I’m wondering where the ACLU is hiding. There is religion in our schools!
Public schools increasingly are being forced to grapple with how to accommodate Muslim students’ needs, during Ramadan and throughout the school year, and some cases have spurred community debate.
Generally, he (Tom Hutton, a lawyer with the National School Boards Association) said, "schools try to bend over backwards to accommodate religious needs."
Outrageous! ACLU, what are you doing about this?
Mr. Hutton said observance of the holy month of Ramadan is usually "easy" for schools to accommodate and may include Muslim children being excused from gym class or assigned different activities if they are fasting. Fasting during Ramadan usually begins in earnest when a child turns 12 or 13 years old, aides at Islamic groups said.
Other accommodations, some during Ramadan and some throughout the rest of the school year, could include rooms where students can go during lunch if they’re fasting; alternatives to pork on the school-lunch menu; areas for students to go to perform the required daily prayers; and requests either to be excused from school for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that ends Ramadan, or to make the day a school holiday, the aides said.
Can you imagine if schools treated Jewish and Christian students like that, giving them all sorts of accommodations? Lawsuits a flying!
"There are public schools throughout the country that — under the guise of diversity or multiculturalism — are allowing Islamic programs in schools that would not be allowed for Christians," said Richard Thompson, president of Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center. "If you’re going to do it for the Muslim students, that’s fine, but you’d better do it for the Christians."
We all know that won’t happen. Liberals, the ACLU, atheists, pitch major league conniption fits over the Pledge of Allegiance, due to "under God." A moment of silence is treated as if the most extreme of backwater religious tent healers is leading a prayer. Christmas is guaranteed to put liberals into a funk, and God help anyone who tries to even allow Santa into a school on a paper bag. Detention and a good talking to!
This is not to say, regardless of how one feels about Islam, that their religious beliefs should be denied; I am simply saying that there needs to be consistency, and no group should be put above another.
Funny how the ACLU is completely absent when it is Islam in school, eh?
