Articles in this document:
·
Shelbyville Times:
… The union took its original press release off its web site … A Tyson spokesperson Tuesday called the union's figures "misinformation" …
·
WSJ: You
Still Can't Write About Muhammad
…After consulting security experts and Islam scholars … the company decided "to postpone publication…
·
FrontPageMagazine: Tyson Foods Adopts Muslim
…unwittingly, an avowedly supremacist agenda that is directed toward supplanting American laws…
·
Christian Newswire: Tyson Foods: An American Company?
…Tyson is replacing a secular
holiday with an Islamic Religious
·
AlArabiya: Critics say
…management at the plant was “elated” by the proposal to make Eid a holiday…
Shelbyville Times Gazette -
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The recent announcement by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that its new contract with Tyson Foods' Shelbyville Plant implemented a new holiday for the plant's Muslim workers, in exchange for Labor Day, has created a national firestorm of debate.
In the agreement, all union workers must surrender their
paid holiday on Labor Day in exchange for a paid holiday on the Muslim holy day
Eid al-Fitr, which falls at
the end of Ramadan. This year, it is October 1, but it changes every year.
Much of the ensuing comment has denounced Tyson Foods, with
many people calling for a boycott of the company's products. This kneejerk
reaction to the announcement is misdirected. A boycott of Tyson would do more
harm than good.
A successful boycott would affect the lives of thousands
locally. It would affect the local workers, chicken producers, truck drivers,
and all their families. The economic impact would stretch throughout all
sectors of our local economy, and would, either directly or indirectly, negatively
effect everyone living in this county at some level.
We can't afford to lose another industry.
We feel the anger is misdirected, because Tyson simply
agreed to a contract presented by the RWDSU, which made the Muslim holiday a
priority in its contract negotiations. Tyson gave the workers what it thought
they wanted, as presented by union representation.
The RWDSU, on one hand, should be commended for bringing the
Muslim's concerns to the negotiating table. Allowing Muslims a paid holiday on
their holy day is one thing, but to take Labor Day away from everyone else in
order to do so was not such a good idea, especially since it seems the Muslims
are the minority in this case.
In its original announcement, the union claimed there were
700 muslims working at the
plant, out of a total of 1,200. Tyson has maintained that only about 250 of its
Shelbyville workers are Muslims, a clear minority.
The union took its original press release off its web site
Tuesday, the same day in which the New York Times quoted the union as saying
there were nearly 400 Muslims at the plant. A new statement issued by the RWDSU
Tuesday refers to "many" Muslim workers at the plant. A Tyson
spokesperson Tuesday called the union's figures "misinformation," and
said the union acknowledged its original number was inaccurate.
This raises the question: Did the union intentionally
inflate the numbers in its initial announcement to justify the holiday
exchange? Or, was it working with the wrong numbers to begin with?
If the RWDSU made the holiday exchange for 700 Muslims,
which would be a majority of the plant's workers, it would be more
understandable. However, to make the change for a minority is a slap in the
face to the majority of non-Muslims at the plant. It's a case of political
correctness run amok.
It also is ironic that the union chose to surrender Labor
Day, a holiday for which American unions fought so hard in the past. Whatever
happened to the idea of honoring the American worker?
The union claims it is merely setting a trend and that other
unions and factories will follow suit. With this line of thinking, will the
RWDSU next negotiate an exchange of Memorial Day, another non-religious
American holiday, for Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican day of
celebration? How safe is Thanksgiving in this brave new world?
Perhaps the union would have better served its entire
membership by proposing that all workers receive eight flexible paid days off
per year, which could be taken at the individual worker's discretion. A
combination of fixed and flexible holidays is another solution that makes
sense. For instance, everyone takes off on Christmas, Independence Day,
Thanksgiving, Memorial Day and Labor Day, and then can choose three additional
paid days off at their discretion.
With either of these solutions, traditional workers could
take a paid day off on Labor Day, Muslims could have Eid
al-Fitr, and Mexicans could have Cinco
de Mayo. Production could continue on each of these days, and everyone would
have a better chance of being satisfied, thus being more producive
while at work.
At the least, the American public wouldn't be calling for
tar and feathers. Nor would they consider this one more step down a slippery
slope.
t-g.com
You Still Can't Write
About Muhammad
By ASRA Q. NOMANI
Wall Street Journal
August 6, 2008; Page A15
Starting in 2002,
It's not going to happen: In May, Random House abruptly called off publication of the book. The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.
Random House feared the book would become a new "Satanic Verses," the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book's Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones's novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it "disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now." He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received "from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."
After consulting security experts and Islam scholars, Mr. Perry said the company decided "to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."
