{"id":7461,"date":"2011-09-20T16:47:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T20:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=7461"},"modified":"2011-09-20T16:50:23","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T20:50:23","slug":"school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical","title":{"rendered":"School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pennsylvania school kids will sing about the Sooner state instead of Baghdad after complaints prompted school officials to cancel plans to put on &#8220;Kismet,&#8221; a\u00a0musical about a Muslim\u00a0poet.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, students at Richland High School in Johnstown, Pa.,\u00a0will sing and act in Rogers and Hammerstein&#8217;s &#8220;Oklahoma!&#8221; reports David Hurst\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0<em>Johnstown<\/em> <em>Tribune-Democrat<\/em> newspaper.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Kismet is\u00a0&#8220;a classic Tony Award-winning musical about a poor, wily street poet,&#8221; he notes, but it is also &#8220;set on Baghdad\u2019s Muslim streets. And complaints about its content from local community members have prompted those who oversee Richland\u2019s Performing Arts program to pull it from their 2012 schedule.<\/p>\n<p>District officials called\u00a0the\u00a0timing for Kismet \u201cpoor\u201d on the heels of 9\/11\u2019s 10th anniversary \u2013 and not worth putting students through potential controversy or criticism.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were some concerns,\u201d Superintendent Thomas Fleming Jr. told Hurst.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/tribune-democrat.com\/local\/x221222290\/School-changes-play-plans\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pennsylvania school kids will sing about the Sooner state instead of Baghdad after complaints prompted school officials to cancel plans to put on &#8220;Kismet,&#8221; a\u00a0musical about a Muslim\u00a0poet. Instead, students at Richland High School in Johnstown, Pa.,\u00a0will sing and act in Rogers and Hammerstein&#8217;s &#8220;Oklahoma!&#8221; reports David Hurst\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0Johnstown Tribune-Democrat newspaper.\u00a0 Kismet is\u00a0&#8220;a classic Tony Award-winning&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1600,2207,1315,1599],"class_list":["post-7461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muslim","tag-kismet","tag-muslim","tag-oklahoma","tag-pennsylvania"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pennsylvania school kids will sing about the Sooner state instead of Baghdad after complaints prompted school officials to cancel plans to put on &#8220;Kismet,&#8221; a\u00a0musical about a Muslim\u00a0poet. Instead, students at Richland High School in Johnstown, Pa.,\u00a0will sing and act in Rogers and Hammerstein&#8217;s &#8220;Oklahoma!&#8221; reports David Hurst\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0Johnstown Tribune-Democrat newspaper.\u00a0 Kismet is\u00a0&#8220;a classic Tony Award-winning&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-20T20:47:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-09-20T20:50:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical","og_description":"Pennsylvania school kids will sing about the Sooner state instead of Baghdad after complaints prompted school officials to cancel plans to put on &#8220;Kismet,&#8221; a\u00a0musical about a Muslim\u00a0poet. Instead, students at Richland High School in Johnstown, Pa.,\u00a0will sing and act in Rogers and Hammerstein&#8217;s &#8220;Oklahoma!&#8221; reports David Hurst\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0Johnstown Tribune-Democrat newspaper.\u00a0 Kismet is\u00a0&#8220;a classic Tony Award-winning&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-09-20T20:47:35+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-09-20T20:50:23+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical","name":"School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-09-20T20:47:35+00:00","dateModified":"2011-09-20T20:50:23+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/school-picks-oklahoma-over-baghdad-for-school-musical#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"School picks OK! over Baghdad for musical"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7461"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7463,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7461\/revisions\/7463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}