From further into the article
"Officials from the Amicus union have asked the company to allow staff members to opt out of the flights to protect their own beliefs.
BMI have ruled instead that any long-haul staff can transfer to domestic flights only.
But staff could lose up to £20,000 a year in wages - and BMI have refused to compensate them.
Since the route began in September around 40 staff have made complaints to their managers.
A similar number have taken legal advice and plan to take the company to an employment tribunal.
Homosexual activity is also illegal in Saudi Arabia and is punishable by flogging, jail or death.
A source said: "A lot of male members of staff are gay and some have gone off sick because they are so frightened of travelling to Saudi."

So the employees understand the problem. The Union understands the problem. The Union understands that the religious beliefs of their members are offended. They are not my union, and I am not as active a trade unionist as I used to be (partly family committments and partly disillusionment with the PC package) but I am heartened to hear that a union is giving it's members such support. If I hear any more via the TU grapevine, or about the Industrial Tribunal action I will post it.

BMI have taken over this route after it was abandoned by BA and they are putting profit before principle and staff welfare.
T'was ever thus.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 8, 2006 9:03 AM

What's next; BMI taking Jewish staff (or anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport) off long haul flights, because they can't remove them from just the Saudi Arabid route without being racist?

Posted by: Tziona at January 8, 2006 10:14 AM

When is someone involved in "respecting Muslim beliefs" going to stand up to these rats? Someone has to go to Saudi, someone who is too powerful for them to arrest, and challenge this. They need foreigners to run their sham of a nation - they should respect them live without.

Quijybo

Posted by: Quijybo at January 8, 2006 10:20 AM

Walk two paces behind their male colleagues? Wear an abaya? That's outrageous. I'm glad the union is taking this case up. I'm pretty sure it is sex discrimination. A quick look at the Equal Opportunities Commission website suggests that "cultural reasons" do not get employees off the hook in sex discrimination cases. The case below concerns transfer of workers rather than employment conditions, but there are some similarities. Note that "Asian" is PC code for "Muslim".

Mrs F-B, an African-Caribbean social worker, claimed that she was being discriminated against because she was female and non-Asian...

Birmingham City Council decided to redistribute its social workers to a number of different locations and sought volunteers from the members of Mrs F-B's team. Following consultation a preference was made to retain a male Asian social worker and to move the other members of the team. The basis for the preference was because a high proportion of the clientele were male Asians, who did not speak English fluently and for cultural reasons did not respond well to female social workers...

At tribunal Birmingham City Council admitted that they had discriminated against Mrs F-B. on grounds of her race and sex, but claimed that their decision was justified because of the racial-gender nature of the clientele.

The tribunal ... found in favour of Mrs F-B, saying that because her colleague had been selected to remain in his post because of his gender and race and because she was not of that gender and race then she had been discriminated against on the grounds of her race and gender.

It will be interesting to see how the tribunal progresses.

On a practical note, usually when the stewards and stewardesses are pushing the trolley up the aisle, one of them has to walk backwards. How do you do this in an abaya and two paces behind a man?

Posted by: Interested at January 8, 2006 10:21 AM

British Midland used to be a good domestic airline. I fear that they are seriously overstreched since they went international and cannot cope. As well as the existing route to Riyadh, they are opening one to Jeddah in April.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 8, 2006 10:29 AM

How do you do this in an abaya and two paces behind a man?

With enormous difficulty.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 8, 2006 10:31 AM

Please take a moment to email BMI and express your outrage. You can go to the following link;

http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/contactus/websitefeedback.aspx

Josie

Posted by: josie at January 8, 2006 10:36 AM

Ginger Rogers might know something about this; didn't she once say she had to do everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels? And then there was the tap dancing.

If you're walking backwards, doesn't "behind" become "in front"? On the other had, for the man to walk backwards might be humiliating and unislamic role reversal. What a dilemma.

Posted by: Interested at January 8, 2006 10:43 AM

Off topic: Congratulations on the win of your O's against Fulham, Granny.

On topic: I'm not going to fly BMI again any time soon.

Posted by: disillusioned_german at January 8, 2006 10:59 AM

Outrageous! This is sheer dhimmitude at its finest.

Kafir Nonbeliever

Posted by: Kafir Nonbeliever at January 8, 2006 11:01 AM

The one unheralded irony here:

-all airplanes are essentially shaped like BIG flying crosses.

Either the airline will have to remove one wing, -or add one more- so as not to offend the poor people on the ground who might accidentally look up as a flight is approaching the airport and suddenly have a eureka! moment, realizng that:

"Ohmigollygosh! Here comes a giant flying cross!"

