Posted on 09/25/2013 3:11:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On the one hand, its a good idea to be respectful of religious holidays. However, in a nation like America that has people from every faith on earth, if all of us took a holiday every time some religion had a holy day, wed never get anything done. The Council on AmericanIslamic Relations would apparently be just fine with that.
Standing in front of the Montgomery County Council Office Building in Rockville, Northwest High School senior Anhar Karim said he is one of many students in the county who have faced a hard decision related to two Muslim holidays. Karim said that when a holiday conflicts with school, he can either celebrate and miss class or go to school and miss the celebration. We are forcing our students into an unreasonable decision, said Karim, who is president of the Montgomery County Muslim Student Association. Karim and other speakers urged Montgomery County Public Schools to close when classes fall on Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr during a Monday press conference held by the Maryland chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations and the Equality for Eid Coalition. Eid al-Adha celebrates sacrifice to God and falls on Oct. 15 this year. Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and was Aug. 8. The dates of the holidays change because of the Islam lunar calendar. The coalition, which is sponsored by the council, formed about a year ago to pursue a long-standing goal for the school closures. Percentage wise, there really arent very many Muslims in the United States and once you get outside of say, Michigan, you could probably make just as good a case that Hindus, Scientologists, and Voodoo practitioners deserve holidays off as Muslims. Thats not a slap at Muslims; its just the demographic reality of the country. So, no, schools shouldnt be taking Islamic holidays off.
Islamic holidays off today, meat cleavers to the infidels' throats tomorrow.
Provide education vouchers for use at any school which can meet certain standards. Such schools can set any holidays they wish.
I don’t CAIR.
This is simple. We need to take a good look at how they handled these morons down under. Many of them left and that is a good thing.
In the old, real world, a number of schools were closed for Jewish holidays in the major cities (mine was Baltimore), because Jewish students and staff constituted the majority in some neighborhood.
Some schools were open but more for catch-up time.
Nobody died, no one went crazy. The city schools were closed for Christmas and I believe some were closed for Good Friday (or had excused absences).
This was a time when Jews and Christians had pretty good relations, esp. in the school systems, where administrators, principals and staff were able to work out reasonable accomodations for each religious group.
Today, “diversity” has destroyed this long-time balance but as one commentor postulated, each religious group could ask for the schools to be closed on their most holy holidays (and their rationale would be correct).
The old recognized “excused absences” technique would resolve all these problems without interferring with anyone’s religious practicies.
Heck. One of my classmates (and his friends), took off for Greek Christmas (Greek Orthodox - it helps when your father is the head of the local church). We thought that it was “cool” because we didn’t know much about Greek Orthodoxy and why they went by a different calendar. But we learned, and had respect for them.
Now, one of my classmates, in a truly early effort to promote “diversity”, took off for Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur, Christmas, Greek Christmas, and Chinese New Years.
Unfortunately we were a few years too early to celebrate Vietnamese New Year “Tet”, and the fake holiday of Kwanza (why anyone made a holiday to celebrate a Kwanzset Hut is beyond me).
Otherwise, Phil would have joyfully celebrated them too in the spirit of universal brotherhood and taking another day off from school.
As for CAIR, who CARES? They are Islamic jihadist subversives and should be treated as such. But with Marxist O’Malley in charge of Maryland, you never know whether he will order a “surrender” to this religious fanatics. The same for the governorship ambitious Doug Gansler.
In Maryland, the “M” could stand for “Moslem”.
Is 9/11 on their list?
#18” After the Islamic jihadist massacres at the Mumbai Mall in India and the Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, your question is rhetorical.
Hey, Anhole: you won't need to face that hard decision if you move to Saudi Arabia or one of those fine Middle Eastern latrines where islime is the law of the land. There, your betters will decide for you.
There are no muslime "holidays" in this country as far as I'm concerned. At least none worthy of public recognition.
Except for National Beheading Day, of course ...
As long as the school allows it to be an excused absence what’s the big deal about having to choose whether to celebrate or attend school? Every time there’s a Saturday extracurricular event orthodox Jews have to decide whether to participate or not.
What this tells me is that they believe it’s time to begin the push for sharia. It starts with “cultural” concessions that lay a groundwork for special recognition of Islam in the legal system, which is later exploited to make Islam supreme and then eventually the only legal religion.
We are in America, last time I looked. We have American Holidays. You want to celebrate Islam Holidays, go back to Islam.
Hey...while we are making holidays...lets have some for Marshall Applewhite and his cult...we can celebrate by wearing purple capes....
Better than celebrating a cult that worships a Pedophile and kills those who doesn’t worship pedos. CAIR is Evil
I worship Bim Bam Boom...I can’t work on Fridays or Mondays.. but my religion requires me to paid for a full 5 days.
Shows how much you know. The holiday is for celebrating an Australian Airline.
We will once they get above a certain percentage of the population. Look at England. It's part of their plan. They pop out kids like rabbits while British natives have one, maybe two children. Dearbornistan's another place here in the USA.
Why there aren't federal bureaucrats decorating lampposts across the land is beyond me.
Well bugger me, mate! I thought that airline went out of business long before Crocodile Dundee came to America.
What next from Australia, ROO BURGERS? Oh the horror of it all.
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