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June 9, 2006

US: Muslims Try To Ban Jewish School Holidays

We have reported before on the attempts by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to interfere with the holiday schedule of Hillsborough County School Board in Florida. They wanted to add Muslim holidays, but the plan backfired when the Board decided to remove all religious holidays. A month later, the board had another vote, and decided to reinstate such holidays, such as Yom Kippur and Good Friday, but with no additional Muslim holidays.

Now, a deliberately malicious campaign by Muslims to interfere with school holidays has been mounted in Baltimore, Maryland, according to Towson Times and Arutz Sheva.

For three years, there has been a battle by Baltimore County Muslim Council to introduce Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha into the Baltimore County school curriculum. This move has so far borne no fruit, so the Muslim tactic has changed. They now wish to remove all Jewish holidays from the 2006 to 2007 school calendar.

The school calendar, proposed on May 10 and due to be ratified by the school board on June 13, includes Roch Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but does not have the Muslim Eid holidays celebrated. Eid ul-Fitr takes place at the end of Ramadan.

The president of the Baltimore County Muslim Council, Dr Bash Pharoan, has gone on the offensive, claiming discrimination against Muslims, but demanding discrimination against Jews. He says that if Muslims cannot get their holidays, then neither should the Jews. He said: "The issue is about equality, about equity".

Pharoan did not say what he would do if his demand was ignored, but he did not rule out the threat of legal action.

Arthur Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council explained that the reason Jewish holidays were on the school calendar was because it would be costly to hire substitute teachers for the time that observant Jewish teachers would be away on these dates.

There do not seem to be many Muslim teachers on the school staff registers in Baltimore County. Substitute teachers cost from $59.66 per day up to $103.05 per day, depending upon experience and specialisation. Abramson said that when the schools have more Muslim staff and pupils, then Muslim holidays will be added to the list.

Abramson described Pharoan's attempts to remove Jewish holidays thus: "This is an attempt to wage de-facto warfare between Muslims and Jews in Baltimore County." He added: "This has nothing to do with the best interests of the school district nor the students."

The calendar committee had decided to take note of the potential for Muslim teachers to be off on the two Muslim holidays. It allowed both Muslim teachers and Muslim pupils to take time off on the holidays. The panel agreed to monitor how many absences took place and from this decide if future days off were needed on a school-wide basis.

Pharoan called this "racial profiling", even though when I last looked, Muslims belong to a religion, not a race. He calimed that his vendetta was "not about celebrating religious holidays", but said "this is about equal treatment of all county tax-paying residents."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 9, 2006 2:25 PM

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