Inshallah!

Those damned crusaders Orville and Wilber Wright must have planned it all along!

From now on we'll all know that Islam walks two steps behind the West, mentally.

Posted by: profitsbeard at January 8, 2006 11:08 AM

Profitsbeard: Brilliant analogy. I love it!

Posted by: disillusioned_german at January 8, 2006 11:18 AM

One should reciprocate: Korans, medals bearing the "Allah" inscription, and such stuff should be forbidden in Europe.

Besides the best way to deal with those stone-age lawmakers is to tell them to **ck off.

Posted by: rocky at January 8, 2006 11:24 AM

Saudi Arabia's strict laws enforced by the religious police - the Mutaween - ban the public practice of Christianity, churches and Christian religious materials, and figures of animals, including toys.

Would that we in the united states could do the exact opposite of this and ban the practice of islam along with its accoutrements.

Posted by: dms at January 8, 2006 11:46 AM

This shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone working in the vicinity of the human sewer of Saudi Arabia -- that's not to say Saudi intolerance or ludicrous Saudi demands are in any way acceptable... We should NOT agree to follow their quaint little barbarian ways...

Do readers remember how, in the first Gulf War, President Bush was "dissuaded" from celebrating Thanksgiving on Saudi soil with our troops!?! This demand was placed on him by his dainty Saudi hosts. They "refused" to allow a sitting US President from celebrating his "heathen holiday", as it would offend the delicate sophisticated sensibilities of those tender Muslims in their preposterous "kingdom". This foul demand was placed on President Bush and foolishly acceded to by him (also wrongly, and unwisely) despite the fact that American mothers and fathers, sons and daughters were on Saudi soil to help protect their execrable orifice from being usurped by Saddam Hussein of Iraq...

Were the Saudis grateful? Well, yes and no... They got to keep their blood stained "kingdom"... But after we'd saved them from certain oblivion, the Saudis proceeded to show us their version of thanksgiving by using the presence of American troops in their "sacred land" as a pretext to gin up white hot hatred of infidels in the "kingdom". This was designed to effectively drive the US out of their region and protect them from allegations of infidelity to Islam... They are venom spewing vipers. They are liars. They are thieves. They are ingrates. Saudis are the epitomy of fiends and true infidels...

Saudi Arabia, at the epicenter of Arab culture, and at the gravitational center of the gaping wound of Islam, is also hatred's epicenter and evil's font... This festering sore, along with all the the other festering sores of cultural intolerance and hatred which dominate the broader sphere of Islam are a cancer to humanity... The Muslim is the metastatic cell by which the cancer of Islam spreads -- providing new tumors which attack healthy non-Muslim tissue across the globe... How do we defeat cancer? First by stopping its spread. This can be accomplished by surgical removal of the cancerous tissue from areas that are threatened... Then, a concerted larger campaign of chemical and radiological interventions to attack the cancer at its core -- the end goal being its total eradication, or, failing that, a state of remission...

Posted by: jsla at January 8, 2006 11:54 AM

This may backfire, of course. Saudi men, used to black ghosts at home, may well want to feast their lecherous eyes on a few unveiled trolley dollies. What a disappointment for them to find all this kafir crumpet is veiled. They could switch to another airline where the infidel whores look like infidel whores. It would serve BMI right if that happened.

Posted by: Interested at January 8, 2006 12:01 PM

Saudi Arabia, at the epicenter of Arab culture, and at the gravitational center of the gaping wound of Islam, is also hatred's epicenter and evil's font... This festering sore, along with all the the other festering sores of cultural intolerance and hatred which dominate the broader sphere of Islam are a cancer to humanity... The Muslim is the metastatic cell by which the cancer of Islam spreads -- providing new tumors which attack healthy non-Muslim tissue across the globe...

Can we get this put in all the new encyclopedias published from now on?

Posted by: BayouCoyote at January 8, 2006 12:03 PM

Thanks disillusioned_german, it was indeed an excellent result.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 8, 2006 12:09 PM

Where is 60 Minutes? They should be sending a crew to film the shredding of bibles and the forced removal of crucifixes and stuffed animals at the Riyadh end of the line. Nevermind about the BBC. Still, these are the kinds of stories now percolating to the surface that raise awareness about Muslim practices and attitudes. As they say in show biz, you can't buy that kind of publicity.

