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Stealth jihad update from Minnesota. "On the job, their way," by Chris Serres in the Star Tribune, June 15 (thanks to Paul):
Fatuma Hassan has just enough rice in her near-empty cupboards to make it through the month. The anger she felt when she lost her job in May has given way to a dull, nagging hunger.Yet this soft-spoken 22-year-old became an unlikely hero within the Somali community when she and five of her Muslim co-workers were dismissed last month from the Mission Foods tortilla factory in New Brighton for refusing to wear a new company uniform -- a shirt and pants -- they consider a violation of their Islamic beliefs.
"For me, wearing pants is the same as being naked," Hassan said, noting the prophet Mohammed taught that men and women should not dress alike. "My culture, my religious beliefs, are more important than a uniform."
Then get another job -- but of course that wouldn't solve the problem, because that is not the point of this exercise. The objective here is to force American companies to accommodate Muslim sensibilities.
Over the past century, Minnesota has seen waves of immigrants from Germany, Sweden, Norway and Laos, among other nations, and each group managed to move up the ladder of prosperity despite some initial doubts about their ability to integrate.Yet nearly two decades after a violent civil war brought thousands of Somali refugees to the Twin Cities, their integration in the U.S. workplace is becoming more contentious.
Their insistence on maintaining Muslim traditions, including prayer times and modest clothing, have led to firings at several manufacturers across the state and a sharp increase in religious discrimination complaints.
The well-publicized clashes also have sparked legal and ethical debates on whether efficiency-hungry workplaces are doing enough or defiant workers are accommodating too little.
"For the average Minnesotan, this is entirely new," said Bruce Corrie, an economist at Concordia University in St. Paul who specializes in immigration research. "The Somali community is highly assertive and politically engaged. ... It's part of who they are as a people."
But of course it has nothing to do with religion. Have you ever noticed that it never does? It is, as ever, all about economics. If we give them money, they will assimilate. Good luck with that:
But the root cause of the persistent tension is more about economics than culture or religion, say some immigration experts.Unlike their counterparts from other parts of the Muslim world, a disproportionate percentage of recent Somali immigrants have taken lower-level assembly line jobs where accommodations for religious practices are seen as an impediment to productivity.
Did you catch that? It's not about religion, but the difference between the Somalis and other Muslim immigrants is not that others don't demand accommodation for Islamic religious practices -- it's just that they work in jobs where such accommodations are harder to get.
Twenty-three percent of Somali workers in Minnesota work in manufacturing jobs, well above the 16 percent for the population as a whole, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. And one-quarter of Somalis in the state over the age of 25 have less than a ninth-grade education, a rate five times higher than the overall population, according to census data."We have a saying in Somalia that 'he who approaches the lion does not know what a lion is,'" said Abdi Sheikhosman, a professor of Islamic law at the University of Minnesota. "Many Somalis arrive here not knowing the history of racial divide in this country. They don't know the lion they are up against."
Abdi Sheikhosman is purveying rancid nonsense. This is about race? So is Abdi Sheikhosman expecting me to believe that white employees at the Mission Foods tortilla factory in New Brighton were excused from wearing the new company uniform, while the black Somalis were not? I highly doubt that was the case.
Bias complaints risingOf course, the melting pot that is the United States has always had immigration clashes. "In places that have successions of immigrant groups, the latest one is always seen as the worst of all," said Roger Daniels, a history professor at the University of Cincinnati and author of several books on American immigration policy and history. "There were 'argumentative Jews' and 'noisy Italians.' ... The newcomers are never like the ones that we've learned how to accommodate." [...]
Indeed. The immigrant Muslims are not just "argumentative" or "noisy." No immigrant group has ever come with a ready-made system of laws and mores that they believed superior to the system they encountered here. And no immigrant group was ever so unwilling -- since they believe their system to come from the one true God -- to assimilate. But no one can face those facts, or face up to the consequent necessity to restrict immigration of Muslims -- if, that is, we want to preserve our own society and laws.
