A company produces lawn mowers and snow blowers is subject to great loss in case it doesn’t provide its Muslim workers a special prayer break.
But Dan Ariens , CEO of Ariens said in an interview “I refuse to allow the disgruntled employees back to work unless they accept his decision to ban extra prayer breaks”
The company which is being run by Ariens family from the last 80 years does not accept that they were being insensitive to their religious needs .
Arien says ‘It just throws 800 people in disarray. Think of the unfairness. Everybody gets two ten minute breaks, but some additional 50 people are getting more breaks of maybe five or twenty minutes,’
Ariens employee Maqdas Abdiqadir ‘Everything else at work was great. The pay was fine and the people were good to us. Then they stopped us from praying when we have to and we have to lose our jobs,’
CEO Dan Ariens set uo a deadline i.e. till Sunday for the muslims workers to get back to their work otherwise they will be fired from their jobs.
Ibrahim Mehammed also a worker in Ariens group says ‘They are not respecting our values and religion.
‘The Koran says we have to pray five times a day and at what times this has to be done.’
“These prayers are very important to us as we have to fully respect Allah and when they refuse us to pray at these times, we have no choice but to lose our jobs. Since most of us arrived in Brillion last summer, we have been treated very well and we get on with our non Muslim colleagues. They would step in for us when we went to pray and it was all OK. Nobody had any trouble at all until the company called us together last week and told us we couldn’t pray anymore when we had to.”
“It is crazy to ask us to pray out of the times that we have to. It wouldn’t mean anything to us or to God. Now they have given us letters which tell us where to get help with unemployment. As far as I am concerned, I have been fired from my job over my religion.”