Islamic Prayers Allowed in Toronto Schools

Any organization (especially one that apparently is supposed to be secular in nature) with a “religious accommodation policy” is doomed to failure.

Hemant, you’ll know doubt be tickled to know that about fifty years ago, my class regularly got pulled out my elementary arithmetic class to go across the street, where some little old ladies read us Bible stories (and feed us cookies and lemonade–that part was cool). Who knows? If not for them, my whole history with math might have been at least a little better!

I don’t really see a problem with this – nor do I see anything wrong with religious accommodation policies, in general. While I may not always agree with religion, I do recognize & respect others’ beliefs, & I think that, when possible, accommodations should be made for religious individuals, so long as they don’t infringe upon the rights or beliefs of anyone else. Saying that religious people should leave religion at home when they come to school is akin to saying they should leave it behind when they come to work, too, that religious people should only be religious people in their own homes & their places of worship. Do you believe that a Muslim woman who wants to wear her head scarf should, in fact, not be allowed to work at an Abercrombie & Fitch, who has tried to ban headscarves from their strict dress code, or that a Sikh man with a beard should not be allowed to work in food services, even if he covers it with a hairnet (which the law has deemed acceptable, by the way)? While I agree with you quite often, I feel strongly that opposing sensible religious accommodations can only lead to an increase in religious discrimination which is, well, discriminatory. And no matter how you feel about religion, I hope none of us is “for” discrimination!

I worded this poorly, but I hope my views make some sense! (I, too, wonder how much class they’re missing. I wonder if perhaps these students have scheduled study halls after lunch, & they used this time for prayer? I see that as being fine, as long as, obviously, it’s not required of anyone.)

It’s not a religious accommodation policy that they have, rather it’s a religious appeasement policy.

My mother’s on the school board so I’ve been hearing a fair bit about this lately. I’m a pretty vocal secular education advocate but this doesn’t bother me that much for a couple of reasons.

First, the students’ parents arranged for the imam to lead the prayers, not the school. The school’s merely providing the space. They’re not providing any other resources.

Second, the Muslim students (and there are a lot at this school) were missing class on Friday afternoons to attend prayers. This was a pragmatic solution developed a few years ago that was intended to address that and, as far as I know, the students aren’t missing class time with this arrangement.

The boys and girls are kept separate, which generally bothers me but is in line with what would be happening at the mosque anyway. Still don’t like it though.

The print version of this article has much more information in it, but hopefully this clears up a few of the main questions!

Imagine a Christian group filing a lawsuit based on that!

Since the praying students are Muslim, that’s easy enough for me to imagine.

I don’t know. I don’t like the praying during class time, but if it’s voluntary and the school isn’t actually paying the iman, and similar accommodations are made for other religious groups, I’d be inclined to let it go. I actually really like what dpeabody described.

I think the “its voluntary” and its “not officially sanctioned” are weak arguments. Imagine if back when prayer was being eliminated from the schools that the Christians had informally brought in a pastor/priest/etc for a “voluntary” prayer. I dont think it can be truly called “voluntary”.

If it’s set up like American schools, there’s a half hour recess after lunch. So, it sounds like they are ‘sacrificing’ kickball or prayer. Someday they’ll walk out into the sun, and after that … they’re all ours.

My old school had christian services in the gym every week before school started. attendance was not mandatory, but a lot of students liked it. If the kids are getting out of class time for this, and if other groups cannot hold their own services, then it’s wrong, but otherwise I have no problem with optional religious services at school.

I found another article written by the newspaper two days ago which touched on islam, I think you’ll find this article interesting, especially the second half, pretty spot on if you ask me:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/time-to-lead-archives/readers-react-to-growth-of-muslim-population-in-canada/article2087952/

Justin from the Toronto Centre For Inquiry was on the radio talking about this and he raised some salient points:

Firstly non-muslims are not welcome to these prayer meetings. This is divisive and counter to Canadian principles.

Secondly teachers are expected to help as part of their duties to set up the cafeteria for use as a mosque – a mosque which they are thereafter not permitted to enter because they are not muslims, see point #1.

Thirdly and most egregiously, the students attending are segregated into male and females, this breaching another Canadian value of equality between sexes.

Attendance is “voluntary” but it is all too easy to see how coercive students could pressurize disinterested secular muslims into taking part, and there is something sinister about giving a non-educater religious leader basically unfettered access to a whole generation of kids.

