According to The Washington Post, there has been a significant increase in Muslim students seeking to pray in public schools in the U.S and one school, Maryland high has found a way to accommodate them.
Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County, Md., has begun to allow a small group ten high-achieving Muslim students out of class for about eight minutes each day to pray together on campus. The Principal, Cheryl J. Logan said that students with parental permission and high grades receive a pass to leave class and pray every day. She said that one student is working hard to raise his grades so he is able to join the group.
Still, the attempts of some American schools to accommodate the prayer needs of Muslim students has been met with resistance from parents of other faiths.
Last year a Green Bay, Wis., school district was criticized for allowing Muslim students, many of them recent immigrants, to use empty classrooms to pray during breaks, according to The Christian Post. And the mere possibility that some Muslim students would be getting similar accommodations in a district in Pennsylvania was enough to draw protest from parents, according to The Patriot-News.
Some schools that have introduced similar policies to accommodate Muslim students have met challenges in the past. A San Diego, Calif., elementary school that had set aside prayer time stopped doing so after it received criticism. The school ultimately reconfigured the schedule so Muslim students could pray during lunch.
Logan said that when the Muslim students had initially started praying during the school day it upset some of the Christian teachers. They told the students “it was a Christian school.” She went on to explain the situation to the students; public schools are not religious but are legally able to accommodate students who wish to practice their religion.
The First Amendment protects the separation of church and state, but it guarantees students are allowed to practice their faith, The Tennessean reported in 2012.
Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, told The Tennessean that while schools may restrict how and where students choose to exercise their religious rights, a school may not stop students from doing so. "Public schools cannot prevent students from expressing religious faith while on school property," she said. According to the Union, female teachers and students were also not allowed to wear a hijab or have been harassed for doing so.
Charles Haynes, the director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism based in Washington, said that allowing Muslim students to pray is “certainly permissible” under the U.S. Constitution though probably not required.
He added some states have passed laws which obligate schools to “simply treat everyone the same way and not give exemptions or special accommodations for religious reasons.”
The Montgomery County Board of Education informed leaders of the county’s growing Muslim community that it would be impossible to add an Islamic holy day to the school calendar even though there are Christian and Jewish holidays on the school calendar. The board said these dates were decided a long time ago.
Logan also said that when the school's plan was implemented, she initially heard grumbling from some Christian teachers, who reportedly told students Parkdale was "a Christian school.” But apparently the issues have since been resolved.
“I’ve been real happy with how we’ve been able to deal with it without it becoming an issue,” Logan said.
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