Mosqueing the workplace

1. Greeley CO and Grand Island, Nebraska: JB Swift meat packing plants. Muslims
get special break times. Non-Muslims protested because of the inconvenience caus
ed to them.
2. DELL Computers: Nashville. In February 2005, thirty-one Muslims working at th
e Nashville, Tennessee plant of the computer firm Dell walked off the job after
they were denied permission to leave their workstations and pray. Dell fired the
Muslim workers, but CAIR took up their cause and began to pressure Dell to chan
ge its practices in order to accommodate Islamic prayer during the workday. Dell
quickly caved. Within a month the corporation had agreed to reinstate the emplo
yees who had walked out, give them back pay, and allow them time on the job for
Islamic prayer. Dell also agreed to give its managers training in accommodating
Muslim demands in the workplace.
3. TARGET: in March 2007 Muslim cashiers at some Target store outlets in Minneap
olis began to refuse to ring up pork products, causing delays as they had other
cashiers handle the untouchable items or even told customers to ring them up the
mselves. Target Corporation finally opted for the path of least resistance, offe
ring to allow the Muslim cashiers to wear gloves while operating the cash regist
er, so as to avoid touching any of the offending pork, or to shift the recalcitr
ant, pork-hating cashiers to other jobs within the store.
4. FIRED for EATING BACON: Lina Morales, who for ten months held a job at Rising
Star, a telecoms company in Florida. One fateful day in 2004 she was eating a b
acon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at work, and was summarily fired for violatin
g a company rule against eating pork products on company premises. However, Mora
les said that she had never agreed to comply by any such rule, and indeed, “When
I got hired there, they said we don’t care what religion you are.”
Special accommodation for Muslims:
5. In September 2007, the Indianapolis Airport announced that, as part of a $1.0
7 billion terminal renovation scheduled to be completed by November 2008, footba
ths would be installed in a restroom used by cab drivers -- so that the drivers,
almost all Muslims, could easily perform the rituals required before Islamic pr
ayers. The floor-level sinks, which cost $400-600 each, would be financed throug
h airport revenue. An airport spokesman, David Dawson, insisted, “These faciliti
es are for everybody’s use.”
In schools:
6. In 2007 a public school, the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, ann
ounced plans to construct full preparation facilities for Islamic prayer – despi
te having prohibited a coffee cart from playing Christmas carols on campus the p
revious year. New York University followed suit in October 2007, as have many ot
her public colleges and universities. Seventeen universities have announced plan
s to install footbaths, including Boston University, George Washington Universit
y and Temple University. And all of this is going on at the instigation of the M
SA -- a Muslim Brotherhood organization.
7. Ridgeland School District 122 – comprising five schools in Oak Lawn, Illinois
– blazed a trail when it banned pork from school cafeterias, so as to avoid off
ending Muslim students. (The possibility that non-Muslim students might be offen
ded by having to conform their eating habits to Islamic dietary regulations was
apparently not considered.) The pork ban even included Jell-O, since gelatin is
made from pork products.
8. In San Diego’s Carver Elementary School, when over one hundred Somali Muslim
students enrolled after a charter school closed in 2006, school officials schedu
led breaks so that Muslim students could pray during school time, and even intro
duced sex-segregated classes to conform to Islamic sensibilities. Pork, of cours
e, vanished from the school cafeteria, and Arabic classes were added to the curr
iculum. Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, “In effect, Carver administrato
rs have carved out a school within a school expressly for Muslims, elevating the
m above Christian and Jewish students. They’ve had 15 minutes of instruction tim
e taken away from them, so Muslims can roll out their prayer mats. It amounts to
a special privilege afforded a specific religion, which plainly does not have o
ur best interests at heart.”
9. At Harvard University Muslim demanded, by using the excuse that Muslim women
cannot be seen without proper dress by any men particularly Non-Muslims, they go
t exclusive use of the school swimming pool one day a week!
Sharia finance
Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dow Jones, Goldman Sachs, HSBC
Bank, Lloyd’s, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Standard & Poors have created
“Sharia Advisory Boards,” staffed with Islamic clerics and scholars, in order t
o help them bring their financial practices into line with Islamic norms – so as
to attract Muslim investors and help Muslims in the West find ways to avoid bre
aking Islamic law in their financial transactions.
A journalist who has exhaustively documented Sharia finance initiatives, Alyssa
A. Lappen, reported that “among the perils of shari’a finance, according to a Ja
nuary [2008] analysis by Moody’s Investors Service are: A central role in invest
ment decisions for shari’a scholars who are actually Islamic clerics; investors
being forced to accept weak positions; short track records of major investors; m
ultiple complex asset types; risky interest rates and new ventures; plus a lack
of transparency combined with corporate management and risk control in the hosti
ng Third World countries.”