Muslims in Greeley today and that city’s role in the birth of Al Qaeda

Update September 10th:   Talks break down.

Update September 8th:  Is there a cover-up?

This is a follow-up to my post this morning where I reported on protests at a Swift meatpacking plant in Greeley.  Seems non-Muslim workers have had it with the demands of Somali workers who want special accommodations in the workplace.  Said one of the protesters, “Somalis are running our plant.”  Apparently, the Somalis got violent but that went unreported in the local press.

I’ve written several posts about the influx of refugees to this area of Colorado lured apparently by the prospect of employment in the meatpacking industry.  (Sorry this may seem like a lot to wade through, but if you are really interested in this, please follow the links back.)

I first made note of the activity in July 2007 when I reported that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (US Department of Health and Human Services) was helping open a refugee office for the cities of Ft. Morgan and Greeley, which, by the way, are about 50 miles apart.

This is from the local paper last summer:

An influx of Somalian and other African refugees to Greeley and Fort Morgan is spurring the formation of a refugee and asylee office.

In the course of about a year, about 150 refugees have moved to the Fort Morgan and about 40 to Greeley. The refugees migrated here from other states, including Minnesota, primarily to pursue jobs in the meatpacking industry, said Paul Stein, Colorado state refugee coordinator.

The office is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services office of Refugee Resettlement, through the Colorado Department of Human Services’ Refugee Services Program.

This told me at the time that the meatpacking industry, in this case Swift and Cargill, were in the process of bringing Somali refugees to the area and the federal government was in on the plan.   The purpose of this office is to facilitate all the other aspects of the worker’s lives:  apartments, food stamps, medical care and English lessons, etc.  In other words, you are subsidizing the labor needs of these giants by taking care of the other needs of the imported workers.  To hell with the American workers who have to take care of their own needs and to hell with the community that gets overrun.  

So if Swift is getting shafted now, they brought it on themselves!

Then here is an update, again in July 2007, where the prayer issue raises its ugly head in Greeley/Ft. Morgan.

Another article that attracted my interest involved four questionable Somali men, or at least questionable to me!  Perhaps it is nothing more than an example of the annoying State Department practice of bringing hordes of single men ‘refugees’ to the US (yes, and I bet you were thinking most refugees were sweet women with needy kids), but this account of Somalis in Greeley looked strange to me.  (This is from an AP story that I now see is no longer available).

GREELEY, Colo. — The four Somalis moved into the apartment last August, six floors up in a downtown Greeley building. The living room is furnished with only a metal folding chair and small table covered in papers and a laptop computer. A Somali flag, a white star against light blue, is the only wall hanging, draped behind the table.

They sound like 4 guys really hankering to be Americans don’t they?

And finally from this news account a month ago, one could tell things were not going well in the community with refugees who had come to Ft. Morgan and Greeley to work for meatpackers.

Here is the answer to my comment at this morning’s post about what role Greeley played in the birth of Al Qaeda.   Sayed Qtub had come for a visit:

Communism had Karl Marx. Al Qaedaism has Sayed Qtub. Who’s he, most people would ask. The ideology that nurtured modern Islamic extremism, and spawned every violent movement from Hezbollah to al Qaeda, was born in 1952 when Qtub, an Egyptian writer, returned from studying American literature at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo.

The tipping point from detached observer to extremist ideologue took place at a church dance in Greeley when, as Qtub recalled in “The America I Saw,” the pastor dimmed the lights and put on the come-hither number “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” a hit tune from the MGM movie “Neptune’s Daughter” — a guy, girl and bathing suit lemon — with Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban.

“The room,” Qtub wrote “became a confusion of feet and legs; arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together,” That was the scene that turned him off American culture in particular and Western culture in general — and onto Islamic fundamentalism.

Read more here and consider how Greeley could just be an excellent target city in which Shariah might be planted in America.   The irony.

Workers protest Somali accommodation at Colorado meatpacking plant

Update September 11th:  Over 100 workers fired!

Update September 10th:   Talks break down.

Update September 8th:  Cover-up of the violence?

Update I promised:  Meatpackers and Muslims in the ideological birthplace of Al Qaeda!

Thanks to Always on Watch for sending me this article from Greeley, Colorado where Swifts meatpacking plant workers walked out to protest the company’s accommodation of Somali Muslim demands for a change in break time.

A complaint by Somali workers earlier this week that they weren’t getting early enough break times to accommodate religious fasting snowballed into worker protests at the JBS Swift & Co. plant Friday.

Employees from both early and late shifts converged in the afternoon in front of the human resources office at the north Greeley plant.

About 100 employees, some of whom were supposed to be working, protested company officials accommodating Muslims by moving their break time to accommodate those fasting for Ramadan, a Muslim holy month. The company allowed Muslim workers to take their breaks about an hour earlier than normal to break their fasts.

One worker had this to say:

“They have no respect for the Spanish or white people,” said Brianna Castillo, a Swift employee of four years. “Many times we are forced to pull extra count… I don’t feel that is right.”

Castillo, who is white, said every race was represented in the protest with the exception of Somalis. Castillo said employees are frustrated by what they feel is a double standard when it comes to other races and Somalis.

