Posted on 10/07/2007 3:46:51 PM PDT by KeyLargo
Southland school holiday debate blows up into a national controversy
(http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/591412,010507xmas.article)
October 7, 2007
Angela Caputo, Staff writer
News that Christmas celebrations, of all things, might be banned in some Oak Lawn schools was just another example of how the core of American culture is being gutted by outside influences, according to television personalities, radio pundits, bloggers and everyday people who piled on the debate in Ridgeland District 122 last week.
"For years now, it seems like the war on Christmas is only getting worse," CNN's Glenn Beck said. "First it was mangers, then it was trees. And then it was the word itself."
In the media frenzy - which captured national attention on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," the talk radio circuit and fringe anti-immigration blog sites - the thrust of the story got lost somehow.
For blogger Dan Riehl, the debate wasn't about a dispute between PTA moms over how school children would celebrate the holiday season. Rather, it was another liberal attack on tradition.
"You can kiss traditional American customs goodbye, supplanted by the new multiculturalism that gets more multi- and less American every day," Riehl wrote in an Oct. 3 entry titled "Islamic Creep," which blamed liberals and the ACLU for supporting Islamic activists.
Anti-immigration commentators also exploited the controversy. But for them it was a way to illustrate why the United States needs to close its borders.
"We invite them over here and give them sanctuary and they repay us by trying to destroy our culture and take over our lands," JoeSnuffy wrote Oct. 2 on the conservative message board LibertyPost.org.
"It is an invasion of a hostile people who have no interest in assimilating but in conquering and dominating," he said
And others fanned the flames by equating the request of a Muslim woman to celebrate Ramadan in the Oak Lawn schools with war and terrorism by using headlines such as "The Tyranny Of The Minority Continues (Muslims BAN Christmas!)" Some characterized the debate as yet another "Isalamist tactic" and called people behind forums like "stopthemadrassa.wordpress.com" into action.
"This is the enemy you are talking about," Steve from Norfolk, Va. wrote on the online forum topix.com. "Are you going to keep kissing they're (sic) asses until they roll you over and cut your throat? Get a spine!"
Those comments aren't what you'd expect to erupt from a quarrel among a group of moms in an elementary school - even though that's exactly who was at the heart of the debate.
Instead spectators from across the nation tuned into a conversation about a new affront that Americans face on their way of life.
The reason that many media personalities used the topic as a battle cry is simple, said Michael Niederman, who chairs the television department at Columbia College Chicago.
"It's a call and response," he said. "They'll find one that gets a response, and they'll ride it until it's dead."
Sorting through the complexity of an issue can even lose importance, which, Niederman said, sometimes lead to distorted facts or a convoluted message.
"To a point, these topics are even made up or manufactured," he said, pointing to Bill O'Reilly's series of commentaries dubbed "Christmas Under Siege" as an example.
"It's pandering to your audience."
'Out of hand'
As word got around that the long-celebrated holiday traditions - including the Christmas concert and Halloween parade - were facing elimination in Ridgeland 122 schools, residents got riled up, too.
What was going on, some wondered aloud.
Was it a Muslim mother's request that her children be separated from others during lunch for the Ramadan fast that brought the controversy to the boiling point as CBS 2 reported?
Or was it because Zahdan asked that stars and moons be displayed in schools in honor of Ramadan but was denied because it was seen as a religious celebration, as the Chicago Tribune reported?
About 250 people convened at the special board meeting Tuesday night to show that they weren't going to lose their holiday traditions even if they were offensive, particularly to Muslim students.
After shouting through the Pledge of Allegiance, the special board meeting began and residents finally got their chance to be heard.
And cameramen, reporters and photographers were on hand to listen.
"To try and take our culture and wipe it from the face of the earth is absolutely wrong," said one man who appeared hours later on cable television to tell the nation what was happening in the cafeteria at Harnew Elementary School.
A response by Zahdan, the mother who raised the issue in the first place, wasn't aired.
"We are American, too," she told the crowd. "I want everyone to have equal rights."
Tensions in the district had been building during the past few weeks after changes to the lunch menu were announced.
Pork products were briefly excluded to accommodate the diets of Muslim students, who officials estimate make up a third of the district's enrollment. But the real uproar was over the elimination of Jell-O.
Shortly after, Zahdan was asked to take down Ramadan decorations because they contained moons and crescents, symbols that were likened to a cross for Christians. And that prompted the mother of three to question why some holidays got a lot of play, while others were sidelined. All of the arguing came to a head when police were called to Columbus Manor last week to help settle a shouting match among parents.
Supt. Tom Smyth chalked up the controversy to a lot of "miscommunication" over Zahdan's request that the Muslim holiday Ramadan be celebrated alongside Christmas.
"It got out of hand," said Smyth, who initially directed principals to tone down the celebrations in the interest of keeping the school's party scene under control. It's already a struggle for teachers to cover all essential academic materials in a school day that's just less than six hours long, he said.
Ramadan now will be celebrated along with Christmas and Halloween, the school board has since decided.
That prompted Renee Slattery to e-mail a Daily Southtown reporter with the question: "Where does it end?"
"For years, Some Christians have complained about Halloween being the Devil's holiday. Schools have responded by ignoring the Christian demands," adds Kuksool in an online entry on the message board freerepublic.com. "If a school does stop Halloween parties, the ACLU will sue. Now that Muslims are complaining, the school yields to their demands. Will the ACLU sue?"
Not likely, said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman with the Illinois ACLU, who doesn't think such a case would stand up in court.
