Posted on 06/01/2016 1:55:20 PM PDT by HomerBohn
The Philadelphia School District will add two Muslim holidays to its calendar and the city will create a task force to study doing the same for the city’s calendar, officials announced Tuesday.
“Philadelphia’s history is based on being a place where religious freedom is part of its founding ethos,” Mayor Kenney said at a news conference in City Hall. “Our city was built on the idea that while we may be different in nationality and ethnicity, the city welcomes all to worship and practice the faiths of our culture or our choosing.”
The two holidays are Eid al-Fitr, celebrated after the month-long observance of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha, celebrated at the conclusion of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
The dates on which the holidays are celebrated change each year because Islam follows a lunar calendar. But this year Eid al-Fitr will fall in July and Eid al-Adha will take place in September.
Because the calendar for the 2016-17 school year has already been finalized, students, staff and teachers who wish to take the day off will be given excused absences, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said.
Hite said in the following years, the holidays will be treated like any other.
Because various Muslim sects determine the dates of the two holidays differently, Michael Rashid, chair of the Philadelphia Eid Coalition, said Muslim religious leaders from communities across the city have agreed on dates to be included on the school district calendar for the next five years.
In the 2017-18 school year, Eid al-Fitr falls during the summer and Eid al-Adha on a Saturday, meaning the first new holiday that the entire district will have off will be Eid al-Fitr on June 14, 2018.
The change could also impact charter schools, which Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. Hite said typically follow the district calendar.
Philadelphia, which has an estimated 200,000 Muslims, would not be the first city school district to add the holidays to the official calendar. Schools in New York City added them to the academic calendar last year.
Kenney said making the days city holidays will require buy-in from the city’s municipal unions. He said the newly created Mayor’s Task Force on Cultural Inclusion will “first and foremost” will focus on that issue but that the focus could broaden long term.
“I think it’s wide open and multifaceted,” Kenney said. “We have to take into account how society sometimes ostracizes and eliminates people from the mainstream because of extraneous kind of reasons.”
Philadelphia city workers currently have 11 paid holidays, two of them religious: Christmas and Good Friday. The School District also recognizes Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur.
America is governed by perverts and pansies that do everything to placate the Muslims. Leftist loons rant and rave about Christian holidays to the point many of them have been forcibly renamed so as to not offend Atheists, but have NO problems with this? As far as Jews are concerned they are considered evildoers who goad the poor Muslims into killing them.
So-called “educators” once again prove while many are frauds.
Islam is not a religion.
“200,000 Muslims” - I that is a valid number, we are in a bad way as a nation. There will come a time in the n ot so distant future when muslims will outnumber Jews in this nation. Politicians will kowtow even more to the enemies of mankind.
Ben Franklin doing RPMs in his grave.
if we can’t use the natural designation, “Christmas”, or “Easter”, why are the exact natural names for muslim holidays being used?
They are reaching have reached critical mass.
Englandistan.....Ring a bell??! SOON TO COME AMERICANISTAN!! And along with that Sharia is just around the corner!!! WE MUST STOP IT...even if it means Death as in a Civic war!!!!
Send your kids to a public schools and you’ve signed a pact and alliance with Satan.
Fact! Deal with it.
“if we can’t use the natural designation, “Christmas”, or “Easter”, why are the exact natural names for muslim holidays being used?”
From their website:
Easter is on a Sunday. They do use ‘Good Friday’.
Christmas falls during the extended Winter Break.
Schools are in the forefront of teaching kids about hating this country.
Will they celebrate Good Friday?
The world just keep giving in to them.
Last time I lived in Philly my wife and I were in the supermarket one day. I went to the deli counter and my wife pointed out a woman and said, “I think she was here first.” I noticed the woman was wearing the burka (without face covering) so I said, “That’s ok she can wait. She’s just a woman.”
My wife got mad and said she may complain. I told her that if she did I’d chastise her for being in public without a male escort and for speaking to me. And the woman never said a word. Of course I would have pointed out to her that we are in the USA and she is allowed to speak out.
What about Passover?
Of course, these school districts REFUSE to honor our midweek Orthodox Christian Feast Days!!!! (The next one coming up is Orthodox Ascension, June 9.)
Children (and teachers) who celebrate these holidays attend Divine Liturgy in the morning. They then can return to school for the rest of the day. So they do not require missing a full day of class.
Recognizing Orthodox Feast Days will necessitate full recognition of Western Christian holidays as well—no more “Spring Holiday” and “Winter Holiday”!! So there is no chance of such recognition short of these bureaucrats being run over by the Trump Train, etc.
Otherwise, the muslims get their bloody pagan “Eid” feasts, and it’s “gay”/atheism as usual for the rest of us!!!!
In the Orthodox Church we celebrate the end of the Fast but call it PASCHA!
As retarded as those that follow islam are, missing more school and work can not be a good thing.
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