Posted on 09/12/2013 7:36:20 PM PDT by moonshinner_09
The principal of Concord Carlisle High School is apologizing to parents about the schools opening ceremony on Wednesday - the 12th anniversary of 9/11 - in which a Muslim poem was recited over the intercom but the Pledge of Allegiance was not.
Principal Peter Badalament said in a statement to parents that the poem was meant to promote "cross-cultural understanding," and that the Pledge of Allegiance was not read because of a mixup with the student reader.
The combination of the two has "outraged a small number of members of our community," Badalament said in an email to the Globe, noting that the school has received a handful of calls and about 10 emails from unhappy parents.
"Yesterday was the first Wednesday of the school year; we were unaware that our student Pledge reader had an internship commitment on this day," Badalament said in the statement.. "This was our responsibility to know. We humbly apologize that this oversight and communication gap occurred."
Badalament said officials were only thinking of the well-being of their students when they chose to read the poem, Mohja Kahf's "My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears." The poem recounts a granddaughter's account of watching her grandmother adhere to the religious Muslim custom of washing her feet five times a day, though it puts the pair in an awkward situation at an American department store.
Kahf writes in a section of the poem:
Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown as they notice what my grandmother is doing, an affront to American porcelain, a contamination of American Standards by something foreign and unhygienic requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Out of a cannon.
I grew up in Acton, which is the next town over. we use to say the pledge ourselves. how would listening to it be the same as saying it?
after saying that.. this story outrages me
Tar and feather the principal.
Cross cultural understanding?
A line in the poem reads: “My grandmother knows one culturethe right one,”
Sure sounds inclusive to others doesn’t it?
catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says,
I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul,
with water from the world's ancient irrigation systems
I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus
over painted bowls imported from China
among the best families of Aleppo
And if you Americans knew anything
about civilization and cleanliness,
you'd make wider washbins, anyway
My grandmother knows one culturethe right one,
“...you’d make wider washbins, anyway...”
Tell the old hag to stand sideways in a toilet bowl and flush a few times - it always works for me - especially if I’ve been walking in swine shiite.
Yes, where are those hypocrites who are always screaming about separation of church and state?
Excellent! thanks. Poor Paul would wonder if his efforts were for naught.
I think that this story is a hoax, for a number of reasons.
Hey bitch, next time someone might just shove your feet in the toilet, as well as your head..
I’m sorry, I’m just tired of this nonsense.
It sounds like they were forcing religion down the students’ throats. What if someone got offended?
Hike your whining wrinkled azz back to Aleppo, granny.
Even Benedict Arnold is rolling over in his grave.
I gave it little notice as well, but the idiot in charge of the pubic sckrewel issued an apology today. Not a hoax at all. He should be in 0 bummers' unemployment line tomorrow. I hate liberals.
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