Memo to CAIR: It's called assimilation, you morons

We have read a number of stories in which CAIR jumps into lawsuits crying discrimination against Muslims for a host of reasons. Whether it's taxi cab drivers who refuse to carry passengers with guide dogs or if they have alcohol with them, or if it's employees at stores who have to scan pork products at the register, CAIR is doing it's best to give Muslims a pass in assimilating to American life. Now it's Mission Foods, which requires employees to wear uniforms, and CAIR claims that requirement equates to religious discrimination:

A group of Muslim workers allege they were fired by a New Brighton tortilla factory for refusing to wear uniforms that they say were immodest by Islamic standards.

Six Somali women claim they were ordered by a manager to wear pants and shirts to work instead of their traditional Islamic clothing of loose-fitting skirts and scarves, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that is representing the women.

The women have filed a religious discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"For these women, wearing tight-fitting pants is like being naked," said Valerie Shirley, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota chapter of CAIR. "It's simply not an option."

CAIR issued a press release calling on Mission Foods to reinstate the women in their jobs. However, the group declined to disclose the names of the women and would not make them available for interviews Tuesday.

Gruma Corp., the Irving, Texas-based parent company of Mission Foods, released a written statement Tuesday denying that any employees were terminated or disciplined at the New Brighton plant. However, the company made clear the six women have been relieved of their responsibilities for the time being, and may ultimately lose their jobs if they don't wear uniforms.

"Should these employees choose to adhere to the current Mission Foods uniform policy, they may return to their positions with the company," the company statement said. "However, these positions will need to be filled as soon as possible and cannot be held indefinitely." ...

The women's traditional clothing was loose-fitting but never posed a safety risk, Shirley said, because the six women put tortillas in packages and did not work near machinery. "Tortillas came down a conveyor belt onto a table and they packaged them with their hands," she said. "There wasn't even the potential of a safety hazard."

OK, let me explain something here for the nutters at CAIR that obviously don't understand what it means to work around machines like this. I used to work for my father at a plastics processing plant where plastic parts are formed by molds. A lot of moving parts, and loose items such as scarves, watches, necklaces, etc. could get caught on moving parts of these machines. If that happened, the workers, like myself, could end up getting burned. You had to heat the plastic sheets up in an industrial oven so it would be soft enough to be vacuum-formed to the mold.

These women are working on a conveyor belt. Even if it's moving slow, there is a serious potential for injury, which the company is obviously trying to avoid. Additionally, OSHA has guidelines about such items around moving machinery. Those standards trump this asininity perpetuated by CAIR and these six women. Furthermore, if there's a dress code, they either abide by it, or find a new job.

CAIR is doing whatever it can to have Muslims excluded from assimilating to practices in the American workplace. They want exceptions made for Muslims. Now we have no problem with allowing Muslims to practice their religion. In fact, that's protected by the First Amendment. But CAIR's insistence that they be granted special exemptions is simply stupid, and if they win lawsuits like this, it sets us on a dangerous path to giving into minorities that don't deserve such acts.

Publius II