"Prayer leads to work disputes" by Emily Bazar

I found this piece quite well written. I liked the use of statistics to supplement the story, such as "2,880 complaints of religious discrimination" in the 9th paragraph. I really liked the table at the end that supplemented the piece, and gave me an idea of how religious discrimination complaints are broken up.

I would like to know how the non-Muslim employees of these factories felt, more than just that it was "preferential treatment."

Explaining was something is, such as, "complaints of religious discrimination were filed with the EEOC, which enforces federal employment discrimination laws" explained right in the middle of the piece. It helps me to just keep reading without wondering what's going on.

Is not letting Muslims have breaks for prayers a trend? Several factories are mentioned that don't give breaks, and only one that does, which gives "all employees, not just Muslims, two 10-minute breaks instead of one 15-minute break. The additional break 'roughly coincides with prayer times.'" Which is more common, companies that give breaks or that don't? Are special accommodations made for Jews or Christians, other than giving them Saturday or Sunday off for worship? Do Muslims get Friday off for worship?

The ending is a great quote, "'We are refugees to this country," he says, "and now we are made to be refugees within America.'" I feel it really captures how the Muslims who were fired feel, especially since a lot of them were from Somalia.

This piece was written by a USA Today reporter. Most of the religion pieces have been done by AP reporters, so it's nice to see a USA Today reporter doing a religion piece.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-10-15-Muslim_N.htm