The Somali experience is closest to that of Orthodox Jews at the turn of the century, said Donna Gabaccia, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Jews also had distinctive food taboos ("kosher" only), clothing (women wore wigs to cover their hair) and their own schedule of religious holidays.
Yes. But they didn't have a political and social agenda, or a supremacist imperative.
Religious discrimination complaints nationally have nearly doubled since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- a reflection, some argue, of the heightened state of anxiety and fear concerning Muslims. In Minnesota, Muslims filed 45 religious discrimination cases with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2007, up from just eight in 2004. The EEOC does not break down this data by ethnicity.
This is a consequence of an assertiveness that is being fueled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that provoked the Sharia cab controversy.
And many of the more publicized disputes in the area -- including Target cashiers who declined to scan pork and cabdrivers refusing to transport passengers with alcohol -- never made it to an EEOC filing."After 9/11, there was a growing sense among Muslims that they had to stand together, at least to oppose unjustified actions," said Thomas Berg, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas.
For Abdisalam Adam, director of the Dar Al-Hijrah Cultural Center in Minneapolis and an imam at an area mosque, the issue goes beyond 9/11 to cultural differences. "You would think this would have been more of an issue in 1993 or 1994," when Somalis started arriving in the Twin Cities in large numbers, he said. "But now, Somalis and employers have gotten to know each other, and the situation is only getting worse."
Many Somalis come from tribes that move with their herds every six months in a constant search for safe grazing land, Sheikhosman said. Many of these nomads are fiercely independent and equate freedom with being left alone, he said.
Sheikhosman said that each time he returns to Somalia to visit his relatives, he is struck by "the general chaos of the place," he said. At a Somali airport counter, he said, the only way to be served is to yell and push one's way through a crowd.
"Imagine that a person comes coming from that environment is suddenly subjected to all these regulations and rules" in the workplace, he said. "He may think these are an intrusion to the freedom that he had at home. He's not afraid to take a stand."
Combined with this nomadic sense of independence is a belief that faith and life are interconnected, and that religious practices should not be confined to a particular hour or day of the week, said Adam of the Dar Al-Hijrah Cultural Center.
Many of the religious discrimination complaints revolve around the Islamic prayer schedule. Praying five times a day is one of the essential pillars of Islam, but prayer times vary daily, based on the times of sunrise and sunset. In July, the difference between the afternoon and sunset prayers can be four hours apart; in December, it's just two hours.
The changing prayer times can be disruptive to assembly-line manufacturers that maintain assigned break schedules and can't afford to have their workers leave their work stations at unscheduled times. Many Somalis argue that their prayers take no longer than a bathroom break, yet bathroom breaks aren't prohibited.
In 2005, 16 workers at Celestica's circuit-board manufacturing plant in Arden Hills were fired or suspended for taking unauthorized breaks at sunset. The changing Islamic prayer schedule was a key reason.
Faysal Haliye, 43, a Somali refugee and former Celestica employee, said he was heading to the company's prayer room -- a room where each day for two years he dutifully prayed toward Mecca -- when a manager stood near the entrance and ordered him to return to his post as a machine operator.
"I had been praying my whole life and wanted to continue praying my whole life," he said. "No one had ever told me not to [pray] before."
Haliye and 22 other workers have since filed a class action lawsuit against Celestica, accusing the company of religious discrimination. The suit is pending.
The Mission Foods clash has also led to a lawsuit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, filed a religious discrimination complaint on behalf of the women with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
CAIR's involvement is no surprise, and underlines the stealth jihad aspect of all this.
Mission Foods had implemented the new dress code for all factory workers and told its Muslim workers that their traditional clothing was too loose-fitting and posed a safety hazard near machines.
Horror of horrors! Racism!
The cleric-driven aspect of all this shows up here:
Strength in numbersMuslim religious leaders, or imams, play a significant leadership role in the Somali immigrant community and are often sought out for advice on how to behave in the workplace. Imams were vocal supporters of the Somali taxi drivers who, last year, attracted nationwide controversy for refusing to transport alcohol-toting customers from the airport.
