Author: David A. Yeagley
Publication: Front Page Magazine
Date: June 21, 2001
In New York City, Muslims can pray
in public schools. Christians can't. Muslims can assemble in school auditoriums,
during school hours, and pray. Christians cannot.
So says the New York Post, in a
Dec.1, 2000 article titled, ''Muslim Kids Get To Pray In School For Ramadan,''
by Carl Campanile. This article didn't make it far in the national news.
I found it referenced in a rather obscure Christian newspaper out of Fort
Worth, Texas, The Hour of Prophecy.
I thought, ''Are these Texans the
only people that care? How could this situation not make national headlines?''
It marks one of the most dramatic inconsistencies of Constitutional interpretation
in recent history.
At Lafayette High School, in Bensonhurst,
in Brooklyn Technical & International in Queens, and in other Brooklyn
schools, Muslim students are allowed to assemble and worship publicly in
school auditoriums or makeshift prayer rooms during the regular school
day.
At Lafayette, ''The school lets
us do our own prayer. It's beautiful,'' said Umit Kulug, a 17-year-old
senior from Turkey, according to the Post. ''They let one hundred of us
boys and girls pray together in a big auditorium. Some of the non-Islamic
students get a pass to watch us pray.'' Kulig said teachers help
students catch up on what they missed in class.
On the other hand, the Post notes,
a Bensonhurst school mural dedicated to youths who had died was painted
over just a few weeks before Ramadan, because it featured Jesus Christ.
Christmas songs heralding the name
of Christ are not allowed in public schools. There cannot be Bible
reading or Christian prayer, because this violates the separation of church
and state.
The First Amendment reads: ''Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.'' Americans disagree on what this means. Chief
Justice Rehnquist has opined that, ''There is simply no historical foundation
for the proposition that the Framers [of the Constitution] intended to
build a wall of separation [between church and state].'' (Wallace v. Jafree,
1985)
On the other hand, the Supreme Court
ruled in 1962 that school prayer violated the Constitution. But how did
any of this ever come to mean that Muslims can worship in public schools,
but Christians can't?
There is more.
In 1998, Tibetan monks conducted
Tantric Buddhist devotionals in the public schools of Grand County, Utah,
according to reports by the Jefferson 21st Century Institute. Two
California school districts have introduced New Age curricula honoring
Lucifer, God of Light.
Liberal authorities seem to show
unlimited compassion for anything that is foreign to America's foundational
values. Is this the intent of the Constitution? If Christian worship in
public schools is prohibited because it would be considered the state's
''respecting an establishment of religion,'' then why doesn't the same
logic apply to the Muslim, Buddhist, New Age or Satanist religions?
Ralph Waldo Emerson considered a
foolish consistency ''the hobgoblin of little minds.'' Recently, the Supreme
Court took a step in the direction of Emersonian large- mindedness. On
the front page of the Dallas Morning News, June 12, Mark Curriden reports
that the U.S. Supreme Court ''clarified a murky area of constitutional
law involving the separation of church and state.'' In ''Justices
Say Religious Clubs Can Meet At Public Schools,'' Curriden seems to laud
the court decision [Monday, June 11] that allows church groups to use public
school facilities, so long as the meetings are open to the public.
The decision directly affects a
situation in Dallas. The Dallas Independent School District had heretofore
refused to let church groups use school facilities, rejecting more than
70 such requests just last year. Now the DISD is reversing its policy,
and will allow churches, like any other civic group, to use school buildings.
So, we have Muslims allowed to worship
in school, during school hours, and now Christian church groups can at
least use the school buildings - after hours. It's not exactly equality,
but that has to be some kind of step in the right direction, no? Well,
leave it to those freedom- loving Texans to at least report this news as
well.
Don't worry. I'm not going to advocate
the peyote cult of my Comanche ancestor Mumsekai for public school practice.
We Indians are much more reserved about our religious beliefs. I
just think America needs to remember the principles it was built on.
And I don't think Islam, New Age-ism or Buddhism were among them.
