Hat tip to my friend Char. I wonder what would happen if a Christian or a Jew moved to a Muslim country and started to make demands like this about religious holidays. Can you imagine? Yet America is touted as the intolerant country.
Alexis
Montgomery Co. ed board strips religious holiday references from new calendar
Via WTOP
ROCKVILLE, Md. — Montgomery County Public Schools will remove religious labels from school holidays, but members of the Islamic community say the adjustments to the school calendar do nothing to gain parity and a day off for the Muslim holiday of Eid.The school board approved the school calendar for the 2015-2016 school year Tuesday. The calendar will no longer reference specific religious holidays but rather state simply that school will be closed on dates that correspond with holidays, such as Eid, Yom Kippur and Christmas.
Saqib Ali, a former Maryland state delegate and co-chair of Equality for Eid, was not happy with the board of education’s action Tuesday.
“Equality is really what we’re looking for,” Ali said. “Simply saying we’re not going to call this Christmas, and we’re not going to call this Yom Kippur, and still closing the schools, that’s not equality.”
School board members said they were sympathetic to the desire to have Eid recognized and close schools but that legal precedent in Maryland bars them from closing for religious purposes.
“We can’t close for religious holidays. We can only close for operational purposes,” like high absenteeism, school spokesman Dana Tofig said.
That explanation doesn’t sit well with Zainab Chaudry, with the Council on American Islamic Relations.
“What’s really concerning to us is that similar conditions weren’t placed on any other faith community,” Chaudry says.
In the 1970s school officials decided to close on Jewish holidays because of high absenteeism.
But school board member Michael Durso said that the schools effectively close for a religious reason: the schools had high absenteeism because of a religious holiday in the community.
Noting the attempt to move away from favoring religions by instead referring to school days off as “winter break” and “student holidays,” Durso said as long as the Islamic community’s concern for parity wasn’t somehow addressed “it comes off as insensitive, and I just think we cannot afford to be in that light”.
That drew applause from parents who filled the seats in the board of education’s meeting room.
The adoption of the 2015-2016 school calendar does give students the day off on Eid but only because it happens to fall on another school holiday, Yom Kippur.
Several school board members, Chris Barclay, Judy Docca and Michael Durso, made it clear that they want to see a permanent policy change but that discussion would continue.
Board member Judy Docca acknowledged Tuesday’s action does little to satisfy a community that’s been waiting for years to see a change.
“We’re kicking the can down the road,” Docca said.
But Docca said until the board can find a legal way around the issue, the waiting would continue.
Muslim parents say their children get a clear message from the Montgomery County school system that they are second-class citizens.
That’s how Abdul Shaikh sees it. He has two kids in Montgomery County Schools and said it’s painful to explain to his American-born kids that public schools choose a holiday policy that gives off for Christmas and Yom Kippur, but not Eid.
“How am I supposed to explain it to them?” Shaikh said.
Queen Of Liberty™ 
Second class? Islam everywhere it is practiced is a breeding ground for violent radicals who hold up their koran as justification for genocide. Contradicting Montgomery County school board’s decisions is just another act of arrogance from those too ignorant to clean their own house .
The school board gives them an inch and they want a mile. Nothing is good enough for Islamic activist. I get into many debates on social media with American Muslims. It really annoys me how so many of them see themselves as victims trapped in a nation which is horribly islamophobic. They bash America, especially white men and Christians yet they never criticize the Islamic terror groups. It’s endless anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric. Thanks for commenting Dan.
Political Correctness is harming our country, if we as Christian’s went to a Muslim country would hey listen to our demands I think not, if we our to survive our leaders need to make a clear statement to those who migrate here, respect our standards/culture or exit and return to your country.
My suggest to parents do all you can to remove your children from public schools they have moved so far left that your children will be damaged rather then educated.
Good point Ken!
CAIR claims to be unhappy about the end result of this issue, but in fact they are extremely pleased. This was a victory for them, the fact that they managed to get Jewish and Christian holidays removed from a school calendar is quite a feat. Now that they accomplished this, they will become even more brazen.
I read yesterday that a Michigan woman – Christine Weick – was removed from the National Cathedral during a ‘service’ because she stood and proclaimed Jesus Christ as the Savior.
Episcopal leaders invited and then joined with Muslims in the National Cathedral, sending prayers up to Allah in order to show the world that two very different religions could “approach the same God” as one body of believers. I believe there is a lot of deception and apostasy going on in some of these so-called ‘Christian’ churches. We are living in dangerous times.
I don’t understand all of this talk about equality. If people truly wanted equality, they would stop harassing others to do what they want and change the things that THEY want changed. I don’t harass, and yes, to me it is harassment, others to stop saying religious things or to stop believing in Santa Claus because it bothers me. We all just move on and tackle the topics that are really important. Why is a school calendar so important? The children go to school to learn, not so their parents and special interest groups can have a soapbox to stand on.