Posted by: Rebecca JW at January 8, 2006 12:14 PM

these are the kinds of stories now percolating to the surface that raise awareness about Muslim practices and attitudes.

Yes, this was in a popular paper (which we take for the football coverage - honest) with lots of celebrity and TV gossip, diets of the stars of soap opera type stuff etc.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 8, 2006 1:08 PM

Profitsbeard analyzed:

"-all airplanes are essentially shaped like BIG flying crosses..."

Now we know why the Mohammedans keep blowing them up...!

Its all our fault, you see: Cross-shaped airplanes are offensive to Muslims. We should develop flying saucers instead.

(Or flying carpets, or steel -buraqs: Donkey-with- wings-kind of thing!)

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at January 8, 2006 2:02 PM

60 Minutes did do a story a while back (far before "Memo-Gate") about the institutionalized discrimination in Saudi Arabia being extended to US military women who were stationed there. They, too, had to go out in the abaya, and in the company of four male service members... I guess they also had to transport them in the back seat of cars (certainly no driving), preferably under cover of darkness.

The report did question why the US military, being in a position to resist such impositions, did not, petro-politics being the usual excuse...
Imagine all the moral compromises the world won't make when it's no longer dependent on oil.

On a lighter note, I understand the Saudi national airline "solves" the whole dilemma by only having male flight attendants. What happens if one says, "Oh, stewardess..."?

Posted by: Shinoliite at January 8, 2006 2:49 PM

Sheik yer'mami-

(Any relation to sheik yer'moneymaker?)

I'd love to see the faces of the Saudi public if a flying saucer came over Mecca!

(Their left hands would be very busy that day!)

Posted by: profitsbeard at January 8, 2006 3:07 PM

Where is 60 Minutes?
-- posted by Rebecca JW

They're caught up in a Fictive Reality called Hippie-Land. Have been for over 30 years now.

That's about the least time I watched that useless sack of Walleye assholes...

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at January 8, 2006 3:30 PM

Dhirmitude!!!

Posted by: Franze at January 8, 2006 3:41 PM

We should develop flying saucers instead.

I can't find a picture of the spaceship in Jews in Space, one of Mel Brook's spoof trailers for The History of the World Part II which he put at the end of The History of the World Part I (Hitler on Ice was another) But I remember it was in the shape of a blue and white Star of David, and the song went something like
"We're Jews in space,
zooming along protecting the Jewish race...."

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 8, 2006 3:42 PM

profitsbeard: Brilliant observation! Now we demand the Saudis stop buying any military jets.

Actually the only jets that should be flying over arabia should be B1 Bombers over Makkah and Riyadh. They think our symbols are offensive, we'll we're offended by their big cube idol in Al-Makkah. It would make great target practice for bombers, especially when its packed full of these idiots making haj.

Posted by: Provoslavni at January 8, 2006 5:24 PM

Granny -
star of David spaceship image

and just for fun

"Jews In Space" song

Posted by: justamomof4 at January 8, 2006 5:57 PM

My God - it's the infidel teddy bears! Honestly, nothing is beyond parody with this insanely murderous cult.

Posted by: johnb at January 8, 2006 7:00 PM

Provoslavni-- we can go even friendlier with the B-2 and F-117A's. They've got that non-offensive triangle shape. :)

Posted by: Shinoliite at January 8, 2006 7:01 PM

I'm just wondering WHY BMI decided to make this move. What prompted it?

Hopefully, British labor tribunals will rule against BMI. I suspect that this topic has been adjudicated before, though.

Maybe the question really is: Who benefits most from these passenger routes? The airlines or the Saudis? Corporate dhimmitude makes me want to vomit, but the truth is that the duty of corporations is to shareholders. Perhaps such corporate dhimmitude is necessary to earn a profit.

At any rate, I hope this practice by BMI is either voluntarily ended or forced to end.

Posted by: jim at January 8, 2006 7:31 PM

"My God - it's the infidel teddy bears! Honestly, nothing is beyond parody with this insanely murderous cult."

-Johnb

What about infidels carrying sex toys in their suitcases? I suppose that would offend Allah and, inshallah, Mohammed himself (plastic toys be upon him).

Posted by: Kafir Nonbeliever at January 8, 2006 8:44 PM

profitsbeard,

That's why Allah (SAW) provided clear instructions for the delta-winged jet in the Holy Qur'an.

Really, it's in there.