And Hassan had to cut short an interview to meet an imam to discuss the situation, along with the five other workers from the Mission plant....
About 300 of Marsden's 1,600 employees in the Twin Cities are immigrants from East Africa nations such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Yet after more than two decades of employing Somalis, Marsden can count the number of disputes on one hand.
On a few occasions, Somali male workers complained about having to take orders from female managers. And once, as violence in Somalia intensified, a fight broke out on a job site between members of separate warring clans. The company held a training session on how to get along in the workplace, and the fighting stopped.
Marsden's biggest concern was how clients would react when they came upon Muslim janitors kneeling for prayer -- particularly in the heightened climate of anxiety after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To prevent surprises, Marsden has assigned prayer spaces at many of its work sites.
"They are very loyal workers," Marsden said. "We wouldn't employ them unless it made good business sense."
That good business sense could be the epitaph of American Constitutional government -- unless at some point officials wake up to the ultimate goal of Sharia accommodation, and call a halt.
Posted by Robert at June 18, 2008 6:24 AM
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Sheikhosman said that each time he returns to Somalia to visit his relatives
There's a war going on that makes them flee their country but there's no problem going back to visit?
Why don't they migrate to a nearby country? That has similar culture?
Posted by: Borg![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 18, 2008 7:21 AM
For me "Not wearing pants" is the same as naked..
Posted by: payingattention at June 18, 2008 7:28 AM
CAIR are the biggest waste of space I've ever come across. They are disgusting because they profess to be this wonderful organisation helping everyone to get along with everyone else, yet essentially, their hidden agenda is to inevitably assert the right for Muslims to get their way over everyone else.
Or, stealth jihad as Robert calls it.
"Many Somalis argue that their prayers take no longer than a bathroom break, yet bathroom breaks aren't prohibited".
People come to work to.... work. Not to pray and/or take many bathroom breaks. They can either pray in the morning or at night and just get used to it.
Otherwise, these Muslims could just leave and go back to wherever they came from. Simple.
Posted by: S Perry at June 18, 2008 7:34 AM
When a person works for a manufacturing establishment they are given training, extensively, in how NOT to destroy the facility they are working for.
How hard would it be to use this same information to destroy the same?
For one hundred years, workers with, shall we say, limited personal mental resources worked at the sugar refinery in Savannah, GA.
Nobody blew it up in those one hundred years, until this year.
The people who have been picking, and packing produce all these years did not, most likely, graduate from Harvard or Princeton.
Yet America has had one of the safest food supply chains in the world.
Is it a coincidence that ALL the tomatoes are contaminated with ONE strain (of thousands) of the Salmonella bacteria? Or that the this same strain is called aptly, the St. Paul strain?
The two step side shuffle by the FDA tells me that it is known how they got contaminated and are hoping it will go away before they have to release their findings.
I wonder if it will be nearby pig lots or some such. Yeah and they all had the same strain. Sure and VIP's don't get special mortgage rates.
Terror doesn't have to kill you, just make you think it might happen.
at June 18, 2008 8:29 AM
Other religious groups have similar needs for strict observance of religious laws in daily life. Orthodox Jews and Amish are obvious examples. They don't expect the world to accommodate them. They either setup their own businesses or work on farms.
Jerry
Posted by: Jerry M at June 18, 2008 8:38 AM
"For me, wearing pants is the same as being naked,"
Typical Islamic inversion of logic. Wearing pants = naked.
Then get another job -- but of course that wouldn't solve the problem, because that is not the point of this exercise. The objective here is to force American companies to accommodate Muslim sensibilities.
-Robert-
Bingo!
Posted by: awake at June 18, 2008 8:39 AM
Hmm. EEO vs. OSHA. Not sure who'll win.
Posted by: Lori B. at June 18, 2008 9:51 AM
Oh Bravo! Mission came through!