School should not be a place where adults are allowed to proselytise to kids. If this was a student led prayer group then I wouldn’t have a particularly huge problem with it (as long as rules against proselytising were clearly written and rigourously enforced) but this is a local religious leader being brought in by parents and handed over to a basically captive audience.

@Another_anon: I notice that the section on Islam is the longest section in the entire document with the widest variety of accommodations. In fact the only accommodation granted to another religious group that doesn’t have an similar allowance under the Islam section is that Sikhs are allowed to wear a kirpan.

Perhaps the Hindu group is concerned about an insular religious group being granted special protections in an otherwise fairly secular society? Especially a religion that they’ve had such a long and violent history with extending right up to the present day. Maybe they’re worried about how insular Muslim expat communities around the world are seen to fairly often engage in violence against outsiders? Perhaps the fact that Canada even considers allowing Sharia courts to exist within our borders alarms them?

To top it all off, this Muslim imam is being granted unrestricted access to impressionable youths while outsiders are forbidden from observing him. Apart from the fact that this setup opens up the muslim youths to possible abuse, a public school is being used to preform religious indoctrination during school hours.

Check out this debate from a Toronto radio station.

http://www.640toronto.com/HostsandShows/JohnOakley/Audio.aspx

Think I have to agree with the Hindu guy here, but have issues with the way he goes about saying it.

In addition to Tony’s comments;

the girls are forced to sit at the back of the room, behind the men, and are further separated from the girls on their period, who are considered “unclean”.

The Iman they bring in to speak in these sessions does so in arabic, which the majority of the students don’t actually speak, and to which the teachers are unable to understand what is being “preached” – in which case where is the value?

Apparently a significant portion of this school is Muslim (approaching 90%)…imagine what kind of distraction this must be for the non-participants when the participants get up to leave. Further – does the teacher continue teaching the class as if the students were dimply absent or is the teaching plan modified to not cover material until they return? If the former, what kind of damage must this missing material be doing to the participants academics…if the latter, then the non-participants are getting shortchanged on their opportunity to learn.

I’ve read the comments on your web site. 1/3 of the students are missing from class.

You strike me as a genteel group of posters who 1) know nothing of fundamentalism, 2) know very little of feminism and Islam, 3) know nothing of the power of precedent in schools, 4) do not understand how disruptive changing around an entire teaching schedule is to accommodate a religious demand – even when at lunch because gyms are used for all sorts of extracurricular activities at lunch time and also, need some time to be cleaned in order for the next class to have their time in there for instruction (gym/band practice, etc.)

However, I’m glad you’re reflecting on the issue.

Hi Emily,

I’m very sad to here this news, as I am currently in the process of moving to Canada, in particular to Toronto…and one of the reasons for moving is due to the stance that the UK establishment is taking toward religion in general but more disturbingly toward islam.

I am on a quest to show that Islamophobia is a highly rational state of mind. As you know ‘phobia’  means ‘fear of’ and as I ‘am’ very fearful of Islam in fact hyper fearful, I have no problem being labelled Islamophobic. I am also Naziphobic (Nazis), Misogynophobic (Misogynists) and Theologicophobic (Religions). All of these things threaten human progress.

I think the UK is steadily on its way toward islamofication, I know this comes across alarmist and maybe even sounds a bit xenophobic, but I assure you, in context we are headed there. This is how it has been able to spread…we as Brits have come to feel so contrite about the actions of our ancestors in the dark history of our nation (religious intolerance, crusades, colonialism, slavery etc.), that as a means of assuaging our brutalized conscience we prostrate ourselves at the altar of relativism, because dare we criticise, we will be labelled racist, colonialist and intolerant brutes…just like our forefathers.

Now, we all despise these things and quite rightly, but as a result of this cowardly mood of thinking we have in effect dropped our guard and allowed some very dangerous memes to infiltrate our minds. The question you ask is, ‘Do you feel guilt for the actions of your ancestors?’. My answer is ‘absolutely not, don’t be absurd.’, even they could not be held guilty in a properly convened court of public opinion. Does it mean that their behaviour was acceptable? Absolutely not! Their behaviour judged by todays zeitgeist would condemn them without much trouble. 

But that’s just the point we cannot judge our ancestors by our standards, and even if we did, there is no reason for me to feel guilt about the actions they carried out. My response is that we must not regress to their primitive ways, we must not forget their errors of the past and we must work tirelessly at maintaining and improving  human wellbeing. This involves keeping especially close watch on any attempts to regress to our apelike tendencies.

