Recognizing Muslim Holidays in Public Schools

My experience in High School as a Muslim was overall a pretty positive one, albeit at the time I didn't wear hijab. Most teachers and administrators were as accommodating to my needs as a Muslim as they could be.

During my four years in high school there were at most seven or eight observant Muslims at any one time, and at least a couple dozen Bosnian and Albanian Muslims who chose to blend into the masses. For the group of us 7 or 8, which included two white American converts, we were made to feel quite comfortable. We were given a space to pray at school in a dressing room backstage of the auditorium. We were also given special hall passes so that we could make our prayers at the appropriate time of day. At lunchtime, the lunch ladies always heeded my request for a clean change of gloves and a fresh package of turkey yet to be contaminated by the nearby ham before assembling my sandwich. The no headwear rule was waived for those girls who did choose to cover their hair, and gym uniforms were allowed to be modified so that we could be as modest as we felt comfortable. There was always a healthy curiosity amongst the teachers and many students which reassured us kids that we were right where we belonged. Yes, all of this was after 9-11. I was in the graduating class of 2006.

The only time I ever really perceived a problem was when our holidays, Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr rolled around. It wasn't really a huge problem, but more of an inconvenience. We were allowed to leave school with an excused absence so long as we provided a written note from our Imam with the coming of each holiday. What this meant was we didn't receive any penalty for missing school, but we still had to take the risk of missing out on important lectures, tests, and on at least two unfortunate occasions, final exams. I wasn't exactly the most serious student in high school, and skipped classes with reckless abandon whenever possible. My other Muslim friends weren't like me though. With each Eid they had to weigh their options to decide whether or not they could afford missing classes, excused or not. Often times, skipping Eid celebrations was academically the smart decision, so that's what they did.

I always just thought "well, that's the way it is." Of course my friends and I joked around about how cool it would be if everyone could just take Eid off like Christmas or Easter, but we never considered this in any sort of serious way.

That's why I was shocked to read the headline "NYC Muslims Push For School Holidays" in my newsfeed on Facebook. I had no idea that there was a real, organized movement trying to get Muslim holidays onto school calendars. I thought this stuff only existed in teenage imaginations.

As I read further into the article I was even more shocked when I found that about a year ago the city council voted almost unanimously in favor of including the Eids on the New York City Public School calendar. It's not just a handful of Muslim students and parents, but the real decision-makers; people with some amount of authority are backing this movement to provide Muslim students with the same privileges as their Christian and Jewish counterparts. In NYC, Yom Kippur is a recognized holiday in which students take off school.

I suppose this was all so shocking for me because I'm from a school district with only a handful of Muslims; from a place where it honestly wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to recognize Muslim holidays. At my high school, we didn't have any Jewish holidays off either.

But in a place where 1 in 8 students is Muslim, like in NYC, it does make sense that the Eids be recognized holidays. It seems nonsensical, in fact, for 12% of the students to have to weigh out whether or not to miss class. And if the majority do decide to skip school in order to celebrate Eid, that would certainly be a whole lot of tests that teachers would have to reschedule.

The only thing keeping this dream from becoming a reality for NYC Muslims is Mayor Bloomberg who opposes the idea on the basis of "if you close the schools for every single holiday, there won't be any school." I get the point that he's trying to make. Back in 2006 when similar decisions had to be made in Skokie, Illinois, then school board president James McGowan said "we can't be in the business of deciding which religions are important enough to be acknowledged and which are not."

The point I'm making is, maybe in Machesney Park where I went to school, in a city without any sizable Muslim or Jewish populations, recognizing Muslim or Jewish holidays wouldn't be worth the efforts at this juncture in time. But in places like Skokie where over 10% of the students are Jewish, or in NYC where 12% of the students are Muslim, the decision kind of makes itself. If that many students in NYC are Muslim, it's probably fair to assume that a similar percentage of the teachers are Muslim as well. Recognizing Muslim holidays in NYC public schools, and in other school districts with large populations of Muslims seems like the right thing to do, and the smartest thing to do. For those Muslim kids from smaller towns, they'll have to just keep dreaming, and taunting their friends about having an extra day off that everyone else doesn't get.

