Free Republic

The Philadelphia School District will add two Muslim holidays to its calendar, placing it among the first in the nation to do so. In what would be an even rarer step, Mayor Kenney said Tuesday he also hopes to adopt the holidays for city workers. He has created a task force to determine how the change can be accomplished. A spokesman from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington said his group is not aware of any cities that have included the holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, in their municipal calendars. "Philadelphia's history is based on being a place...

School districts debate closing school for holidays observed by a growing number of students. As Eid al-Adha approaches, how will schools observe the holiday?Public schools in the US close in observance of Christian holidays including Christmas and Easter, and now other religious denominations are asking for their holidays to be respected, too. This Thursday is Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, one of the biggest holidays of the year for Muslims, and school administrators must decide whether or not to close school for the day. In New Jersey, where almost 2 percent of the population identifies as Muslim, several...

A petition on White House.gov is calling for President Obama to support an effort to encourage public schools to recognize Muslim holidays on their official school calendars. The petition was put on the "We the People" site last month by a group of Muslim students from Virginia and has garnered about 28 thousand signatures so far. "With the growing population of Muslims in he United States of America (including first, second, third and fourth generation) we believe it is high time that Muslim holidays are recognized by schools throughout this nation," reads the petition text.

Supporters claim the addition of Muslim holidays to the New York City school system calendar would “send a positive message to the Muslim community that you are welcome here,” but the Big Apple’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is no fan of the plan. Bloomberg claims the school children already take too much time off, and points to statistics that only four of 10 students in the system graduate on time. Muslim enrollment in the New York City schools has risen to 12 percent, or 100-thousand students, and religious leaders there are demanding five more days off over the next decade. Having...

Workers at Tyson Foods' poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day, but will instead take the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in the fall. A recent press release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) stated that a new contract at the Shelbyville facility "implements a new holiday to accommodate the ... Muslim workers at the plant." The RWDSU stated that "the five-year contract creates an additional paid holiday, Iidal Fitil, a Muslim holiday that occurs toward the end of Ramadan." read full article at Times-Gazette