Did you know that about ten percent of NYC public school students are Muslim? That’s more than 100,000 students!
Celebrating Indonesian Eid ul-Fitr with ketupat (steamed rice inside palm leaves)
I learned from the NYC Students Blog that the question is on the table in the City Council as to whether Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha should become public school holidays. As the New York Sun article reports, Robert Jackson (who represents the 7th District in Manhattan) is pushing for the change because:
“There was a situation about two or three years ago where they held a big exam on one of the highest holy days and parents had to make a choice: Do I send my kids in to take this exam or do we celebrate our religious holiday? That should not be the case. It doesn’t happen on Christmas, it doesn’t happen on Easter, it doesn’t happen on other major religious holidays.”
Last year, there was a New York Times article about the trend in New Jersey. So why won’t New York City follow suit? Apparently because Mayor Bloomberg just doesn’t want to consider adding any more school holidays to the calendar. What do you think?
And while we’re on this topic, there was an interesting study published a few months back about how comfortable Muslim students feel in NYC schools. According to the findings, it looks like Muslim students feel pretty safe in school, even though 17 percent report having been the object of bigotry in school. Not specific to the school environment, though, about one-third of Muslim public school students say that 9/11 made them feel uncomfortable about their religious identity, and 28 percent say they have been stopped by police as a result of racial profiling.
5 Comments
Interesting that NYC is considering this. When I teaching at a high school in Guyana as a Peace Corps Volunteer, it seemed as if every week we had some sort of holiday. Guyana is one of the few countries where the Hindu, Muslim and Christian population co-exist relatively peacefully, and so each religious holiday is honored. I can definitely see Bloomberg’s point about not wanting to add more holidays. As a teacher, I constantly felt like I didn’t have enough time, or that my lessons were interrupted.
However, I did see how important it was to the Guyanese to have their religion honored and publicly respected. I think that Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha should definitely become holidays.
Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. Muslim children are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. They face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the role of women in the society, and adherence to religious and cultural traditions. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters. There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Than little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.
The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background. Schools do not belong to state, they belong to parents. It is the parents’ choice to have faith schools for their children. Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or a child in a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools. An ICM Poll of British Muslims showed that nearly half wanted their children to attend Muslim schools. There are only 143 Muslim schools. A state funded Muslim school in Birmingham has 220 pupils and more than 1000 applicants chasing just 60.
Majority of anti-Muslim stories are not about terrorism but about Muslim
culture–the hijab, Muslim schools, family life and religiosity. Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as a western community, not as an alien culture.
Iftikhar Ahmad
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
I think that Muslim holidays should be added to the public school holidays list. Public schools get off for the Jewish holidays, but most *MOST* jewish kids go to private school anyway. So there is really no need to have everyone suffer- Muslims are a growing population and need to be accomadated.
A side note… I found it interesting that these holidays are accounted for in the Alternate Side Parking schedule for NYC: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/scrintro.shtml
(scroll down to the bottom)
i am livig in United States for 2 years and when i saw that Jewish students dont have to come to school for their relegoius holiday but i have to miss our most important relegious holidy Eid Ul Fitr and Eid ul adha, i felt angry. but what can i do i am only a muslim.
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[...] One Day Off for Lunar New Year Too Much to Ask? A few months ago I wrote about a campaign to make Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha public school holidays. Our commenters agreed that they should [...]