Prayer Rooms and Chickens In Tennessee

In this Memri video, an Islamic preacher explains how Muslims will come to dominate the West. This man is not a firebrand; he’s quite reasonable. And if numbers are what count, then he’s also correct. However, that is the part that remains open to debate


Here’s a great example of how the dhimmitude described by this Islamic preacher comes to pass:

Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.

According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new five-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant.

Eid al-Fitr -- which falls on Oct. 1 this year -- marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Union leaders said implementing the holiday was important for the nearly 700 Muslims, many of them Somalis, who work at the plant that employs a total of 1,200 people.

This is a culturalist decision, one which favors Somali culture over American culture and local Shelbyville culture. It is simply wrong and wrong-headed, not to mention destructive. If Somalis refuse to acculturate they will remain in the unskilled, low-paid jobs they currently have. Working for Tyson’s is neither pleasant nor a way up and out of ignorance and poverty.

On the other hand, the majority wins, right? There is only one problem here: the news story got its figures wrong. Snopes points out that there are but 250 Somali workers out of the 1,200 employed at the Shelby plant. The twelve person union bargaining committee that passed on this resolution contained three Somalis. The mystery remains as to why the rank-and-file voted for it. Indifference?

Tyson company spokeswoman Libby Lawson said by phone that, “This isn’t a religious accommodation, this is a contractual agreement. The majority asked for it.”

That’s an interesting twist. A vote for a religious observance is not accommodation. As I said, twelve people passed on this and then the union members agreed. What is not clear is if it was a local Shelbyville vote or a national union vote…or what.

Refugee Settlement Watch follows the patterns of this and similar events. Here’s the linkto updates on this news, including the question as to why this story hasn’t received much national attention.

This is the conclusion of the post:
- - - - - - - - -

Through 2007 we have admitted 82,000 Somalis to the US through the refugee resettlement program. Between 6000 and 7000 came in 2007 alone. Go to this post where a reader and I discuss those numbers.

P.S. If you are a new reader just joining us, see the Shelbyville Somali rampage of last week here.

Refugee Resettlement Watch is the place to go to become unsettled about the future prospects of our ability to maintain a coherent American culture in the face of the concerted onslaught against that coherence.

Meanwhile, one former employee of the Shelbyville plant complains about the Muslim prayer room he helped build in the Tyson plant:

Former employee and Shelbyville resident Anthony Proctor said he thinks what’s happening is wrong.

He said he helped build a special Muslim prayer room that’s located inside the plant and that no other Tyson facility has been that accommodating for any other religion.

“If we want to go pray, we don’t have one for Christians,” he said.

[…]

Lawson said they consider religious accommodations on a case-by-case basis. She said that so far, no one has asked for any other type of religious prayer room.

That’s an informative statement. The Somalis demanded a prayer room in the chicken processing plant and they got it.

If you followed the link at Refugee Settlement Watch, you saw that during that Somali’s rampage, the fellow seemed to focus on attempting to rape women in churches… and this spree followed his attendance at the Shelbyville mosque.

Thus it’s not as if the workers needed a prayer room because now we know they have a mosque. And they certainly didn’t have prayer rooms back home in Somalia. So what gives here? In my opinion, the demand was met because management wanted to quell disturbances among the militant. These workers have quickly learned the politics of grievance that works so well in this country. They may be uneducated, unskilled workers but someone has taught them the basics of negotiation in the US.

Shelbyville probably has the usual share of Baptist churches in the South; I haven’t checked. How many of the native-born workers at the plant are church-goers is another question, one which bears on the denominational prayer room at Tyson’s - or other workplaces for that matter. If there were such a thing as chapels in American workplaces, they would be non-denominational. We fought those battles a long time ago. However, being that such rooms would be a priori fit only for infidels, no militant Muslim would set foot in a “non-denominational chapel.”

Here’s the wrap-up on that news story:

A representative in New York said that no one there knew specifics about the new contract with the workers, but a person in research told Williams that holidays aren’t usually replaced and are more likely to be added on.

The decision will only apply to workers at the plant who are union members. All other employees at the plant will still have their normal Labor Day holiday.

Just so you know, only two hundred employees at the plant are not union members. My guess is that they belong to management. I doubt management cares what the one thousand workers do as long as they keep those chickens moving through the processing plant.

Anyone for Smart Chickens?


Hat tips: Dan Riehl’s World View for the news story and John in Basel for the video.