescheduled their parties to next month to help their friend maintain her daytime fast.

This is happening, by the way, in a Christian day school, not a public school. I am proud of my daughter for showing such wise ecumenical leadership in that milieu.

Posted by: Leigh Williams | September 13, 2008 11:38 PM

"And in other news, the Muslims have escalated to making threats via flyers, such as "Behead those who insult Islam." (second article link)."

Where are you getting that from? I read the second article and I can't find that anywhere. I tried to read through the comments for it too, but after about eighty posts of pig-ignorant right-wing shit about "the Islamization of Europe" I decided that life really was too short and gave up.

Posted by: Der Bruno Stroszek | September 14, 2008 5:29 AM

I have taken note that there seems to be a growing tide of resentment against religious accommodation for Muslims taking place in Europe.

Population levels of Muslims are higher there than in most places in the US, and as demographics shift, anger is growing.

Islam in not a very tolerant religion, I think it can safely be argued, and the fear is that a large segment of European Muslims do not crave a secular society.

At some point, a nation such as the US, which values its secular nature is going to have to make hard decisions about the extent of religious accommodation it is going accept.

Here is an example of the sort of religious accommodation based on intolerance that is causing upset:

Public pool hours for Muslim men only, because of their religious delicacies, !

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-560231/Public-pool-bars-father-son-Muslim-swimming-session.html they refuse to share a pool with non Muslims. Imagine if it was Sunday mornings for white KKK members only

Posted by: Gingerbaker | September 14, 2008 11:37 AM

Re: working during Ramadan. Muslims do not stop working during Ramadan, not even during daylight hours. They simply fast from before sunup until after sundown. Many even abstain from drinking water. They are also supposed to abstain from smoking during that time, and are supposed to abstain sexually throughout the month.

There is great variation between individuals with respect to how rigorously they follow these requirements, but there is no requirement that they abstain from working.

Islam also allows for pragmatic exceptions. For example, a Muslim working in the arctic when Ramadam occurred during summer would not be required to wait for a non-existent nighttime to eat.

Gingerbaker, I must disagree with your statement that "Islam is not a very tolerant religion." A religion cannot be either tolerant nor intolerant, only individuals, and there is great variation among individuals. I have several Muslim friends, all of whom are quite tolerant.

Posted by: James Hanley | September 14, 2008 12:24 PM

Gingerbaker: Didn't the head of the Church of England recently advocate Sharia Law for Muslims in Britain?

Evidently not:

Dr Williams noted that Orthodox Jewish courts already operated, and that the law accommodated the anti-abortion views of some Christians.
...
People may legally devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed third party as long as both sides agree to the process.

Muslim Sharia courts and the Jewish Beth Din which already exist in the UK come into this category.

The country's main Beth Din at Finchley in north London oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes.

It appears that he was suggesting a way to legally allow disputes between people to be resolved in a manner agreeable to their religious and cultural values if both parties are in agreement, like what is already available to the Jewish community.

This may or may not be a good idea, but it hardly seems like caving in to Muslim demands. It sounds like offering a significant portion of the population a certain legal avenue that is already available to another portion of the community.

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The problem is for every one of your acquaintance's stories, the internet can offer us a thousand documentations of Muslims Behaving Badly.

Sure, and all of them speaking of the same dozen or so individual events. Meanwhile, the many, many cases of a Muslim coming home, hugging his children, and maybe even helping his wife with the dishes doesn't make the news because such things aren't really news.

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Of course, outside of Europe most(?) Islamic countries are Islamic Theocracies, so that should give us a clue.

One has at least one entire Muslim country, namely Turkey, which not only is not a theocracy, but comes pretty close to France in its attempt at secularization.

I don't know. To me, it sounds like something typical in many Asian and African countries. Many countries are dictatorships, where the laws and courts are based on principles espoused by a few "Big Men" -- if the "Big Men" happen to Muslim clerics it's called a theocracy, otherwise it's called "that's the way those people are". It sounds too much like a cultural thing to me, maybe even a geopolitical issue rather than something specific to Islam.

Having known many tolerant Muslims myself and no intolerant ones, I think that any religion, whether it is Islam or Christianity, will be a reflection of the entire society. As the society changes, the explicit religious tenets will accommodate themselves to the new social beliefs held by the citizens. This is what happened with Christianity; originally pretty anti-democratic and illiberal, it was basically dragged kicking and screaming through the Enlightenment; now many Christians belief that their faith was always pro-liberty and pro-democracy.

I see no reason why Islam can't make the same adjustments. It might be able to change as the greater societies of which it is a part changes -- like it has in Turkey.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 14, 2008 2:00 PM

Gingerbaker: I don't know - that sounds like advocating Sharia law for British Muslims, at least to me.

What does? This? For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court. [Bolding added.]

