Religious excuse

[matrixmann]

People call for respect towards their beliefs and meanwhile sometimes for separate for prayer areas at their work places and schools. In order to avoid conflict and an image of possible cultural intolerance, as those claims can be met with Muslims more often than other religions, and someone decided somewhere that this group needs to be given everything they demand for without conditions, the lords of these institutions give them to them.
Strange thing it only is... When somebody worships a different belief called "cigarette", then they get treated like lazy slackers who search for a possibility to get a short unofficial break from work.
When your employer is a militant non-smoker too, then even rooms and places to smoke vanish from all over the property your workplace is located on.
Anti-smoker regulations even make it possible to do a manhunt on these people.
Smoking is regarded as a personal weakness.
So - what is this double standard?
When in capitalism, since when you get granted extra breaks apart from the legally ensured ones to eat or to do anything you like?
Does a smoker have to call the sucking on his glimmering stick "an act of personal worship to God" in order to get granted the same rights back like somebody who claims to follow his religious belief?
What makes religious belief so exceptionally worth to be protected and privileged these days, no matter which one it is, compared to other more pragmatic things?
Or is it already a religious conviction of some social justice warriors that shape the zeitgeist to prey upon everything that has nothing to do with religion?

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Interesting. Because smokers take far more breaks and longer than my Muslim colleagues ever did - the Muslims would go to the prayer-room at their designated breaks (15 minutes morning/afternoon, half hour for lunch) which we all got.

Also, speaking as a Christian who used to go to the hospital chaplaincy, I was far more productive after a 15 minute silent prayer than my colleagues who smoked would be after a fag. Fags were accompanied by coffee breaks once back in the dept and a gossip session from the group outside smoking. They could easily lose half an hour this way.

[matrixmann]

It's not about the productive part, it's more that point that one thing literally gets glorified and people who worship that, they like get away with everything and they receive all the rights and time they want because "oh no, don't you discriminate anyone for his religious belief, you schmock!". Nobody asks for what they do with their breaks that are secured in their work contracts, or when they take an unofficial break here and there reasoning it with praying or some other religious activity.
And smokers literally even get scolded when they consume a ciggy in their granted breaks or during times where there is no work to do or just waiting for something else to be finished. At most when supervisors or employers are militant non-smokers themselves or search for whatever-a-reason to give you a disciplinary action or downright fire you.

[angelofthenorth]

But if we worship the mighty dollar, then encouraging an activity that makes people more productive, and discouraging an activity that makes people less productive makes sense. They may appear to be being benevolent, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if they thought that restricting religious behaviour and improving things for smokers would improve the bottom line, then they would do it.

And if you think Muslims don't get treated with suspicion when they go to Mosque for Friday prayers, you have another think coming :).

[matrixmann]

Hm, I think in that point I need to describe it a little bit how things function here. (I'm not from the US, in case this didn't come out anywhere.)
These days, literally everything that doesn't suit your bosses gets taken as something to hold it against you. Even if you just stand there for a minute to breathe through or if you stay for a minute more than you're granted by contract in any place other than your work place (this can even only be the toilet).
Everything gets regarded as unproductiveness and avoidable waste of time - or I better say "slacking". Everything that diverts from stoic assembly line work like a machine who doesn't feel or gets tired. Even (physically normal) tiredness gets regarded as a personal weakness.
And the only thing you get granted extras for is becoming even more productive, even more like a machine who doesn't care left or right and doesn't get tired.

Under that star then, some groups appear on the screen then and ask for spaces to pray and be left alone for 5 minutes. (Factually I didn't hear about practicing Christians here claiming such rooms, but more the often those claims come from Muslims. These even include public schools. And I could swear, except for places like religious Bavaria or other very confessional areas, or places of work run by the church, Christians wouldn't get such rooms granted because zeitgeist's political correctness doesn't say it is offensive to turn down the claim of a Christian to practice his belief.)
While a person practicing no belief doesn't even get granted a minute to take a break from horrible province radio playing in the hall making you go insane with the same songs played 3 times a day.