These memes play traitor to some of the most progressive martyrs of modern times.  Let’s consider the lives of those small few that had the courage to stand out and be counted. (I’m on my soap box now…sorry, just bare with me…). Take the suffragists & suffragettes for instance, these woman were spat upon, ridiculed in public, demonized and murdered as they pursued equality for woman. We have waged open war with misogyny over the decades that followed to uphold the spirit of this movement. However as woman begin to accept their rights as a given they begin to forget that it was only in 1928 that women got to vote on equal terms as men.

But we all know that since then the emphasis has broadened to look at equality of women across all spectrums of society. We have made a lot of progress, so much so that I think today most women are not aware of the struggle that their sisters and mothers had to face to win ‘their’ freedom.

Islam is openly the biggest enemy of women in modern times, and I find it utterly absurd that most people nod respectfully at the notion that as islam is a religion  muslims should be allowed to spew their misogynistic vitriol without any contest or protest. If it’s islamic culture to cover a woman because they feel it’s disrespectful to show her body, them we politely nod and say ‘well ok, it must be good’, ‘BULL-SHINONA!’ I say, it’s only disrespectful to the small pubic-hair-invested-heads of the men of this religion, that they feel justified in brutalizing the women of their tribe. Imagine sticking a sack over your daughter’s head…there is no way you think of her as your equal…

Now we have women being subjected to this vile culture of the burqa in the UK, being made to feel like you should be ashamed of showing you face and/or hair. We have had countless TV debates where muslim women will come on and vehemently defend their right to express their religious and cultural devotion by donning these degrading obscene garments. These women were around during the struggles of the suffragettes too, they were the ones who defended the right to be classed as chattel to their better halves.

So? You might ask, if a girl that appears on TV wants to wear a burqa, then she should be allowed to, surely we should not tell her that her desire to wear one is wrong. Well if you had an inkling of intellectual honesty you would know that if she does not like wearing the burqa could have very dire consequences for her. Death even, honour killings (why they are called honour killings is beyond me) are regarded as quite effective in dealing with rebellious teens. Perhaps she would look better in the eyes of her family and community if she stood up for this barbaric practice. Of course she’s going defend the practice, she stands to be shunned or killed if she doesn’t…ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I’m not saying that we should ban the  burqa (as in France), but I do feel the best way to deal with this has been neutralised by this competing meme (to prostrate oneself in respect for others’ religion and culture), because we don’t want to be seen as the aggressors that our ancestors were. How should we in the west deal with this malevolent meme/practice? In my view, there is only one way this can be done, and it’s the only way it has been done before, you need to shame them into seeing the error of their way’s. How do we respond to racists?, we drown them out with boos and jeers, we shake our heads in disgust at them and they have learnt by this that they are wrong. 

So too should we behave toward a man who walks along with his chattel en tow, beburqa’d and cowering. He should be shunned, booed and jeered at until he conforms to our enlightened zeitgeist, not only will help him, but by helping his wife it will help his children too.

The situation in the UK has got so bad here that we have introduced sharia tribunals that can act as quasi courts on such matters as divorce and inheritance, two of the least qualified fields for practice of sharia. Now ‘Nadia’ not only has to keep schtum about wearing her burqa but when her dad says that she has to accept that her brother gets double what she should get from her aunt’s will because they’ve opted for this sharia tribunal, she will have to grin and bare that too.

I have two girls a sister and a mother, and I will not stand for their being demonised for being female…I look through barbaric bearded man I see walking down the street with his burqa’d bride en tow and I go out of my way to make him feel miniscule.

Needless to say, the principal of this school is an IDIOT MORON of epic proportion, and he is openly inviting in the demise of female equality. Other than this islam is as bad as the other abrahamic religions, and has NO PLACE in school, just as racists have NO PLACE in a tolerant society so should we think of islam. If I were the principal faced with an imams request to show tolerance, I would say ‘you first’,  and then ask two questions…‘does your religion profess that woman are in any way less than men?’, if he says ‘yes’, then I use this as grounds for denying access to children, and if he says ‘no’ then I point him to sura 4 verse 34 and show him the door on the same grounds. My second question is ‘since the quran says that death is the sentence for apostates…is the quran correct in your view?’

The parents who do nothing are equally culpable for this calumnious action and should be ashamed of themselves. Sorry for the rant…

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2515587181120245843
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/faith-school-menace/4od