This saga upsets me as a Muslim -- and as a writer who believes that fiction can bring Islamic history to life in a uniquely captivating and humanizing way. "I'm devastated," Ms. Jones told me after the book got spiked, adding, "I wanted to honor Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored -- silenced -- by historians." Last month, Ms. Jones signed a termination agreement with Random House, so her literary agent could shop the book to other publishers.
This time, the instigator of the trouble wasn't a radical Muslim cleric, but an American academic. In April, looking for endorsements, Random House sent galleys to writers and scholars, including Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas in Austin. Ms. Jones put her on the list because she read Ms. Spellberg's book, "Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha Bint Abi Bakr."
But Ms. Spellberg wasn't a fan of Ms. Jones's book. On April 30, Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer in Ms. Spellberg's classes and the editor of a popular Muslim Web site, got a frantic call from her. "She was upset," Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told him the novel "made fun of Muslims and their history," and asked him to warn Muslims.
In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." The novel, for example, includes a scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life." Says Ms. Spellberg: "I walked through a metal detector to see 'Last Temptation of Christ,'" the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."
After he got the call from Ms. Spellberg, Mr. Amanullah dashed off an email to a listserv of Middle East and Islamic studies graduate students, acknowledging he didn't "know anything about it [the book]," but telling them, "Just got a frantic call from a professor who got an advance copy of the forthcoming novel, 'Jewel of Medina' -- she said she found it incredibly offensive." He added a write-up about the book from the Publishers Marketplace, an industry publication.
The next day, a blogger known as Shahid Pradhan posted Mr. Amanullah's email on a Web site for Shiite Muslims -- "Hussaini Youth" -- under a headline, "upcoming book, 'Jewel of Medina': A new attempt to slander the Prophet of Islam." Two hours and 28 minutes after that, another person by the name of Ali Hemani proposed a seven-point strategy to ensure "the writer withdraws this book from the stores and apologise all the muslims across the world."
Meanwhile back in
"She thinks there is a very real possibility of major danger for the building and staff and widespread violence," Ms. Garrett wrote. "Denise says it is 'a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff . . . a national security issue.' Thinks it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses and the Danish cartoons. Does not know if the author and Ballantine folks are clueless or calculating, but thinks the book should be withdrawn ASAP." ("The Jewel of Medina" was to be published by Random House's Ballantine Books.) That day, the email spread like wildfire through Random House, which also received a letter from Ms. Spellberg and her attorney, saying she would sue the publisher if her name was associated with the novel. On May 2, a Ballantine editor told Ms. Jones's agent the company decided to possibly postpone publication of the book.
On a May 21 conference call, Random House executive Elizabeth McGuire told the author and her agent that the publishing house had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of the novel for "fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims" and concern for "the safety and security of the Random House building and employees."
All this saddens me. Literature moves civilizations forward, and Islam is no exception. There is in fact a tradition of historical fiction in Islam, including such works as "The Adventures of Amir Hamza," an epic on the life of Muhammad's uncle. Last year a 948-page English translation was published, ironically, by Random House. And, for all those who believe the life of the prophet Muhammad can't include stories of lust, anger and doubt, we need only read the Quran (18:110) where, it's said, God instructed Muhammad to tell others: "I am only a mortal like you."
Ms. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of "Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam" (HarperOne, 2006).
online.wsj.com
Tyson Foods Adopts
Muslim
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, August 07, 2008
Eid mubarak, Shelbyville! Union employees at Tyson Foods’
poultry processing plant in
The RWDSU explained that the new contract “implements a new holiday to accommodate the...Muslim workers at the plant.”
Since this story has gained attention on Fox News and elsewhere, some observers have called for a boycott of Tyson Foods. But what’s the big deal? The popular blogger “Allahpundit” noted at Hot Air.com that “according to Tyson, fully 80 percent of the union’s 1,000 members agreed to the new holiday arrangement. If a workforce with a huge Muslim contingent wants to make a deal with management to have their biggest religious holiday off, who cares? And why are there rumblings about boycotting Tyson when it’s the union that’s driving this?…What am I missing? Is there an anti-Eid exception to freedom of contract?”
Indeed, insofar as this was an agreement freely entered into by the union, by majority vote, no one can reasonably object to it. One does not require that 100% of the plant employees be Christians in order to give Christmas as a day off, and the same principle is operative here.
