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]

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.