As the article pointed out, this would be an option if both parties agreed to it, just like two Jewish parties of a dispute have the option of having their dispute settled according to Jewish traditional laws. Maybe this is "advocating Sharia law for British Muslims", in which case you haven't really made a case against it. I think, though, that when most people read "advocating Sharia law for British Muslims", they are going to interpret that as meaning that a Muslim would be forced into using Sharia law against her wishes, which Williams doesn't appear to be advocating at all.

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"the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty". Uh-oh!

Do you find the phrase problematic? Do you think that someone should be forced into loyalty to one's culture or to one's state? Or do you think that Williams is over-simplifying the issue?

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At any rate, seeing how British Orthodox Jews have already been accommodated in this very way, why are you concerned that someone has proposed accommodating Muslims in the same way?

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...all I have to work with is the available data....

And the existence of many tolerant Muslims and even Muslims who support secular government aren't data?

I can believe that most Muslims world-wide are very conservative and may even support the notion of a theocratic state and intolerance of other faiths in their nations. I do know that any attempt by people in those nations to liberalize their societies, advocating Western notions of liberty and equality and democracy, will often be opposed by political and religious leaders, often invoking their notions of Islam.

But what troubles me is this a priori labeling of Islam as intolerant and fundamentalist, ignoring that a religion is only a manifestation of the attitudes and beliefs of its people, and that in some areas Islam is non-fundamentalist and tolerant. The automatic labeling of Islam as "dangerous" or "opposed to the ideals of liberal democracy" then is used to prejudge individual Muslims before one makes the effort to know what that individual's beliefs actually are. It is also used to label entire minority communities as "subversive" and "dangerous".

Furthermore it masks how much of the conservative, intolerant/exclusive attitudes of Muslims are really a reaction to racial prejudice of minorities in European and North American nations, and a reaction to the consequences of Western neo-liberalism/imperialist foreign policies on Third World Nations which then become incorporated into the religious expression of the people; in fact, is used justify further repression of domestic minorities and more aggressive policies against foreign nations.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 14, 2008 4:45 PM

James Hanley,

Of course a religion can be more or less tolerant. Islam in its mainstream form is intolerant in that it teaches that other religions should be eliminated, that infidels should be killed, that Jews and Christians should only be tolerated if they submit to second-class status, that the testimony of non-Muslims is inadmissible in court, etc. As you say, many individual Muslims are tolerant, but that simply means that they have the decency not fully to follow their religion. If you look a the Muslim-majority countries of the world, for example, you will find that in almost all of them Islam is the state religion and that other religions are discriminated again, not merely by virtue of being in the minority but by such provisions as laws permitting only Muslims to serve in the important government positions. So, yes, there is individual variation among Muslims, but we can certainly compare both the group behaviour of Mulims with that of adherents of other religions and the precepts of Islam with those of other religions. By both measures, Islam is the least tolerant of all major religions.

Posted by: Bill Poser | September 14, 2008 10:00 PM

Chiroptera said:

"I think, though, that when most people read "advocating Sharia law for British Muslims", they are going to interpret that as meaning that a Muslim would be forced into using Sharia law against her wishes, which Williams doesn't appear to be advocating at all."

I apologize if that is your interpretation - it is not mine and I certainly did not mean to convey such a message.

I meant it to convey that he was advocating a parallel and official system of justice based an Shari laws as an option for Muslims. I think that is how most of his critics understood his position, as well.

Your suggestion that he was simply referring to a system of argument dispute already used by members of some Jewish synagogues raises, at least to me, the question of why did that need to be asked?

Of course Muslims would have a system of dispute resolution available to them through their mosques, so why would the head of the CoE need to make this an issue?

=> Have I missed the point here? Does England have a parallel official set of laws for Jews?

The articles I read which were critical of Dr Williams were upset that he seemed to be pleading a special case for Islamic religious accommodation.

Chiroptera:

""the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty". Uh-oh!

Do you find the phrase problematic? Do you think that someone should be forced into loyalty to one's culture or to one's state? Or do you think that Williams is over-simplifying the issue?"

I think it is a problem when the issue of religious accommodation gets to the point that phrases with a distinct fascist flavor have become part of the discussion. I think it is slippery slope when the discussion veers into territory where the secular laws of a secular nation are vetted against any religious sensibilities.

If cultural sensibilities are in direct opposition to the laws of a secular society, the religious sensibilities should be denied. Britain already was accommodating the requests of routine accommodation of Muslims for many years before Dr Williams made his statement. So, what was he really proposing?

Sharia law, for example calls for the beheading of homosexuals, and in some Mid Eastern Islamic theocracies, this judgment is carried out today in the public square. Is this the sort of thing he was proposing?

Was he proposing that, for example, Muslim homosexuals might be punished, or that Muslim adolescent girls be married according to the dictates of their mosque tribunal? Was he proposing some criminal law to be shunted to a Sharia system? If he was merely referring to dispute resolution why did he bother?

Posted by: Gingerbaker | September 15, 2008 12:27 PM