Mission NOT impossible! Back on my grocery list, they are.
Posted by: darcy at June 18, 2008 10:22 AM
They are lucky their husbands let them work - wait a minute......
I thought proper Muslim wives never left the house........
Now I'm misunderstanding Islam!
All you jihad watch bloggers - read "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It will give you incredible insight into the Somali cultural arrogance. Combine this with a helping of Muslim arrogance and you have a group of migrant goat herders who think they are better than the heirs to the greatest civilization the world has known.
Talk about hubris!
Posted by: tanstaafl at June 18, 2008 10:39 AM
People, here is the Mission Foods "Contact Us" form. Please send a Comment or Compliment. I chose Compliment!
http://qa.missionfoods.com/qualityinternet/frmMov_NQualityUser.aspx
at June 18, 2008 10:58 AM
Mission Foods had implemented the new dress code for all factory workers and told its Muslim workers that their traditional clothing was too loose-fitting and posed a safety hazard near machines.
Have them sign a legal waiver and put up a bond for any equipment they might damage, and grind away.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at June 18, 2008 1:26 PM
Mission Foods had implemented the new dress code for all factory workers and told its Muslim workers that their traditional clothing was too loose-fitting and posed a safety hazard near machines.
thats the key words "safety hazard near machines"let one of these muslim woman get caught in a machine and she will find out what its like to be really nude in frount of men in the hospital let them were there buka like robes but DONT LET THEM SUE OR ANTHING ELSE WHEN THEY GET CAUGHT AND DRAGGED INTO THE MACHINES BY THERE ROBES
at June 18, 2008 1:32 PM
Have Somalis gone anywhere without dragging along some huge controversy? I remember all the initial problems when they started arriving here in the early 90s as refugees. In Ottawa, they stuck together in a few apartment blocks and wound up pretty much terrorizing everyone in the neighborhood. Even the mainstream media covered that way back when. Was a huge story for many months.
I had some international students from Kenya as good friends back then, too, and they told me over and over again how the Somalis were regarded as the "thieves of Africa," nothing better than criminal scum. I thought that they were being a bit over the top, as they were really biased due to tribal affiliations and so forth with other Africans, but I soon learned better from experiences here at home.
Why are we trying to accommodate this nonsense? It's absolutely insane. We're bowing to the demands of medieval nomads who don't even know how to line up like civilized people in post offices. Sheer madness. We're taking advice on how to run our societies from veritable barbarians who've given the world NOTHING.
Posted by: OutOfAqaba at June 18, 2008 2:54 PM
Send Mission Foods words of support and encouragement via their web based contact form at: http://qa.missionmenus.com/qualityinternet/frmMov_NQualityUser.aspx
Posted by: dm60462 at June 18, 2008 3:53 PM
There are individuals in the US State Dept that intentionally implant large contingents of bigoted, unprogressive and decidely anti-American cultures into previously peaceful, progressive American communities in the United States. The destructive results are wholely predictable, leading to the end of peace and progress.
These State Dept employees should be brought up on charges of cultural genocide, according the the UN definition on genocide:
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
New York, 1948
Objectives
This convention declares genocide a crime under international law. It defines what genocide is, and condemns this crime whether it's committed in peacetime or wartime.
Key Provisions
The convention defines genocide as any act committed with the idea of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This includes such acts as:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to physically destroy the group (the whole group or even part of the group)
Forcefully transferring children of the group to another group
The convention declares that there is no immunity from being prosecuted for committing genocide: those found guilty of genocide will be punished for their crime, regardless of whether they are or were legally constituted ruler, public officials, or private individuals.
http://www.bravenewsworld.blogspot.com
at June 18, 2008 4:07 PM
"Have them sign a legal waiver and put up a bond for any equipment they might damage, and grind away."
Posted by: Concerned Citizen
The thing is, waivers are often defeated in courts. I'm sure someone would insist she didn't know what she was signing, being a downtrodden little foreigner and all that.
