As you may well have heard, unless you live under a rock (or don't have twitter) M&S have issued a new policy that allows Muslim workers to refuse to serve customers wishing to purchase items that are prohibited in their religion. Although a spokesperson has made it clear that this policy also applies to Christian and Jewish workers, their is really only an uproar around the muslim staff. In the news, the emphasis has been placed on products such as Pork and Alcohol, two things that A LOT of religions do not encourage their followers eat. You'll find that Jews, Rastafarians and Seventh Day Adventists just to name a few, don't encourage the consumption of pork and I'm sure you'll already know that a lot of Hindu's, Sikhs, Buddhists and some small Christian groups (to name a few) are vegetarians altogether.
However, As usual the british media are intent on spreading Islamophobia and highlighting any cultural differences between your average roast pork loving, red wine drinking daily mail reader and any muslim person, british or not. It seems to me that the media are trying to make people look for their 'good old Britain', so of course we'll all love David Cameron for trying to tightening immigration laws and then the majority of Britian can enjoy their indian takeaway and fosters beer (originating from poland) in peace.
At the end of the day, Any person with common sense, who practises a religion such as Islam knows what kind of environment they are going to be in when applying for a job. Marks and Spencers, Asda and all other supermarkets will always sell alcohol and meat and retail workers will most likely have a job description when they start…. It would be unfair to assume that every religious worker wants these new policies as they could potentially cause them to be ostracised at work, or even have customers purposely avoid them...
Have M&S made a problem where there wasn't one?
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