AIBU to question praying and sleeping in the library kids area?

The distinction I was making is that comments around “lone men hanging around” clearly carry connotations of risk, and nefarious intent.

Yes! For millions of very good reasons every year globally. We should all be suspicious of lone men hanging around in children’s spaces. Anyone that isn’t needs to have a look at the world in which we exist.

You are making a false distinction.

Why is ‘lone man hanging around in a children’s area for an unknown period of time and spending 10 minutes of that praying’ any better than ‘lone man hanging around in a children’s area’?

He may have just rocked up, budged the children out of the way, moved the mat, spent 10 mins praying and left straightaway, or he may have been in the space for much longer than that.

Neither option is acceptable and it is a worry that some are suggesting it shouldn’t raise alarm bells.

Absolutely nothing in an appropriate place which a child's section of the library isnt.

That’s good. The man in this occasion should have been asked to move too.

By the staff there that is.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to leap to the conclusion that he may be a paedophile, for example, because he was praying in the wrong place.

@SleeplessInWherever

As part of my job I try to keep the library a safe place for all users. In my time I have had to deal with, drunks, drug users, stealing, and many forms of anti social behaviour. And many many creepy men. I I won't apologise here for saying creepy men. Because it is almost always men. A lone man, in the children's area, to my mind is always suspicious. Always.

I evidently wasn’t trying to justify his being there, as I did say it’s not the appropriate space.

The distinction I was making is that comments around “lone men hanging around” clearly carry connotations of risk, and nefarious intent.

He was praying, aside from the fact it’s not a suitable environment for that, it doesn’t present any risk to my child.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to leap to the conclusion that he may be a paedophile, for example, because he was praying in the wrong place.

For most religions, there are different requirements for male and female praying. For example in Judaism and Islam the men have multiple daily prayers and for the women it's more related to activity, so you're much more likely to see the men praying.

I'm not sure of the specific denomination they belong to but I see a huge amount of Christian women preaching/quoting the Bible in the street.
I am regularly told "Jesus loves you" while walking down certain streets or travelling on specific buses.
A bus I use regularly often has a women who prays loudly (depending on who the other passengers are she sometimes gets an "Amen") or quotes from the Bible.
That doesn't bother me to be honest.
I was tempted to tell one women to f off when she said my daughter could be "healed" (she was in a wheelchair at the time following an operation) if I embraced Jesus. My daughter was healing - it was why she was using a wheelchair 🙄😁

Yes, they’ve closed the toilets in the city centre library near here, because they were being used by substance-dependent homeless people who frequented the library to shoot up. The drugs are new(ish), but there were certainly homeless people using the library to sleep and stay warm in when I was first using it in the 70s.

Pp was responding to a more generalised point though - this:

Adults in children's areas is not appropriate and shouldn't be happening if there is an alternative

I’m not sure what point you are trying to make by drawing a distinction between this specific man ‘hanging around’ and him ‘praying’ but I sincerely hope you are not trying to justify that man being in the children’s area?

That man you are referring to had no purpose or justification to be in that children’s space. Him praying is irrelevant. You also have no idea what he was doing before and after praying - he may have been there for some time and the praying only takes 10 mins afaik.

Libraries are notorious for attracting people with nowhere else to go, like the sleeping woman. How this is managed depends on the staff really. They should have probably asked her to move to another area. Similarly, if they serve an area with a high proportion of people who wish to pray, an allocated room is often provided. A children's mat in an area with people coming and going, and possibly posters on the wall would be very inadequate for prayers. If it was my library I'd leave some feedback to suggest they offered a different space for prayers.

Curious maybe, but not instantly suspicious.

Good point. I have never seen a woman pray in public.

It's strange how we aren't seeing Muslim women needing to do this. Around 30% of Mosques don't allow women, so they have more need to prey in public. You'd think with them being out with children, we'd be seeing them in Libraries etc preying. Children need to prey also and we aren't seeing children do it, very strange.

Context is important.

Whilst he likely shouldn’t have been because it’s not the appropriate space for it, he was praying not “hanging around.”

Unless we’re suggesting that wasn’t his motive, which we can’t know and if he was on his knees on a prayer mat, we can surely assume he was praying?

Yes, this is a good point. It’s exactly the same playbook.

Capturing those in charge with an ideology - in this case that our expression of concerns about growing numbers of Islamic extremists and the encroachment of Islamic practices on us means that we are hostile to all Muslims - we are not.

Brief/train the police and government that we are the evils oppressors and must be pushed down and silenced at every opportunity.

Wonder why there is greater public outcry at our loss of freedoms and interpret that as ‘anti Muslim hostility’ and come down on us even harder.

The question is, why are our government working so hard to allow a minority to impose its anti Western views and practices on us? What do they gain from this? It can’t just be votes surely?

Are you seriously suggesting that you are not suspicious of the motivations of a lone man hanging around children in a dedicated children’s space? That is a worry.

There are a relatively limited number of reasons why an adult would settle down in a children centred space, most of them very bad for children.

Given the rapidly increasing number of male paedophiles and sex offenders we must be very cautious around letting lone adults hang around children.

It is a concern if you can’t see the risks to children here.

It is concerning.

We’ve managed without this type of legislation so don’t come here if you can’t abide by this

Labour’s approach to improving social cohesion by giving special privileges to certain groups does seem very flawed, common sense would suggest it will have the opposite effect.

I have to confess that I've fallen asleep in a library - it was a hot day, a rather comfy chair & I nodded off over my book. 😴

Well why do it in the kids area of the whole library? Surely a different area maybe better?

Op has said it isn't what they are doing that is an issue, it is where they are doing it. As this stops children visiting from accessing that area.

I am not clear what you mean by this?

You quoted my post (where I use the phrase 'lone adult') and responded to it, and I replied to you?

And it should be remembered you can’t have blasphemy laws for more than one religion by definition. Remember when the Muslim MP stood up in parliament rabbiting on about protecting Abrahamic religions and its prophets including Jesus and Mohammed. Well that’s blasphemous in Christianity to reduce the Son of God to simply a prophet surely! So are we to start prosecuting Muslims who don’t recognise that Jesus was the son of God. What is a Christian (rightly) points out this Son of God said he was the last and we should beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing (which according to Christian doctrine would include Mohammed).

We need to be very wary of these things. I would think anything that doesn’t allow free criticism of Islam is against Equality Laws. As a practicing occultist, I demand that Christianity and Islam remove their demonisation of witchcraft and occultism as I find it bigoted. Inflammatory and intimidatory. Let’s not forget many Islamic countries continue to flog people accused of witchcraft under sharia law.

I was responding to someone who said 'lone adult'.