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Students Who Pray May Have to Do So at School
Policy Would Affect Observant MuslimsThe Howard County Board of Education is considering a policy that could effectively prohibit Muslim students from leaving school early for Friday afternoon prayers. The measure, which will be the subject of a public hearing Tuesday, would allow students to miss class for prayer only if the services are held in school. Currently, some Muslim students are allowed to leave school on Friday afternoons to pray with a congregation. "We just want the situation to continue the way it is," said Anwer Hasan, president of the Maryland Muslim Council. "I don't know what's the reason for changing it now." Hasan said it would be very difficult to arrange congregational prayer services on campus for Muslim students. The current policy does not allow students to miss class for any reason except official holidays, but school officials said that the rule has been applied inconsistently and that some students routinely leave school early on Friday afternoons to pray. The new policy would expand opportunities for religious observance because, for the first time, it would allow students to miss 30 minutes of class each week for religious observances conducted in school. "The biggest issue on the docket right now," said Ellen Miller, a school system policies specialist, is "balancing the need for different groups to be able to observe religion in the way that they wish to and the equal responsibility of the school system to meet its obligation for instruction and making sure students are in attendance at schools." But Hasan said Muslim students do not need to leave school more than 30 minutes early -- they just need to be allowed to leave campus to pray. He said his daughter Aisha, a junior at River Hill High School, has permission from the school to leave campus at 1:45 p.m. and travel to prayers at the Owen Brown Interfaith Center. The school day ends at 2:10 p.m. Aisha, who has a 4.0 grade-point average, misses most of the sermon, which begins at 1:45, but Hasan said students don't mind, as long as they arrive before prayers begin at 2:15. "In my opinion, things are working fine," he said. Min Kim, co-chair of a committee that reviewed the policy, said only five students in the county leave school for prayers. Only one of the county's 12 high schools has received requests from students to leave campus; 10 others have had requests from students to hold prayers on campus. The 30-person committee -- comprising administrators, teachers, parents and religious leaders -- began meeting in December to review the school system's decade-old policy on religious observance. The committee voted 18 to 3 last month to approve a policy that would allow a student to fill a weekly "religious obligation" only if the observance is "within the school building." The dissenters, according to the committee report, assert that confining students to the school building "will cause undue hardship and constraints not only to Muslim students, but others as well who would like to congregate and practice their faith according to customary guidelines." But the report indicated that the majority had concerns that Muslim students would want to miss as much as 40 minutes of a 50-minute class in order to hear the sermon as well. Allowing students to miss that much class time, the report added, could compel the school system to deny them credit for the classes concerned. Posted by: ryuge 2006-05-18 |
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