However, the reason why anyone has any problem with this
decision is not because Tyson is not free to negotiate an agreement with its
union -- an agreement that has apparently won the approval of the majority of
plant employees. The problem is that the accommodation of Islamic holidays and
practices abets, however unwittingly, an avowedly supremacist agenda that is
directed toward supplanting American laws and mores and imposing Islamic law
here. One notable example of this was the refusal several years ago of Muslim
cabbies at the
The whole controversy began after a Muslim American Society fatwa forbidding the cabbies to carry passengers with alcohol. Yet in reality, Islam forbids drinking alcohol, but it doesn’t command one to shun those who do, or not to be anywhere near them. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood group, suggesting that the cab crisis was a Brotherhood-led attempt to assert the primacy of Islamic law and mores over American society and laws, in accord with what one Brotherhood operative called “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Tyson’s new holiday schedule, seen in light of the
Brotherhood agenda, strikes many Americans as yet another example of how
Islamic supremacists are demanding that
Islamic law covers every aspect of life. Once the principle is accepted that Islamic law must be accommodated, and American customs and laws must give way in order to accommodate it, there is always more Islamic law to accommodate. If we do not draw the line somewhere, the calls for accommodation will end only with the complete Islamization of American society.
However, Stuart Appelbaum, the national president of the RWDSU, dismissed such concerns out of hand: “There’s no question,” he asserted, “that there is a lot of bigotry against Muslims and that this agreement has clearly touched a raw nerve among those who are prejudiced against them. However, the RWDSU has always understood that unions are only strong when they work to protect the dignity of workers of all faiths. That includes Muslims. Our union may be the first to negotiate this kind of agreement, but I have no doubt that others will follow our lead.”
Appelbaum issued this statement even as it came to light that while the union had asserted that 700 of the 1200 Shelbyville plant employees were Somali Muslims, Tyson itself stated that only 250 were Somalis. If Tyson’s number is correct, the supremacist character of this holiday initiative becomes even clearer. In any case, Appelbaum is no doubt correct that other unions will follow the RWDSU’s lead; unfortunately, however, it is also virtually certain that none of them will examine the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda before they do so. Yet it is that agenda, and that agenda only, that takes the Tyson plant’s decision out of the realm of simple cultural accommodation, and makes it a matter of concern for all free Americans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His next book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, is coming this November from Regnery Publishing.
frontpagemagazine.com
Tyson Foods: An
American Company?
Don Swarthout, President,
Christians Reviving
August 6, 2008
via Christian Newswire
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 /Christian Newswire/-- "The Tyson plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee is no longer acting like an American Company because they have decided not to celebrate Labor Day," according to Don Swarthout, President of Christians Reviving America's Values (CRAVE).
Swarthout asked, "How can a company like Tyson just decide to ignore the fact that Labor Day is a recognized American Holiday?" However, Tyson has decided to ignore Labor Day as a holiday and celebrate Eid al-Fitr as a way to cater to their Somali Islamic employees.
Swarthout said, "What makes this particularly upsetting is that Tyson is replacing a secular holiday with an Islamic Religious Holiday. If we wanted to replace a secular holiday with a Christian holiday the company or the courts would not allow us to do such a thing."
People we allowed to come into this country should want to
learn our culture and to live like Americans.
If a holiday is obscure by the standards of society, then in
We still live in
Our Founding Fathers were Christians and celebrating a
Muslim Holiday in place of an American holiday was never intended to happen in
Swarthout said, "What makes Tyson think they have the right to replace our American holidays by substituting a Religious Muslim holiday in its place? This nation was founded by Christians and we are still the majority, not the Muslims."
Swarthout concluded by saying, "We must take pride in our country, celebrate our recognized holidays and set a proper example for those who come to our country. The American people are sick and tired of this type of treatment!"
Tyson Foods refused to comment when contacted about this story.
christiannewswire.com
Critics say
Eid holiday at
AlArabiya
06 August 2008
The change was proposed by the Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union, to accommodate the 250 Somali workers at a poultry
processing plant for Tyson Foods in Shelbyville, some 40 miles south of
But many had not noticed the holiday change until an article ran in a local newspaper. Since then, reaction from right-wingers has been fast and furious, attacking both the union and Tyson Foods.
“A union in the
Another wrote: “You had no right to drop Labor Day. Muslim
employees must integrate Labor Day into THEIR lives if they are going to live
in
Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president, defended the decision.
“We in the labor movement have always understood that unions are only strong when we work to protect the dignity of all faiths, and that includes Muslims,” said Appelbaum, who also serves as president of the Jewish Labor Committee. “What we negotiated was the will of the workers.”
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.
According to union officials quoted by the Times, Tyson Foods was forced to close the plant last year when nearly all their 250 Somali workers – of some 1,200 employees total – wanted to have the important Muslim feast day off.
As a result, management at the plant was “elated” by the proposal to make Eid a holiday, union official Randy Hadley told the New York Times. He added that Tyson usually required employees to work on Labor Day anyway, paying them a holiday premium instead.
Responding to calls for a boycott of the company by anti-immigrant bloggers and conservative commentators, a Tyson spokeswoman said the plant had three Christian chaplains, and prayer rooms for Muslims and Christians alike, the Times reported.
alarabiya.net