As for other employees, I would expect them to insist upon being allowed, likewise, to wear their own clothes to work.
What's probably going to happen is that Mission will be forced ask their uniform design company to create a Muslimah-friendly uniform.
Posted by: Abscedere at June 18, 2008 5:09 PM
What's probably going to happen is that Mission will be forced ask their uniform design company to create a Muslimah-friendly uniform.
Well, then, I hope it is miserably hot and cumbersome so they can fire them based on productivity.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at June 18, 2008 5:23 PM
Why we let them come here is a travesty to begin with. With them around, what are you going to get, exactly what they did in their waste of a home country.
Posted by: Dumbo at June 18, 2008 7:53 PM
Why we let these stoneage nomadic savages emigrate here amazes me. If they like their freedom so much, move back please!
Posted by: Dumbo at June 18, 2008 8:18 PM
And one-quarter of Somalis in the state over the age of 25 have less than a ninth-grade education, a rate five times higher than the overall population
Can someone remind me again why we're letting in a flood of uneducated, untrained, non-assimilating, anti-Westerners into our heartland? Not enough tortilla makers in Minnesota? Just rename it lefse and invite in the Swedes and Norwegians to make it.
Many of these nomads are fiercely independent and equate freedom with being left alone, he said.
Oh, I'm all for leaving them alone. I'm all for giving them the full panoply of freedoms that they should be enjoying, in Somalia, away from the filthy kufirs with their racist rules and regulations.
"Imagine that a person comes coming from that environment is suddenly subjected to all these regulations and rules" in the workplace, he said. "He may think these are an intrusion to the freedom that he had at home. He's not afraid to take a stand."
Some may call the situation in Somalia "freedom"; others may call it a Mad Max anarchy. I think we'll stick with "all these regulations and rules", thankyouverymuch.
Posted by: special_guest at June 19, 2008 6:56 PM
For a 'reality check' on Somalia - and on Saudi Arabia, too - all one has to do is read Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 'Infidel'.
But read, also, her description of her first impressions of European society - peaceful, orderly and beautiful. She does not give the impression of hankering after the suspicion, violence and chaos of Somalia. 'Freedom?' - when her grandmother had her genitally mutilated? 'Freedom?' - when she might be forced to marry a man who revolted her?
When she got herself to the Netherlands, and signed up for university at Leiden, she chose political science. She wanted to know WHY Somalia was a hellhole of violence, fear, suspicion and chaos, clan warring on clan; WHY Saudi Arabia, with its incredible wealth, was so cruel, and repressed its women even worse than Somalia; WHY (Christian-majority) Kenya and Ethiopia, though poor and messy, were better places to live in than Saudi Arabia and Somalia; and why it was that in Europe stuff arrived on time, strangers mostly trusted each other, and things WORKED.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was intelligent enough to know that she preferred the peace and order of Europe to the chaos and violence of Somalia or the cruelty of Saudi Arabia. And once she worked out that it was Islam that was ruining her birthplace - and Arabia also - she unflinchingly dumped Islam, and embraced classical Enlightenment principles. She chose Reason, and Truth.
What's wrong with Somalis, and Somalia, is Islam.
Until and unless they can be removed from the country, the next best bet is for the kafir all around to make a massive effort to deprogram them.
Not many will respond to pure reason, as Ayaan did; a more peaceful, human-friendly religion may have a better chance of 'taking'.
If the Christians in Minnesota were 'on the ball' they'd be sponsoring a Bible radio program with 24/7 recitations of the Gospels and other selected Biblical texts in the Somali language, and discreetly making available copies of the 'Jesus' film in Somali. There are Somali converts to Christianity, in Kenya, who could be recruited to produce Christian songs in traditional song styles, and to give their testimonies. (There was that other Somali man who became a Christian in the UK - what matters is not that he got martyred after his return to Somalia to teach school and bear witness, but that he WAS converted. It happens!).
And meanwhile, of course, NO concessions to sharia creep, none whatsoever.
at June 20, 2008 2:24 AM
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