The surrender of secularism

A Tennessee chicken-processing plant has dropped the secular Labor Day holiday from its workday calendar and substituted the Muslim day of Eid al-Fitr, the last day of the Muslim month of Ramadan. WSMV TV reports,

Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.

According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new five-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant. ...

Union leaders said implementing the holiday was important for the nearly 700 Muslims, many of them Somalis, who work at the plant that employs a total of 1,200 people.

Tyson company spokeswoman Libby Lawson said by phone that, "This isn't a religious accommodation, this is a contractual agreement. The majority asked for it."

Well, that's one way of looking at it, I guess. I call it creeping sharia. It should be noted that of the 10 federal holidays, only one has a religious connection, Christmas Day.

By process and result, the Shelbyville plant's decision is what Libby Dawson said it was - a contractual arrangement. And workers who are not union members, and are thus not covered by the union contract, "will still have their normal Labor Day holiday." So what's the problem?

The problem is that this is a perfect example of the "camel's nose under the tent." If you don't stop the nose from coming in, the whole camel will follow. How long might it be before the union, dominated by Muslims, will demand ditching July 4 in favor of, say, Eid ul-Adha, which falls 70 (or so) days after Eid al-Fitr. How could the plant's management possibly refuse? So sharia, which already completely controls daily life in significant sections of British cities, infiltrates into mainstream American life, and non-Muslims are compelled to conform to Muslim religious dikta.

As Mark Steyn has pointed out, multiculturalism is a high-minded concept that lets us feel good about ourselves, but how will it feel when the majority of Shelbyville's school board is Muslim, and school holidays are converted to the Muslim calendar?

Oh, you say, that could never happen? Sorry, you need to be beaten by a cluebat. Everywhere in the world where Muslims attain a significant plurality of a population, including "non-Muslim" countries (read, Europe), this is exactly the kind of thing that happens. Why? Simple: Muslims know what they believe and will defend it to extremity. We don't know what we believe, not any more, and therefore have no concept of defending it.

With yesterday's death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, it's timely to offer this except of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address, 1978 (courtesy American Digest):

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Further deponent sayeth not.

Update: In Britain, Muslims are demanding that Islam's religious doctrine of creation be taught in public schools, and succeeding. Atheist scientist Richard Dawkins is alarmed.

'Most devout Muslims are creationists - so when you go to schools, there are a large number of children of Islamic parents who trot out what they have been taught.

'Teachers are bending over backwards to respect home prejudices that children have been brought up with.

'The Government could do more but it doesn't want to because it is fanatical about multiculturalism and the need to respect the different traditions from which these children come.

'The Government - particularly under Tony Blair - thinks it is wonderful to have children brought up with their traditional religions. I call it brainwashing.'

He added: 'It seems as though teachers are terribly frightened of being thought racist.

'It's almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country because if you do you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic.'