{"id":360,"date":"2009-05-27T11:24:46","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T11:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/05\/muslim-holidays-in-prison-vers.html"},"modified":"2009-05-27T11:24:46","modified_gmt":"2009-05-27T11:24:46","slug":"muslim-holidays-in-prison-vers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/05\/muslim-holidays-in-prison-vers.html","title":{"rendered":"muslim holidays in prison versus school"},"content":{"rendered":"

One thing missing from the arguments of most poliitical opponents of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court is actual data – such as her legal written opinions from decades of serving on the bench. The SCOTUS Blog has done true yeoman’s work<\/a> in going through these records and has published a number of case studies that are worth highlighting for insights. Of these, I found this case rather interesting.<\/p>\n

\n

[I]n Ford v. McGinnis, 352 F.3d 382 (2d Cir. 2003), Sotomayor wrote an opinion that reversed a district court decision holding that a Muslim inmate’s First Amendment rights had not been violated because the holiday feast that he was denied was not a mandatory one in Islam. Sotomayor held that the inmate’s First Amendment’s rights were violated because the feast was subjectively important to the inmate’s practice of Islam.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That seems the right decision to me, mainly because the inmate’s observance of the holiday does not infringe on anyone else. In general, religious observances should be accomodated in such situations where there is no conflict.<\/p>\n

In contrast, however, consider the case of a school district in New Haven, CT which is considering adding two holidays in observance of Eid ul Adha and Eid ul Fitr<\/a> to the school calendar. The problem with this proposal is that it starts to cut into the number of days school is in session. Accomodating the (minority) of muslim students on this compels the district to also accomodate Jewish students as well, so the number of additional holidays will need to increase. Ultimately it is simply more efficient to allow students to take some number of excused absences a year for religious observances and let them allocate it on a personal basis. That said, there is a reasonable expectation that the school itself not schedule major exams, etc on major holidays for minority-faith students either. There needs to be a balance.<\/p>\n

This makes for a curious irony that inmates in prison have more religious “freedom” per se than do students in school (though the latter surely see themselves as akin to the former in spirit).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}