Originally posted at David Horowitz’s Newsreal:
A Muslim Disneyland Resort hotel employee, Imane Boudlal, has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over Disney’s refusal to let her wear a hijab in front of customers. Now, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is involved, and they’re crying religious discrimination. But is it? Unfortunately for CAIR and Boudlal, the case isn’t quite so cut and dried. This seems to be yet another case of Muslim bullying, this time at the happiest place on Earth.
Boudlal, and her extremist friends at CAIR, are busily spinning the truth about her employment with Disney to try to bully the company into accommodating sharia. The truth is that Disney has tried to work with Boudlal, and every time, she refused.
A Muslim employee is refusing to wear a hat and bonnet that Disney provided in place of a head scarf, which she wants to leave on at work for religious reasons.
Imane Boudlal, a restaurant hostess at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, last week in a press conference accused Disney of religious discrimination for refusing to let her wear a hijab, a head scarf, in public view.
On Monday, Disney offered Boudlal a bonnet with a hat to wear at work in public.
Boudlal rejected the new headwear and went home for a seventh time, according to the hotel workers’ union, Unite Here Local 11. Disney has offered to let her work behind the scenes with the head scarf, but Boudlal has refused.
“The hat makes a joke of me and my religion, and draws even more attention to me,” Boudlal said in a prepared statement. “It’s unacceptable.”
Suzi Brown, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman, said managers are still trying to meet Boudlal’s request after providing options, including alternative costumes. The company also offered her four different jobs that would allow her to wear her own head scarf.
“We provided Ms. Boudlal with several options, including a modified costume that includes a blouse with a higher neckline and a newly designed head covering that meets our costuming guidelines and which we believe provides a reasonable accommodation of Ms. Boudal’s religious beliefs,” Brown said in a prepared statement.
Boudlal could not immediately be reached for further comment. Her attorney also could not be reached.
So Disney does everything they can to work with Boudlal, to keep her as an employee without making her compromise her religious values. They gave her alternate costuming, they offered her a job backstage, and yet everything they offered, she refused. Now she’s suing Disney and filing a complaint against them. And we’re supposed to find Boudlal at the victim here?
It used to be the case that in America, a business could be run however the owner saw fit. In today’s politically correct world, that’s apparently no longer the case. Let’s take the obvious example: Disney. Disney looks at their entire operation as a “show”, and as such, their employees aren’t even called employees. They’re called cast members, and cast members sign a contract upon employment agreeing to adhere to Disney’s incredibly strict dress code. Believe it or not, the dress code has been loosened in recent years; it used to be even stricter than it is now. Until recently, men couldn’t have moustaches and women had to wear pantyhose if they wore shorts or a skirt (imagine that during summertime in Orlando at DisneyWorld). Women can also now have bare arms while at work. Disney even has a dress code for visitors — for paying customers! This is all because there is an image that Disney is trying to uphold of a clean-cut, family-oriented place. It’s also to keep up with the various Disney themes throughout the parks (in Liberty Square at Disney World, for example, cast members wear full colonial costumes, including bonnets, dresses, and petticoats for women). Cast members are not given uniforms, they’re given costumes, and they are required to wear these costumes to keep the Disney look uniform. This would seem to make sense to reasonable people, especially when a cast member works in front of the public. When an employee is hired, they are made aware of the stringent dress code and are expected to comply.
And for two years, Boudlal worked at Disney with no complaint. Then suddenly, she became an American citizen and decided she wanted to start wearing a hijab. What made her change her mind and why was it suddenly so important to her? This obviously goes against the Disney dress code and yet, Disney still tried to accommodate her. There’s a long paper trail of proof of all the different ways Disney tried to make her happy, but she refused every one of them. And now she’s trying to cash in. This isn’t religious discrimination; it’s nothing more than a case of a greedy woman and a scheming organization trying to bully a multi-million dollar company.
“The hat makes a joke of me and my religion…”
No baby, the hijab does that for you.
I keep telling people that we are at war with Islam, not terror. Everywhere that Islam is in the minority, it has these problems. In those areas were it is in the majority, freedom is non-existent.
Years ago (perhaps still true), Disney would require its characters (Goofy, Dopey, etc.) to all learn to sign their names the same way. Left-handers were required to use their right hands. Disney wanted to ensure that any little kid who got Donald Duck signatures on different days would have the same signature and see the same thing – i.e. the character signing with his left hand.
If you don’t like it, don’t work there. Or take their very generous offer to work behind the scenes, or in another environment, or with a different head covering.
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