British parents looking to see their children in a traditional Christmas play are fuming after a school decided to cancel the performance because it conflicts with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper reported...
A letter sent by school officials and obtained by the paper apologized for "any misunderstanding" but said it had to respect "the cultures and religions of all the children.”
“The Christmas performance has not been canceled outright but has been postponed until the New Year," the letter read.
One wonders how "the cultures and religions of all the children" can be respected when the culture and religion of the seeming majority of students is cast aside in an attempt to appeal to a minority.
Everything conflicts with something. That is simply the law of averages. Why is it that only the Muslims seem so hardheadly intent on making only their days of worship and their celebrations sacred? It is one thing if the majority of students belong to that faith or if it is in the relatively narrow limitations of a private school, but to deny everyone a little holiday cheer based on complaints from a few who probably would not participate anyway, is a dog in the manger sort of behavior. Of course, I still don't see how my kids' choir director managed to get "Messiah" through for the Christmas concert-but they performed it-beautifully in candlelight. What a sight-200 singers, 50 musicians-all kids under 18 making absolute magic on a winter's night. That is what it's all about. And to quash that over sectarian PC attitudes is small and mean spirited and simply wrong.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the Christmas play will become a Winter play before it actually happens.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. The cultures and religions of ALL the children are not being respected.
Only the views of two groups are being respected here: Muslims and people who are offended by Christmas.
There's no indication that any Muslims complained. That just makes it even worse, IMNSHO.
ReplyDeleteThe reverse never happens, because when it is a a major holiday for the Christians, they shut down the schools and half the country. So Christians don't have to worry about the discomfort of being forced to choose between blowing off their part in a school production or missing Easter.
ReplyDeleteThat's convenient, but surely you are capable of seeing how unpleasant it is for non christians.
And it's a reasonable balance: they get the 'traditional christmas play,' they get the actual holiday off--all they haveto do is make some reasonable attempt not to schedule it on the (non-official) holiday of a decent hunk of their students.
Why is taht so bad, exactly?
"The reverse never happens, because when it is a a major holiday for the Christians, they shut down the schools and half the country."
ReplyDeleteBecause it's a Christian nation.
"So Christians don't have to worry about the discomfort of being forced to choose between blowing off their part in a school production or missing Easter."
Really? How many Muslims would participate in an infidel play? There's no conflict here; just idiotic multiculturalism.
Our university got so crazy adding every celebration from every tiny tribal cult across the globe to the list of "official holidays" that the only solution was to recognize none of them. If there was a conflict with an exam, the student had to provide documentation and make arrangements beforehand. It's the only way around this nonsense.
Britain is technically a Christian country, but with hardly anyone who practices Christianity. A recent survey said that more of us believe in ghosts than in gods.
ReplyDeleteAnd, we have no idea if it was to "appeal to a minority", that school may well have more Muslims than Christians. That is not a totally unheard of thing to happen. I would guess that at one of the school I have taught in, more kids went to mosque than went to church..
ReplyDeleteAnonymous-so what do you think happens on Friday-the Muslim day of worship-during major religious events. Everything shuts down. Ditto the sabbath for religious Jews. Why does the singing of a song have to be politicized in a country that is not predominantly Muslim?
ReplyDeleteAgain,we dont know about this school. It may well be predominantly (or heavily) Muslim. There simply is not enough information to tell. As I see it, it is a very sensible compromise. Lots of kids want the day off for their religious festival, the school would therefore find it difficult to arrange the play on that day, so they move it to another day. Everyone wins!
ReplyDelete