"I don't think when people are getting a goodie bag, they are thinking anything religious," Yohnka added.
Smyth doesn't see his community at the center of the culture war as many might suggest, but he does acknowledge that the rift over the holidays has exposed a "cultural gap" that's not going to just go away.
"Oak Lawn was once a working class white Catholic community. With the young people moving out, it was for a time a greying town (sic). Then the town became a magnet for Muslim immigrant. Some shopping plazas look like the Gaza strip," Kuksool added to the conversation via freerepublic.com.
"I think there are some underlying tones of what's going on in the world today," said school board member Dave Lis, who agreed that the holiday debate was clearly about more than just the prospect of losing Halloween parties.
"That's something we're going to have to address," Smyth said.
Oak Lawn resident and former school board member Pat Pulver made an astute observation Tuesday night when he said the debate is sure to continue.
" 'We the people' seems to take on a whole new light these days," he said.
Angela Caputo can be reached at acaputo@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5993.
This public school is located in a southwest suburb of Chicago and is referred to as "Little Arabia".
Daniel Pipes has written about the influx of Muslims in the Chicago area and how public schools are making changes to accomodate their religion.
Go to:
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1739
I think what is more troubling to me than anything else is how quickly school districts just cave in at the slightest pressure while they would fight tooth and nail if the pressure was coming from Christian groups. A majority that allows itself to be subjugated to the will of any and every minority interest will soon find itself regulated to the the ash heap of history.
We do not have to understand them or accommodate them because I can assure you they would not return the favor, we do not have to accept their goals and ideas for our own or argue points of contention for them, and we do not have to go quietly bowing acquiescing into the night as they remake our communities and tear down the very foundations of this nation’s culture and morality.
Bet the ol'boys down at the mosque had a difficult time figuring out why this school board full of Americans was groveling at the feet of a woman anyway.
Ya know, some day this country is gonna pop like an endangered frog on a hot plate.
more proof that public education is an unworkable concept.
Militant Islam Monitor > = Satire = > A Madrassah in Bridgeview Ilinois -Muslim girls basketball team demands banning men from matches played at public schools?
Here’s a solution. Give each student and each teacher 15 holiday days to use however they wish through the year, but they must be used in blocks of 5, no more than 2 blocks of five in close proximity to one another, and there can be no denying anyone’s use of the days in question for reasons of staffing or attendance.
My guess: 10 days will be used near Christmas by most students and teachers, and 5 days will be used near Easter by most students and teachers.
Correct. Muslim Arabs (from Jordan, Yemen, and Israel/Palestine) started settling in the Chicago Lawn/Marquette Park area in the 1970s. Over the past 10-15 years, they have been migrating to aging, blue collar suburbs like Oak Lawn and Burbank.
When we see pictures of the devout Muslims on their knees, it is always a picture of a group of men. Where are the women? Don’t families go to the mosque together?
There is a war going on between Islam and the rest of the world. It’s been going on since the seventh century, and has always involved some degree of fighting with Europe, Christianity, and Western traditions. They understand the strength of the old Taoist precept that water wears down the hardest stone. Put simply, if Islam wins over the West, much of the world descends into another Dark Ages, with constant warfare against the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and the various peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.
Imagine the Islamic army at Tours continuing north into Germany and Scandinavia, or the Turks overrunning Vienna and moving onto Paris and London. However, this is the modern world, and the Islamic armies use modern methods. They’re progressing against us one child at a time.
That’s exactly what most employers around here do since everything is tech related and the employees range from Buddist to Christian to everything inbetween.
You get 30 days to do whatever...
The thing is Islam assumes several things. One is that women wear dresses ~ no Hildabeast stretch pants for them. And, that women don't wear undergarments. Ergo, if they should walk across the main, sacred, worshipped upon, takes the place of a god, main floor where the men pray THE WOMEN will defile that floor with their private parts.
Doesn't get much more basic than that.
Not sure it's a unique experience. Interesting that the Moslems still have enough interest in traditional standards of privacy to demand this.
I'd recommend the school board listen to them because some of these Moslems carry really big knives and are known to cut off heads. Yup. Better listen.
I can imagine how surprised the Moslem armies would be to discover that WINTER IS REAL and those Christians were as Unitarian as they were ~ the theological reverberations would have been astounding.
I don’t know if Japan has any special national holidays or anything, but if they did, can you imagine schools in the 1940s celebrating those holidays?! There’s a war going on and we’re celebrating our enemy’s religious holidays. Wonderful.
Ramadan ends with the next new moon, on October 10. It began the day after the previous new moon, which occurred, ironically, on September 11.
Once Japan entered into hostilities with the United States over Pearl Harbor in 1941, the one sport so many Japanese loved at that time and still love, BASEBALL, was strongly effected.
While they did not drop Baseball even though it was a Western game, the game had to be restructured vis a vis the terms used.
Any English Root Words were COMPLETELY FORBIDDEN. This is because they were at war and the language of the prime enemy was to be banned.
As a result, the words, "strikkey", "out-oh", "seifu", "fauwl boru", etc. we are struck down, and replaced with pure Japanese words. Even players would get in trouble from the coaches initially for saying the English words by mistake until they got used to it.
A true story. It would make a great Paul Harvey story.
Some will not be happy until we, Christians, become the minority, and then totally eliminated.
If I have my way, I will die with my Bible in my hand, and Jesus name on my lips.
That determination is what is necessary to overcome the true “infidels”.
Religion should be kept OUT of schools. I don’t want someone else’s religion being taught to my kids. If they have to have them all them keep them ALL out. Christians and Muslims.
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