Victory! Many thanks to all Jihad Watch readers who contacted Wegman’s to call for equal treatment of all customers. Pamela Geller has the details here, including this letter from a Wegman’s official:
From: Jo Natale
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 10:12 AM
To: Donald
Subject: RE: “Sharia-compliant” policiesIt is not Wegmans” policy to permit signage like this for any religious or lifestyle reason. The decision to post the sign was made at store level by a single employee, and it has since been reversed. The sign has been removed. We have coached the store on other ways they could have addressed the concerns of this employee, who knew when she took the job that it would include handling these products. We apologize if this has offended anyone.
Jo Natale, director of media relations
Wegmans Food Markets | Consumer Affairs
1500 Brooks Ave. | Rochester, NY | 14603
www.wegmans.com
Also at Atlas Shrugs today is my article on why this case was important:
…Muslims who demand that American institutions, businesses, and organizations change their practices to accommodate Islam manifest contempt for American established mores and practices of that new land — contempt that stems from the conviction that those mores and practices are inferior to the ones he brings with him. And they cannily portray this contempt and their demands for accommodation as a simple desire to exercise their religious freedom.
What is inexcusable about this is that so many non-Muslim businesses such as Wegman’s fall for this. Some Wegman’s customers noted that some Christians don’t like the idea of selling alcohol, but did not mention the fact that Christians who don’t like the idea of serving alcohol just get another job. They don’t demand that their workplace change the way it does business in order to accommodate them.
This has been going on for a long time, although the mainstream media has taken no notice of it, and the Obama Administration is actively abetting it. As far back as 2004, Lina Morales, an employee of Rising Star, a telecommunications company in Florida, was eating a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at work, and was summarily fired for violating a company rule against eating pork products on company premises. Rising Star’s Chief Executive Officer, a Muslim named Kujaatele Kweli, said that he fired Morales as a matter of religious accommodation. “Our point of view,” he explained, “is to respect the laws of the land and the laws of the land as I understand it is to accommodate people’s right to practice their religions if you can.”
But apparently only Muslims have the right to practice their religions — not Morales, who is Catholic. That is the principle Obama’s Justice Department has followed, suing on behalf of a Muslim first-year high school teacher who demanded three weeks off to go on the hajj, and winning her an award of $78,000. The DoJ has also joined other such suits, all in favor of Muslims demanding special accommodation.
If the Muslim cashier at Wegman’s were fired for any reason, Wegman’s would probably hear from the Justice Department as well. And so they are taking the easy road of submission. Wegman’s policy amounts to discrimination against non-Muslim customers — they have one less checkout line, longer waits, etc. Yet if they didn’t discriminate against non-Muslims, they would be certain to face charges of “racism,” “bigotry,” and “Islamophobia” — the cudgels that the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) uses to intimidate Americans into dropping all resistance to the stealth jihad and Islamic supremacism.
This not about religious freedom, it is about Islamic supremacism. The civil rights movement was fought to establish equality of access to services for all Americans. This is a perversion of it.