Just don’t say “Christmas” on school property.
New York City public schools will now observe two Muslim holidays, officials announced Wednesday, making the district — the nation’s biggest — one of the few to put Islamic holy days on its calendar.
Under the change announced by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and city Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, there will be no class for Eid al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice, starting next September 24. Another Muslim holiday, Eid al-Fitr — a festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan — will become a holiday for those in summer school starting in 2016.
“This is a common-sense change,” de Blasio said Wednesday, “and one that recognizes our growing Muslim community and honors its contributions to our city.”
The decision affects some 1 million students in New York City. While it’s not known exactly how many of them are Muslim, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said that almost 1 million of the more than 8 million people in the city’s five boroughs practice Islam.
The move isn’t a surprise, given de Blasio’s campaign pledge to alter the school calendar with Muslim families in mind.
Leftists’ priorities would be pathetically amusing if they weren’t almost always ultimately destructive. Public schools aren’t supposed to be in the business of catering to a religious population anymore, remember? If a Christmas tree so much as passes within 500 feet of public property, radical atheists appear out of the ether with pitchforks in hand.
What is awful about the timing for this is that it plays into the false narrative that we need to be more sensitive to a religion that may or may not be telling its adherents to kill us because we really are the problem. Yes, there are a handful of moderate Islamist voices who claim that the violence isn’t an inherent part of the religion.
It’s difficult to hear them over the noise ISIS makes, however.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member