Washington Schools and Teachers Told to Honor the Islamic Holiday of Ramadan
By Julio
Severo
Teachers and schools in Seattle,
Washington, have been told to honor the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. The
instruction came directly from Superintendent Judy Martinson, who in March
received a letter from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an
Islamic organization involved in a major terrorist case years ago.
Superintendent Martinson enacted the
letter as official policy and sent it to all school principals, who in turn
sent it to all teachers.
To help Muslim students celebrate Ramadan,
the CAIR letter pressures American schools to use Islamic salutations for
Muslim students, such as “Ramadan Mubarak!” or “Ramadan Kareem.”
The letter also instructs teachers to
monitor the fasting of Islamic students and not to schedule any tests during
Islamic holidays.
A teacher who felt constrained by such
Islamic pressures at her classroom made contact with the Freedom of Conscience
Defense Fund (FCDF), which sent a letter to schools in Seattle to immediately
stop privileging Islamic holidays.
In response, Ibrahim Hooper,
communications director for CAIR, threatened to take punitive legal action,
saying the FCDF letter was a “sign of the growing Islamophobia” in the United
States.
There will now be a major struggle between
Muslim activists who seek to impose their religion on American schools and
teachers who feel constrained by such impositions.
Although the United States is the largest
Protestant nation in the world, in the early 1960s prayer and Bible reading
were banned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that such Christian practices
were unconstitutional in schools after a Marxist mother complained that her son
was being exposed to prayers and Bible reading at school.
Years later, the son of the Marxist
converted to Jesus Christ. You can read his story in the exclusive interview he
gave me in 2015 at this link: Exclusive
Interview with William J. Murray, Defender of Persecuted Christians.
But the ban continues.
Oddly enough, religious
freedom in the U.S. is basically summed up to level all religions,
so if Protestantism, which was the religion of the Founding Fathers of the
United States and is the predominant religion in the United States today, takes
up space, all other religions, including Satanism and Islam, are entitled to
equal space.
The solution often found is to nullify the
freedom of Protestantism so that no religion may takes up space. Even so,
activists use the strategy of introducing Islamism and Satanism as a minority
culture.
Of course, the left has great guilt in
weakening the social influence of Protestantism and strengthening Islam. But
the right has also contributed. Since the Islamic attack on the United States
on September 11, 2001, right-wing President George W. Bush began calling Islam
a “religion of peace.” Coming from the left, it is no surprise. But it was a
disappointment the greatest right-wing leader in that time making such
misleading propaganda of Islam. Result? After
Bush’s special treatment for Islam, mosques experienced an explosive growth in
the United States.
It is then difficult for Americans to
forbid Islamic indoctrination in American schools, where evangelical prayers
and Bible reading have been banned for decades, when left-wing presidents such
as Obama and right-wing presidents like Bush have already enshrined Islam as a
“religion of peace.”
It is hard to forbid American schools to
honor Ramadan when Obama
honored Ramadan at the White House and now right-wing
President Donald Trump continues
to honor Ramadan at the White House.
Portuguese version of this article: Escolas e professores no Estado de Washington, EUA,
são instruídos a honrar o feriado islâmico do Ramadã
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