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

[sunshine240778474]

Yesterday I took the kids to the local library (Inverness, scotland). The local library has a kids area. The kids area has a nice artificial grass mat for the kids to sit and read their books on.

When I entered the library there was a man who had folded the kids mat over so he could kneel on the floor and pray to Allah.

Therefore this prevented the kids from sitting on the mat and reading their books.
The man was praying for a while.

I don't have a problem with someone praying if that's what they want to do.

Is it appropriate to be doing it in the kids area in a local library?

Also, there was a woman curled up in the corner of the library sleeping. This was also in the kids area.

I've seen people sleeping in the library on a few occasions now. I've never seen it in the kids' area.

Ofcourse, I feel sorry for her if she's tired, but again is it appropriate to be using the local library, especially the kids area, as a shelter?

I left the library, and told the staff politely, I didn't find it kid friendly.

Was I being unreasonable?

We do know the average man can quite easily cover 1.5km in 10 minutes at a moderate pace.

Are lone males not allowed to access children's books in libraries?
For their own children or themselves?

Oh please

Yes but if he was a member of staff he might not have been able to do that 🤷

As PPs have pointed out, lone adults are generally discouraged or have a close eye kept on them.

Do you think that random men should be allowed to hang out in the children’s section of a library? What do you think the potential risks of that are?

"Oh please" what?
My made up scenario is no more unlikely than the OP's (probably made up) scenario.
We don't know do we?
Because the OP made the decision to leave the library.

Or if he was a secret agent and he was actually decoding a top secret message from a Russian double agent written underneath the children’s play mat.

This is getting more and more far fetched.

Why on earth would a librarian use the children’s area for his prayers? Seriously??

The potential risk is they can't get copies of books for their children.
I've never been in a library where there isn't staff members there who can see what's happening and keeping an eye on things.

This is my favourite of all the theories.

FFS.....I said it was a maybe scenario.
The children's section could have been empty and was known to always be empty at that particular time of the day.
So he nipped in to use it.

That too. Who knows?
Like I said. We don't know. The OP didn't stop to find out.
She just decided to go all Daily Mail.

Because the OP made the decision to leave the library.

Because a random man had rolled up the children’s play mat and was conducting a strange religious ceremony on the floor of the children’s area.

I'm out of this thread.
Bye.
It's got far to bigoted and anti man for me.

That's just not always possible all of the time.

She decided to leave because a random man was attempting to communicate with an invisible omnipotent being on the floor of the children’s area,

There is no point which I could say the children's library is always empty at a certain time of day.

I've never been in a library where there isn't staff members there who can see what's happening and keeping an eye on things.

Yes, I have already pointed that out. Lone men would need supervision in the children’s area. Please tell me you understand why?

Libraries haven’t always got staff available to supervise random men who want to be in the children’s area so their presence must be restricted.

You haven’t presented any facts with which to attempt to change our minds though, just a series of ever more creative theories.

Look, I have no truck with organised religion but I am at least respectful in the language I use about other people’s faith. You’ve done the ‘invisible sky fairy’ shtick in every post, it’s boringly repetitive, and it’s not big or clever. I hope you’re not teaching your children to be so rude and intolerant to other members of society. Have you banned Christmas in your house too? Do your kids get an Easter egg?

No, I agree with you. Waiting those few minutes wouldn’t have harmed OP either - agreed!

It would have been YABU for me.

You could have clicked YANBU, and yet… here we are!

Agreed. Thinly veiled bigotry.

I’m a card carrying atheist, couldn’t be less interested in religion.

But I would never have told my Muslim colleague he was praying to a sky fairy, because basic decency exists.

Of course I’m teaching my children to be intolerant of people attempting to force them out of their space in the name magical beings. No I haven’t banned Christmas, I haven’t actually banned any religious related activities anywhere believe it or not!

A grown man lays down in the middle of a kids reading area and whether or not he should be there is actually up for discussion? Give your heads a wobble and use some common sense to move him on immediately!