WHAT ARE FREEPERS WHINING ABOUT NOW?

Today some of them are focused on this blog post from Paul Belien at Brussels Journal:

Manchester Provides Homes with Loos for Muslims

Until recently I did not know that Muslims are not allowed to face Mecca (nor turn their back to it) when sitting on the loo. I heard about it last April when the British press reported that Brixton Prison near London is rebuilding toilets so Muslim inmates can defecate in the right direction. First I thought it was a joke. This week, however, the BBC website has a story on a housing estate in North England. The homes, with wind turbines and solar panels on the roofs, have up to seven bedrooms, kitchens that comply with halal cuisine and "bathrooms that face away from Mecca."

The estate, developed by Manchester Methodist Housing Association, has been built exclusively for Muslims because, as one of the residents says, "We're all Muslims here so yes, it is important [to live exclusively among Muslims]. For myself I'm not really too bothered but to a lot of the Muslim people, yes it is important to them and yes it is a very good idea." ...

In fact, Belien's completely garbled the BBC story he's citing:

... some have bathrooms that face away from Mecca and the kitchens also comply with halal cuisine.

They were designed in consultation with the local community in Coppice, which is 60% Asian....

Rejia Bibi is moving with her husband and five children into one of the new properties, from her home in the Werneth area of Oldham....

"We're all Muslims here so yes, it is important," she said of the homes' design.

"For myself I'm not really too bothered but to a lot of the Muslim people, yes it is important to them and yes it is a very good idea."

...All of the 18 homes occupied by Asian families were made available to the wider community.

(Emphasis mine.)

One Freeper (Canard, in response 8) actually went to the BBC article and figured out that Belien misrepresents it. (Canard's objection is utterly ignored in the thread.) Apart from that, we get the Freepers' usual charming embrace of cultural differences:

Come to think of it, we have two toilets in our house and they both face east. I love it. It will make going to the bathroom more enjoyable.

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If the bathroom faces away from Mecca does that mean their butt faces Mecca? Thats sound the way it should be. I wouldnt mind mooning Mecca. Or do they have to stand so their butt faces away from Mecca, and they are pointing their Penis at Mecca, and urinating in that direction. That isnt so bad either. I wouldnt mind peeing on Mecca either. Sounds like Win-Win to me.

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I personally think the whole world would be better off if Mecca was erased from the map of the earth, its nothing but a shrine for a piece of meteorite these loonies worship.

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Well...they don't use toilet paper so at least they got that right!

There are also the usual dire warnings about the perils of accommodating people who aren't like yourself:

The British people really need to stand up to this sort of malignant nonsense before they lose themselves completely....

The British gov't has gone mad with this PC BS and the people better put them straight before it is too late.

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This is only the beginning my FRiend.

Gradually you are going to find out what else offends the Muslims, little by little until the end when you find out that your very existence offends them.

Oddly, no one at Free Republic seems to have had a similar reaction to this recent New York Times article, which notes that it's perfectly legal for a co-op building here to designate a Sabbath elevator (or Shabbat elevator) -- one that stops automatically on every floor on Friday night and Saturday so observant Jews can avoid the proscription against operating such devices on the Sabbath.

(Well, of course the Freepers don't care about that -- they see Jews as their partners, at least for now, in the march toward a right-wing Christian Islamofascism-free global utopia with low taxes and no gun control laws.)

I imagine a Shabbat elevator would be somewhat inconvenient for me as a non-Jew (though I live on the first floor, so I don't have a dog in this hunt) -- but I don't think switching an elevator that way is a big jackbooted PC outrage. (Interestingly, some of the people discussing the Times article at the blog Orthomom, including Orthomom herself, think it's a worse idea than I do.) But as for halal kitchens, well, I'm not much of a cook, but if this description of what makes a kitchen halal is any indication, what could a non-halal person object to? There's no inconvenience whatsoever, from what I can see.

And I am as much of an expert on using toilets as anyone else, and I'm reasonably certain that I, as a non-Muslim, can use a toilet whichever way it's facing.

So I guess my outrage level will never match a Freeper's.