You can teach faith, it just has to be our faith Options

[Hartmann]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5826378.html

This is retarded... Christian churches aren't allowed to go into a school and preach and "inform" the children about God and if they threatened a hate crime they would get laughed at.

If it really was presentation on culture and ethics then yeah, that's fine, but this is CAIR we're talking about, they always have an agenda.

[impala454]

You can expose young people to Arabic culture without having an Islamic presentation. Just like you could have an American culture discussion over there without discussing Christianity. Or a Chinese culture discussion without Buddhism.

I say it's hypocrisy (not necessarily what you said) because the second you have anything Christian enter a school, the pundits cry about separation of church and state. Then you have some other religion, be it Islam or Buddhism or anything else, and suddenly it's ok because it's "cultural". That's the hypocrisy. It's called a double-standard. And it seems to be happening all too often nowadays.

I recall having "multi-cultural" days in school, where we'd have a big presentation set up discussing various cultures, arabic, chinese, mexican, french, german, etc. There'd be food from different cultures, pictures of people's homes, talks of their way of life, etc. But I don't in any of those times recall someone stepping forward to teach the lesson that "Allah is God of all people". That's not a multicultural lesson, that's a religious lesson.

[Aaron]

You can expose young people to Arabic culture without having an Islamic presentation. Just like you could have an American culture discussion over there without discussing Christianity. Or a Chinese culture discussion without Buddhism.

I disagree with your premise. If we're talking about exposing K-12 students to broad themes, traditions and customs of other cultures, then it isn't practical to completely divorce the two. The Arab world is predominantly Muslim, just like North America is predominantly Christian.

I say it's hypocrisy (not necessarily what you said) because the second you have anything Christian enter a school, the pundits cry about separation of church and state. Then you have some other religion, be it Islam or Buddhism or anything else, and suddenly it's ok because it's "cultural". That's the hypocrisy. It's called a double-standard. And it seems to be happening all too often nowadays.

The reason it is such a hot-button issue is because, like I mentioned above, the United States is predominantly Christian. So it shouldn't come as any surprise when folks are very sensitive about the issue, it's the whole 'majority imposing its will on the minority' mentality.

I recall having "multi-cultural" days in school, where we'd have a big presentation set up discussing various cultures, arabic, chinese, mexican, french, german, etc. There'd be food from different cultures, pictures of people's homes, talks of their way of life, etc. But I don't in any of those times recall someone stepping forward to teach the lesson that "Allah is God of all people". That's not a multicultural lesson, that's a religious lesson.

Per the article I read, no one proclaimed that "Allah is the God of all people." I believe the quote was couched in a manner that stated that Muslims believe that "Allah is the God of all people." I think Allah is as fictitious as the tooth fairy, but I don't see how someone stating a fact (X believes in Y) is offensive or preaching.

We had something similar when I was in elementary school, but ours (and yours too, maybe?) was student-driven and very shallow.