“Somalis are running our plant,” Castillo said. “They are telling us what to do.”

All of this is no surprise, except that finally some workers are saying they have had enough.  Go over to Jihad Watch today on this story and see what Robert Spencer has to say about the issue of accommodating Muslim religious practices—something we have talked about at length here.

And this is very important!  There was violence by the Somalis before the peaceful protest by non-Muslim workers.  A reader at Jihad Watch had first hand knowledge of the incident and reported the following:

There’s much more to the story than what the Tribune printed. It was not all peaceful, as the Tribune has led us to believe. My neighbor, directly across the street from my home, is a Registered Nurse. She is currently employed at the Swift Meat Packing plant at Greeley in the medical department. She was an eyewitness to the building conflict and post-riot damage within the plant that happened at about 7:30 p.m. on Friday evening, 9-5-08.

The Greeley P.D. SWAT Team and many police officers had to come into the plant to stop the destruction by approximately 200 angry Muslims of tables, equipment, and helmets inside the cafeteria at about 7:30 pm last night. My neighbor said that the medical department rendered treatment to one non-Muslim female worker who was assaulted during the melee.

There is more at Jihad Watch.

I’ll have more later because we have written several times on Greeley/Ft. Morgan.   Check back for Part II to learn about the federal government’s involvement in helping supply refugee workers to this part of Colorado.

Just a reminder,  the US State Department has brought over 82,000 Somali refugees to the US in recent years.

To all of you students of Islam, what else is Greeley famous for?  It is ironic!

Arabs and Muslims “chilled” by possible McCain/Palin victory

There is an intersting article from the Middle East Times posted over at Jihad Watch about how Arabs and Muslims generally are shaking in their boots about McCain and Palin in the White House.   Actually when you read the Times article it’s hard to tell whether McCain or Palin strikes more fear in their hearts.

The first Republican woman to be on a national ticket must especially scare Muslim countries that are trying so hard to keep their women subservient.   A strong independant woman with lots of children has got to be their worst nightmare, especially in light of their goal to outbreed us.  And Palin hasn’t yet succumbed to the politically correct word police as demonstrated by this account in the Times article:

Particularly highlighted in the media Friday were remarks made by Palin in June that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the American troops there were “on a task from God.”

“Our national leaders are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God,” Palin told ministry students at her former church in a video that spread like wildfire across the Internet.

She asked her audience to pray for the troops in Iraq. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan,” she said.

The article also takes a swipe at our western values in a segment about the pregnancy of Palin’s 17-year-old daughter.  Imagine the nerve of people who sanction female genital mutilation, forced marriages of children to old men (see Jihad Watch for one such girl murdered this week when she tried to get out of the marriage), and honor killings.

Check out the lively comments at Jihad Watch while you are there.

Two Myanmar Muslim groups squabble over Rohingya?

This confusing story comes to us from a publication which I was glad to discover called The Muslim News.  You can read it and try to sort it out for yourselves, but the gist of it is that two Muslim organizations in the Arakan region of Myanmar (Burma) are fighting over who is most popular with the Rohingya.  Huh?

One organization alledgedly turned in the other for having a meeting at an unregistered location.

When Salim Ullah (U Than Htun), the Chairman of the district branch of the Myanmar Muslim Organization was hosting a meeting in an unrecognized office with some local people on March 30 and some other members were arrested from their homes on April 1 on allegation that they had connection with the meeting, he added.

The acquitted are Dr. Kamal alias Dr. Hla Myint son of Md Sayed of Ward No.4 of Maungdaw town and Dr. Zahir alias Dr. Zaw Nyint, a dentist. There are two categories of members —Township and District level. 

Some locals believe that Dr. Nurul Hoque alias Dr. Tun Aung, the Chairman of Township Islam Religion Council (IRC) of Burma complained to the authorities against the MMO. The two organizations (MMO and IRC) are into parallel work for the Rohingya community. Dr. Nurul Hoque does not want the MMO to be popular.

This article interested me on a bunch of levels.    First, note that everyone has an alias, what is up with that?  Is this standard practice in Burma?  Is this how unauthorized Muslims are getting into refugee camps throughout the region, by confusing the UN about who they are?

Then most everything I’ve read about the Rohingya Muslims is that they are persecuted and mostly out of Arakan and out of the country (living in squalor) looking for third country resettlement to the West (they want to live in a city near you).  Now here comes a story about how they are not only apparently still in Arakan in substantial numbers that they have at least these two competing organizations working for them. And, the ‘evil’ Burmese junta allows groups like these to operate, how repressive is that?

Are the Rohingya outside of Burma persecuted or simply economic migrants?  Economic migrants are not eligible for third country resettlement.

And, then my final question is why are these groups competing?  This is just a guess, but I’m wondering if one is a more radical Islamic group and the other less so.

Note to Rohingya readers:  Since we have heard from you before, maybe you could shed light on what the story is here with two competing Muslim groups?  Why are they fighting over which group will be the most “popular” with the Rohingya of Arakan?

See my original post on the Rohingya here.   And for more information, note we have a whole category called Rohingya Reports.