Once I put it down…

… I could not pick her up again.

I can’t wait to see how the multiculti libtards handle this, via Mark Steyn today.

Woman died after Muslim nurse refused to help as he was praying.

An elderly woman was left on the floor at a care home for up to ten minutes because a nurse was praying, an inquest heard.

Alzheimer's sufferer Dorothy Griffiths, 87, was found sitting down after staff heard a bang and a carer went to the office for help to lift her.

But agency nurse Abdul Bhutto, who was in charge, said they would have to wait.

Carer Zoe Shaw told the Sheffield hearing: "It took between five and ten minutes because he was praying upstairs in the office on his prayer mat. A staff member told me we had to wait for him to finish."

Now, it also states that it took another 4 hours for the ambulance to be called, and looking at the apparent sequence of events it seems that other people with doubts about the old lady’s health might have called an ambulance or other medical care, but didn’t. And we don’t know what Abdul Bhutto, who was in charge actually means in terms of real authority, line of command and so on. Perhaps other people are trying to concentrate collective guilt on only one individual who, fearing a racist backlash or stitch-up wisely did not attend court as requested. So perhaps it’s not quite as pure and juicy North Northwester anti-Islam kick as it seems at first.

But boil it down to a number of possibilities that exclude the one where the witness who turned up is lying her arse off. What do we have left?

A medical/care professional refused to attend a stricken patient because he was in the middle of his religious devotions. He wasn’t on the loo with dirty hands or attending another patient/resident or calming down someone in huge distress. He was facing Mecca and lying on a prayer mat voluntarily. On duty. If he was on a break, then why was it considered more urgent than attending a frail old woman lying on the floor, though in her case rather involuntarily?

Orthodox Jews and strict Christian Sabbatarians will travel, use electricity, and do other sanctioned actions on the holy day of the week to save a human life. There is a recognition that a loving God will allow some leeway in His followers’ religious observances when the sentient parts of His creation are in mortal danger. Why not this chap? Well, perhaps he’s an exceptional case, just like that huge army of unrepresentative minorities that give the rest of Islam a bad name and allow the racist Right to do whatever it is we do to funnel ever cheaper and more obedient labour into our capitalist masters’ factories, er, um, or something. As tiny minorities go, they must be in the Guinness Book of Records for international impact with a numbers-to-death ratio similar to that of ants’ bodyweight-to-burden.

The big argument that folk who want to silence those of us who do not accept the Disney version of Islam is that, well, yes some powerful people use Islam for their own (unspecified) ends such as, er, um, keeping hold of the oil and keep girls veiled to provide cheap labour or compliant comforters for said imported labour, but for most Muslims it’s a religion like all the rest of them in that it provides a measure of comfort, outlines the meaning of our existence here on earth, and helps us mark the passing of our lives as they proceed from birth to naming, to puberty, adulthood, parenthood, maturity and death. Somehow they, like the rest of us, manage to fit a little fun and work in along the way but that’s not the point.

All notions that Islam is somehow disdainful of human life; let alone harsh, xenophobic, lacking in empathy and regard for outsiders is either a Western fiction or confined wholly to some kind of extremist sect that only a few ever join. Look, they say, most of our Muslim neighbours in Britain, America, etc, are okay; just like us, if a lot more sober. What’s all the fuss about?

Well, how about a non-violent Muslim (who will almost certainly be shown to have no connections with terrorism) preferring the outward show of his faith and deciding not to skip it for a few minutes until he had had done his actual job, for which he was paid, because if prayer is better than sleep, it also seems it’s so much better than pretty much anything else and certainly that it’s okay to delay a potentially life-saving duty in order to carry on with it.

If I think somebody’s dying or in real distress, I can put my dad’s Bible down and go and help. Hell, I put it down all day to do my wicked bit to keep the Welfare State going, because that’s what I’m paid for. The same works for the Torah, I am told in so many ways.

He must’ve been reading one hell of a good book to miss all that medical fuss.

Picture from here.