Posted by: Beagle at January 8, 2006 9:40 PM

Shinoliite, That's why I opted for the older B1 Bomber... Crosses dropping bombs on the Kaaba is an image I kinda like! Hey, we can even bring back the B-52s as in really BIG crosses. :)

Posted by: Provoslavni at January 8, 2006 10:32 PM

Kafir Nonbeliever: Sex toys are only allowed in Paradise. You really think weenieless muslims like Muhammed Atta is able to keep it up for all 72 of his virgin houris?

Virgin Houri...Sounds like a new liquor? Oh, that would be haram!

Posted by: Provoslavni at January 8, 2006 10:37 PM

I don't think the houris are programmed for their own satisfaction. That would amount to having rights. ;)

Posted by: Shinoliite at January 8, 2006 10:57 PM

justamomof4-

Bless you!

The link to the image of the 'Star of David ship' didn't work but the second audio of "Jews Out In Space" was delicious and will leave me with a smile that I won't be able to get off without a crowbar!

I'd love to hear that stirring song piped over the BMI loudspeakers before every pilot's announcement en route to Mecca.

May the Schwartz be with you!

Posted by: profitsbeard at January 8, 2006 11:45 PM

Beagle-

Is this the Koranic verse you mean?

SURA 31 "Luqman"- (near the end)

"When waves overshadow them like tent coverings..."

Waves, being arc-shaped, or, "delta-winged", overshadowing them, or "flying" over their heads (since tents are always above you)? Thus, Allah presented a clear blueprint for the most advanced aerodynamic class of aircraft on Earth in the 7th century. A type of flying machine that would take mere foolish mortals another 1300 years to equal.

Amazing how exegesis of a few simple Koranic words can extract such technologically superior wisdom!

(Especially after the fact.)

What Muslims were doing riding camels when this scientific miracle was staring them in the face all that time is another one of those ineffable mysteries of Allah!

P.S.-

Did the Qu'ran have anything to say about hydrogen fuel storage?

Or why he allowed the infidel Danes to come up with the breakthrough, especially after mocking his last prophet with their damned cartoons?

The echatological Enigma deepens!

Posted by: profitsbeard at January 9, 2006 12:05 AM

Do they have a "Koran Code" subculture like the "Bible Code" documentary on The History Channel? Y'know, the kind where you can take every nth character via a computer and then claim your scripture predicts, say, Superbowl winners?

Or are they too busy carrying out the calls to violence made explicit in the Koran's text?

Posted by: Shinoliite at January 9, 2006 12:56 AM

justamomof4
Thank you so much for that, I searched Google but the best I came up with was Mel Brooks filmographies which at least confirmed that I had the right main film. You have proved that my long term memory is still not bad, (but I lost my 4th pair of reading glasses over Christmas.)

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at January 9, 2006 3:19 AM

This is the TRUE face of Islam...

The religious tolerance is just a smoke screen for the Morons in the american Left...

Just try to bring a bible into any muslim country..

They will shred it at the airport (and your hand along with it)...

Just try to bring in even a crucifix or other non muslim necklace...

Your head will be taken off for this horrific crime...

The Hypocrisy of Islam is abundantly clear to anyone who is willing to look...

Posted by: jingoist at January 9, 2006 11:29 AM

what is so proposterous is that we allow this cult of death and depravity to hide behind the protections of a "religion" . Islam Is a religion, but it is also a cult of barbarism unmatched in the world today. We must stand up, confident in the knowledge that Islam is a dark force that is worth fighting. In fact, with communism dead, Islam is the greatest dark force on Earth today. I know that, YOU know that...now the world must know it.

Posted by: templar at January 9, 2006 4:54 PM

This highlights afresh the slow but steady manner in which the freedoms and rights of non-Muslims are being eroded.

BMI have overstepped the mark in requiring their staff to submit to this measure instead of standing up for the rights of the free world.

British citizens must stand up against this intolerance.

Posted by: Gerry at January 10, 2006 10:45 AM

It is interesting to note in this context, that BMI monitors on planes ie the ones that show the location of the plane in flight, also show an updated version of the direction to Mecca.

I'm sure that many Hindus, Jews and others find this pandering to islam, highly offensive - particularly as this the very religion whose adherents, have made flying such a pleasure for one and all.

Posted by: DP111 at January 12, 2006 5:25 AM

"Infidel teddy bears" are banned-
Why such an aversion towards cuddly teddy bears?Probably it stems from Prophet Mo's(Peace to His killers)hatred towards the dolls,which baby Ayesha was playing with,whenever he wanted to 'play'with her!.-A 65 year old man lusting for a six year old baby!.

Posted by: rafia at January 13, 2006 2:52 PM