When do religious accommodations become unnecessary? This is a question employers are having to grapple with in the workplace. Such is the case with a Wisconsin manufacturing company which produces lawnmowers and snow blowers called Ariens Co. In January, Ariens fired seven Muslim employees while an additional fourteen resigned after refusing to stop taking an extra break (apparently used for prayer). The Christian Science Monitor explains the background behind the incident:

The company had hired the workers, Somali immigrants from Green Bay, several months earlier and accommodated them with both prayer rooms and a bus service to help with the 40-minute commute. A dispute arose in January after the non-Muslim workers complained the Somali workers were taking extra breaks for prayer time, sometimes without communicating with supervisors. The company told workers to stick to two 10-minute breaks, and 53 workers walked off the job in protest.

In addition, Ariens brought in interpreters to bridge the linguistic divide. So, it looks like Ariens made extra efforts to reach out to the Somali immigrants with prayer rooms, transportation, and language help yet they are still blamed for not being accommodating. Suppose they concede and give the Somali Muslims an extra prayer break, would that be enough? Or would they need to serve halal meals, make non-Muslim women cover up among others? The company actually started off giving Muslim employees an additional prayer break during their shift when they had “just a handful of employees [Muslim].” As the Muslim workforce grew Ariens eventually disallowed the extra break for obvious reasons.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) forces employers “…to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer’s business.” Furthermore, an employer doesn’t have to accommodate if it causes an “undue hardship,” which includes factors such as safety, efficiency/costs, infringement upon other’s rights, etc.

Of course the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which the UAE has designated as a terrorist organization, is behind the ‘religious discrimination’ complaint. The same CAIR whose high ranking official, Zahra Billoo, has taken it upon herself for the last three Memorial Days to dishonor our fallen American soldiers. It doesn’t seem like CAIR has the best of intentions.

While workplace prayer breaks for Muslims might seem like a minor issue, it is still important to know why CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood tied groups are pushing these rules and regulations. The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood group’s plan highlighted in the Explanatory Memorandum says “…their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…” CAIR and others will continue to use Somali Muslims as well as other vulnerable Muslim communities to do their ‘dirty work’ in order to fundamentally change this country’s legal system into a Sharia based system with blasphemy, apostasy, and other egregious laws. Don’t be fooled, CAIR wants Sharia, not simply religious accommodations.