American Mosques: NOT Places Where “Terrorists’ Monkey-gods” Are Worshiped

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Tea Party leader Mark Williams recently responded to plans of building a mosque in New York City near Ground Zero by spewing bigoted hate-speech which Muslims have grown accustomed to. Williams mixed up his brown people when he said that the proposed mosque would be a “monument ... for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god and a 'cultural center' to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult." Williams did make a half-hearted, snarky apology to Hindus who he says “worship Lord Hanuman, an actual monkey god.” In contrast to the monotheistic God of Adam, Jesus, Noah, and Muhammad who is worshiped by people of Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths whom he disparagingly likened to a monkey in a puny attempt to belittle Muslims.

Contrary to what Williams thinks, mosques are places where people come together and re-center themselves around God. Mosques are places where worldly problems are checked by humility in front of the divine. They are the very places which teach the true tenants of faith, and openly condemn the violent acts of a few. American Mosques provide a sense of belonging for those who feel alienated and ostracized by people like Williams, and spaces to engage with Muslims as well as people of other faiths. Mosques collect funds that are donated to charity, provide classes, and host soup kitchens. Some mosques are more liberal, while some are quite conservative. Some mosques are rather dogmatic, while some focus on spirituality. Some get political, some don’t. Mosques, like churches, in America are very diverse; however I have never witnessed the propagating “for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult” in any American mosque that I've visited, including the more conservative and dogmatic ones.

The fact of the matter is that people with extremist ideologies or tendencies stay away from mosques because they know they aren’t welcome. But if someone with a slightly more radical outlook does decide to join in on mosque services, that’s a couple of hours a week spent learning from a credible, learned imam and away from his computer where he’s probably on pretty goofy websites and engaging with other like-minded radicals. And if you’re still concerned, rest assured that there are informants-a-plenty in every mosque in this country.

Some say that it’s simply insensitive to build a mosque so near to Ground Zero because it’s a “slap in the face” for victims’ families. I read in an ABC News article that Rabbi Schmulley Boteach said "On the one hand, stopping a mosque from being built undermines the very notion of freedom of worship in the United States. On the other hand, the idea of building a mosque and celebrating Islam at the site where 3,000 innocent Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists is an affront to so many people that I see it dividing New York and the nation."

We have to remember that not all Muslims should be held accountable for the horrific, inhumane, and entirely unjustifiable terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. In fact, dozens of American-Muslims lost their lives that day while working in the Twin Towers.

The American-Muslim victims of 9-11 and the American-Muslim survivors of 9-11 living in New York absolutely have the right to worship God and erect a symbol of their true faith to stand in total opposition to the place where terrorists not only destroyed countless lives and families, but also perverted the message and meaning of Islam. People already pray at the proposed site which is an old Burlington Coat Factory. They simply want to improve upon what they already have and build something they can be proud of; a sanctuary from the residual pain which 9-11 brought to all New Yorkers, regardless of their relgion.

What would be more beautiful and more American than to have a glistening gold dome added to the skyline of New York City amongst the myriad of churches and synagogues? And honestly, what would be more defiant than to boldly state that no matter what, through thick or thin, freedom of religion is a core American value that should not be touched?

I was talking with a friend's father the other day about how difficult it is to secure permits for building mosques in this country. This man happens to work in Saudi Arabia and was quick to remind me that although it's unfortunate that we have to jump through so many hoops to get mosques built, in places like Saudi Arabia building churches is altogether illegal. This simple anecdote should put things into perspective for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Building places of worship should not cause people like Mark Williams to go off on racist tirades, but should inspire people to promote and defend American ideals.