Muslim Prayers In California Elementary School

The San Diego Union Tribune reported that a San Diego public school has become part of a national debate over religion in schools ever since a substitute teacher publicly condemned an Arabic language program that gives Muslim students time for prayer during school hours.

Carver Elementary in Oak Park added Arabic to its curriculum in September when it suddenly absorbed more than 100 students from a defunct charter school that had served mostly Somali Muslims.

The special accommodations for Carver Elementary's nearly 100 Somali Muslims don't stop with organized prayer. The school cafeteria has banned pork and other foods that conflict with the Islamic diet. I remember fish sticks on Fridays in my elementary school cafeteria for the Catholics, but I brown-bagged my lunch. No one had to eat the fish sticks if they didn't want to.

And the K-8 school has even added Arabic — the language of the Quran — to its curriculum, while segregating classes for girls, a la the Taliban.

Is this in the same country where Christians cannot pray at commencement ceremonies, Christmas plays in schools have been cancelled and we cannot even wish each other "Merry Christmas?"

But the Muslim students at Carver Elementary School are granted the time to pray to Allah everyday.

The midday prayer for Muslims here generally falls between 1 and 2 p.m., North said, and that is before the school day ends.

“What is unique about this request is the specificity of the religious requirement that a prayer be offered at a certain time on the clock,” he said.

North went on to say, “The district's legal obligation in response to a request that a prayer must be performed at a particular time is to treat that request the same as it would treat a student's request to receive an insulin shot at a particular time.”

Have you ever heard such drivel? Comparing the necessity of an insulin shot to saying prayer?

Investor's Business Daily reports that The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is defending the Carver program, insists public schools must cater to the growing number of Muslim students. "Our country is transforming demographically, religiously," said the spokesman for CAIR's San Diego chapter. "Our country has to now accommodate things that are not traditionally accounted for before."

But when does accommodation become promotion? In California's brave new schools, Johnny has been forced to recite the Quran along with Ahmed.

Seventh-graders at a San Francisco-area school were required, even after 9/11, to "become Muslims" for two full weeks as part of California's world history curriculum. This included reciting the Muslim profession of faith — "Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger" — and chanting "Praise be to Allah" in response to teacher prompts.

Parents naturally were outraged that teachers would be shoving Islamic beliefs down their children's throats. And some of them sued the school district, only to lose in federal court. They appealed, but the ultra-liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals out of San Francisco ruled that such Islamic catechism is constitutional.

How can Islamic catechism in public schools be constitutional when Catholic catechism is not allowed in public school curriculum?

It is not constitutional to outlaw one religion in America, and honor another in our public schools.