NJ Schools Add Muslim Holiday to Day-Off List

1010 Wins ^ | Nov 14, 2003 2:38 pm US/Eastern | 1010 Wins

[Calpernia]

Add Eid to the list of religious holidays that can get students a day off from school in some communities.

This Essex County district will become one of only a handful of districts in the nation to close schools on a major Islamic holiday, the Eid-al-Fitr on Nov. 26. Paterson and Trenton schools also close that day.

Public schools across the nation have traditionally closed for major Christian holidays including Christmas and several days before or after Easter, and many also close for Jewish holidays as well.

Now, with Islam emerging as one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States, some school districts with significant Muslim populations are recognizing the Eid holidays.

"Up to now, the major holidays have either been Christian or Jewish," said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. "But now we're diversifying, and I'm sure this is something we'll see other districts doing in the future."

Irvington, 2.9-square-mile community adjacent to Newark, is the latest to give students off for the Eid, which celebrates the end of Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims.

Superintendent of Schools Ernest Smith said community leaders convinced the school board that sufficient numbers of students and teachers observe the holiday and planned to be absent from school on the Eid holiday.

Paterson, with its large Arab-American population, started giving students off for Eid about three years ago.

"Members of the Muslim community came forward and requested we consider doing it," said Patricia Chalmers, a school district spokeswoman. "It really came from the community itself, and we were one of the first in the nation to do it."

Trenton has closed its schools for Eid for nearly a decade, a school official said.

In Michigan, Dearborn schools started closing for Eid in 2001, and the Crestwood school district agreed this year to close on Eid as well.

Other New Jersey municipalities with significant Muslim populations still do not close for Eid, including Newark, Jersey City and Camden.

The Eid holiday is slowly gaining in American public consciousness as well. The U.S. Postal Service recently introduced an Eid stamp.

[technomage]

You know, these are typical liberals. Doing this just to be "cool" amongst their friends.

[Calpernia]

There is a little more to it here in NJ than just being 'cool'. There are quite a few palms that get greased. I learned about that in a few meetings.

[fatidic]

Public education can't be reformed. School vouchers are the answer.

[sheik yerbouty]

"People of Cover"

[sheik yerbouty]

"Bad Day At Black Rock"

[technomage]

Of course, but ALL liberals that I know, deep down inside, do most everything just to be "cool" amongst their liberal friends. They NEED to prove they are part of the gang.

[cherry]

will someone tell this idiot that we do not celebrate any religous holidays at all.....we celebrate "winter holiday" ....

I expect people to sue the districts about this....

IF you can't even mention Christmas for the Christmas holidays, then I sure as hell don't think any other religous group should get special recongnition....

[Calpernia]

That is a good point.

[Coleus]

Irvington, NJ, is a city primarily consisting of blacks; it borders Newark and it looks like the claws of Calypso Singer Louie Farrakhan grabbed and converted a large portion of the residents to his brand of Islam.

http://www.irvington.k12.nj.us/
http://www.irvington.k12.nj.us/dist_calendar.html

NOVEMBER


4 Election Day - District Closed
6-7 NJEA Convention - District Closed
10 End of the first marking cycle (45 days)
11 Veteran's Day- District Closed
25 'Id ul-Fitr- District Closed
26-28 Thanksgiving - District Closed

[geege]

These people are off the wall.....I'd still send my kid to school.....even if it was closed!!!!!

[qam1]

Now, with Islam emerging as one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States.....

more fiction from the left

It is wrong, Islam isn't by far the fastest growing religion

From the 1991-2001 The Religious Identification Survey (Large .PDF warning)

Muslim/Islamic did double their numbers from 527,000 to 1,104,000 but in terms of % it is only an increase from 0.3% of the population to 0.5%.

A few of the Christian Religions grew more in people or % like the Catholics, Pentecostals and Evangelicals and over all while Muslims only increased by 500,000 Christians as a whole increased by 8,000,000 though as a percent of the population Christians declined nearly 10% from 86.2% to 76.5%.

The fastest growing Religion in % and numbers is of course No Religion

Atheist, Agnostics, No Religion made huge gains and went from 14,331,000 people at 8.2% of the population to 29,481,000 which 14.1% of the population

[Ed_in_NJ]

It would be more productive in the long run to just close the schools and leave them closed.

[Ed_in_NJ]

Excellent!

[sheik yerbouty]

What does this Allah need with a Borg cube?

[HostileTerritory]

I grew up in New Jersey. In districts where any religious group is present in large numbers, you are going to have students from that group take off from school on the most important religious holidays. Making it a school holiday is a way of recognizing that a significant number of students are going to be absent and this distracts from the learning experience--better to make up the day elsewhere in the calendar.

It's a matter of practicality. My township changed from a 90% Caucasian Catholic farm-and-mill town to a much more populous suburb with a large Jewish minority. When the number of Jewish students reached a certain point, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah were added as school holidays because so many students were absent. This is likely what has happened in Irvington. If there were 10 Jewish students in my town or only 10 Muslim students in Irvington, no one would care when they missed a day.

[HostileTerritory]

So, if the school district created a secular day off (like "Textbook Day") and made sure it fell on Eid every year, would you stop complaining about it? That's the crux of your analogy.

Because hell would freeze over before "Winter Break" was decoupled from Christmas.

If your actual objection is to Muslim students getting the day off for a holiday when they make up large numbers in the school district--and not that the holiday's name is recognized--then find a new line of argument. Do you even live in Irvington, NJ?

[The_Media_never_lie]

Isn't multiculturalism wonderful?

[JerseyHighlander]

>>>Our government was mostly founded by religious Christians.

Have you read Jefferson's writings??

A short time before his death, Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, after commending the morals of Jesus, wrote as follows concerning his philosophical belief:

"It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist."

In support of his Materialistic creed, he argues as follows:

"On the basis of sensation we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of matter or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of motion called thinking shall show how he could endow the sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and by that will put matter into motion, then the Materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise. But I believe that I am supported in my creed of Materialism by the Lockes, the Tracys, and the Stewarts."

Noting the absence of the idea of immortality in the Bible and particularly in the books ascribed to Moses, he writes:

"Moses had either not believed in a future state of existence, or had not thought it essential to be explicitly taught to the people." (Works, Vol. iv., p. 326.)

---

Money trail? I don't know. NJ had 181 days of instruction a year several years ago, i don't know if that changed.

[Calpernia]

>>>Money trail? I don't know. NJ had 181 days of instruction a year several years ago, i don't know if that changed

Yes there is a money trail. I was going to get into that on this thread more. But attack of the religions jumped all over this. Even if you go back and review my posts, I was trying to steer it back to explain myself, but it was too much effort. So I shake my head and walk away.

[SuperVillain]

no, but then again, Catholic schools don't take off for Yom Kippur either. and anyway, I am not yet aware of any Islamic schools here in the States.