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?
I just linked you to the PoliStew blog.
Hey, I remember when our biggest worry was whether or not we’d get the kickball at recess.
Anyway, I can’t say I’m thrilled when I see the Chapel on Wheels parked on the school curb to give enriched Christian education. But I wouldn’t be pleased if it were Mormons, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims or Wiccans either.
Yes, I agree that they should learn about different religions as a matter of social studies, but any part of the day where kids are separated from one another on the basis of practicing religion doesn’t jive with public education as it was intended.
They’re only in school for six hours a day.
I used to bitch and moan to Frau Vader everytime we wrote out a parochial school check for monthly tuition from 1991-2006 for Vader Junior, but atleast he saw an American Flag hanging in his classrooms, his class recited word for word the Pledge of Allegiance daily, they prayed, they respected one another and their teachers and sisters and priests…and their schoolbooks were new every year and paid for without tax payer expenses! Yeah Blackbeard…vader Junior is down your way in a good red state university with a 3.6 GPA… “It doesn’t take a village Hillary – it takes loving parents, faith in God and sacrifice – personal sacrifices!”
GOOD JOB!