The Omaha World-Herald reports on the latest controversy involving Muslims at work:

Tension came to a head at a Grand Island meatpacking plant in June, when Jama Mohamed said his desire for 10 minutes to pray at sunset was met with shouting.

After he left the production line and began praying, Mohamed said, supervisors took his prayer mat, pulled him up by his collar and sent him crying to a lead supervisor, who fired him.

"I told him, 'Look, I know I am in America and I know in America there is a freedom of religion for everybody to practice their religion. . . . And as long as you fulfill that — as long as you let me pray — I will always work for you,'" Mohamed, 28, said last week through an interpreter.

"And he said, 'No, that's not acceptable — your prayers are not acceptable here. You're here to work, not pray.'"

If you keep reading, you can see what is going on. Somali immigrants who work at the Swift meat packing plant have been walking off the production line so that they can pray within a certain number of minutes of sundown. However, sundown doesn't correspond to a break time, so the workers are effectively abandoning their posts and potentially bringing production to a halt.

A complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is now being prepared, as dozens of Somali Muslims are apparently ready to claim civil rights violations:

The complaint alleges that breaktime rules at the Swift & Co. plant violate civil rights laws by not allowing workers to leave production lines to pray at sundown.

This story has several features in common with similar controversies that have erupted here in the Twin Cities. First, and perhaps most significant, is the involvement of CAIR, which actually drafted the EEOC complaint. Second is the fact that the people involved are Somalis, recent immigrants who have not adjusted to mainstream employment practices and who may have been incited by radical Muslim groups to stir up the controversy.

The substantive issue here is one of "reasonable accommodation." Under federal law, employers are required to take reasonable measures to accommodate employees' religious practices. I am not an expert in this area of the law (Paul may be), but it sounds as though Swift doesn't have any objection to the employees' prayers, it just doesn't want them walking off the line without permission, in a manner that impairs production.

This sounds like a conflict that could be worked out within the framework of precedents on reasonable accommodation. One wonders, though, whether it is another instance of radical Muslim groups like CAIR trying to impose on the rest of American society a duty to recognize and conform to Islamic religious laws.

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Posted by John at 11:56 AM  |    |