Saying, I don't wanna know this here to be mainly focussed on complaining about Muslims.
Perhaps it is such a thing, but not about them as believers, more about their own "behavior" or better say political correctness granting them extra rights and excuses that others actively don't get, no matter how much they beg, claim or sue anybody.
As I said, never heard about Christians trying to claim that same right since religion has become such a big topic in political discussions again. And, thinking for myself, I can guess the reason why: Political correctness doesn't say it is an act of intolerance to tell a Christian to hold back his belief in his work place for reasons of unmerciful assembly line productivity or in public places.
When this question of negative image isn't involved, then nothing seems worthy in the eyes of the big capitalists to respect it...
One sees that on all the other abusive / harmful behavior towards their employees which they do as long as no journalist with contacts to the mass media films a reportage.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

I think it is a deliberate act of trying to make them look annoying to everyone. Thus people will start hating them for their little strange cultural habits and get diverted from freaking capitalists who f** everything up around.

[matrixmann]

Because someone responded to the post on my dreamwidth page, I was forced to think a little deeper about it and maybe I have an answer: As Islam currently is organized in its rites to practice the faith, in the majority, capitalism won't get around trying to integrate them into the machine along with their rites.
So, basically it's an action of getting to win them for that issue, respectively turn them into some work slaves that don't question the treatment and that are loyal to their moneybag lords.

But, the great flaw on that action, this doesn't work without any disturbances in between.
Humans are apes who always look for what their neighbor receives in treatment and goods, so when they see someone gets extra rights, extra breaks to practice their religion (if necessary), then they gonna scream what that shit is for, why someone else gets this special treatment and he does not or he even gets scolded for wanting something similar.
And this produces quarrel, sooner or later, for the right reason, I think.

In that point it isn't me regarding Muslims or people with faith who get granted those extra rights as enemies, it's the politics done with using them as a protective shield.
Either people are equal or they're not.
And when political correctness gets twisted and abused for that to make people feel guilty in addressing these politics of treating people differently under the disguise of "religious freedom", then this is something I definitely have a problem with.
Saying, it's getting problematic for me too if people start to hate these people on a personal level for that, for politics they partly even can't control (someone ever asks the Muslim community on the street if they want all that shit that this system prepares as "extra treatment" for them?), that sometimes are the work of the political arm of their religion and sometimes are the result of captalism's arm in stirring up hate and control people by religion.
To me, it's not about them personally 'cause not every Muslim claimed it before a court to be treated differently than other people - Islam as a religion is also too diverse in religious practice to take that as given -, it's about those politics of handing out extra rights or protecting special groups of people in every issue, even if they do mischief or commit crimes or hurt other fellow humans, and telling other people to feel guilty and racist if they just notice people get treated with some double standard here.

By the way, and I truly didn't ever hear about any case like that, strangely for Christians there's never the claim here to get some extra room for praying, unless you work at a facility run by one of the Christian churches or you're situated in a federal state that is more persistent in that still.
I can make up my mind why: Christians are used to it meanwhile that at their work place, religion needs to stay at home. Apart from a cross on your desk or in your locker. It's been accepted that things like that don't get offered anymore, if they ever were (well, I could be mistaken as the separate federal states can be really different here at treating things).
And even if they want to raise a claim, the Christians are universally orientated in that. Meaning "ecumenically", they don't just try to get their own thing which they later don't share with anyone. They seek an aspect of "let all confessions pray together". Which the political Islam, at this point, doesn't look for here. They always try to be separate from all the others. Which, probably, adds to the general disagreement with it and it's own behavior.

It's a very complicated issue... There's a whole lot of giving and taking, you know? Each fraction adding their piece to the conflict as it is. It's not like anyone's totally innocent or totally to blame in here.
And that's why it is so hard going down on that topic.
Probably I have my controversial way of putting it on the table, but I always try my best for being object-orientated, not sink down on the personal level which is reigned by offenses these days.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it makes sense.

And it is always easier to control people and treat them like slaves when they are uneducated and backward. Religion helps a lot with that.

[matrixmann]

I wouldn't call it that.
Their religion and their religious practice is more a subject to offer identity to people from the Middle East than their state borders do.
So, in order to make them work for you, you better address this instead of any national things. Sometimes people from differing nations in the Middle East even are arch enemies to the core - comparable to the various nationalities and ethnic descents that are left of Yugoslavia these days. Why, often only they know (and sometimes not even that).
Addressing that part offers you the biggest bandwidth if you're a dirty capitalist that always is on the watch for cheap labor and for causing competition among the established workers.
People which this point is a big straw for in their inner construct of identity and feeling welcome, they gonna love you for allowing them "to live that" openly.

That principle can also easily applied to other social group.