The Toronto District School Board is taking serious flack for allowing one of its schools to be used for Muslim prayers, a potential violation of settled law
Parents and education experts are not happy in Toronto. Public schools that allow formal prayer services during the day are breaching Ontario’s Education Act, say critics and education experts. The Toronto District School Board has been embroiled in controversy for allowing an imam to conduct Friday prayer services for Muslim students in the cafeteria at Valley Park Middle School. It argues freedom of religion under the Charter of Rights trumps the Education Act.
From ParentCentral.ca:
“As a public school board, we have a responsibility and an obligation to accommodate faith needs,” education director Chris Spence said Friday.
But one prominent constitutional lawyer said Charter cases have found just the opposite — that religion has no place in public schools.
Meanwhile, others have said if compliance with the act is an issue at Valley Park, that’s easy to address.
“I trained students from Lester Pearson Collegiate near our centre in Scarborough to do that and they’ve been running their own Friday service for years,” said Shaikh Yusuf Badat, imam of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto and director of religious affairs.
“They’ll write sermons about things like honesty and I provide the readings for them from the Qu’ran. There are no hard and fast rules about it having to be led by an imam, and if there are concerns about an outside person coming in, even a Grade 8 student can be trained to deliver a sermon,” he said, adding it would have to be a male.
Columnist Mark Steyn weighed in on this story yesterday on his own website, SteynOnline.com:
A lot of Canadians will glance at the picture (of the students praying) and think, “Aw, diversity, ain’t it a beautiful thing?” – no different from the Sikh Mountie in Prince William’s escort. And even if they read the caption and get to the bit about a Toronto public school separating menstruating girls from the rest of the student body and feel their multiculti pieties wobbling just a bit, they can no longer quite articulate on what basis they’re supposed to object to it. Indeed, thanks to the likes of Ontario “Human Rights” Commission chief commissar Barbara Hall, the very words in which they might object to it have been all but criminalized.
Islam understands the reality of Commissar Hall’s “social justice”: You give ’em an inch, and they’ll take the rest. Following a 1988 cease-and-desist court judgment against the Lord’s Prayer in public school, the Ontario Education Act forbids “any person to conduct religious exercises or to provide instruction that includes religious indoctrination in a particular religion or religious belief in a school.” That seems clear enough. If somebody at Valley Park stood up in the cafeteria and started in with “Our Father, which art in Heaven”, the full weight of the School Board would come crashing down on them. Fortunately, Valley Park is 80-90 per cent Muslim, so there are no takers for the Lord’s Prayer. And, when it comes to the prayers they do want to say, the local Islamic enforcers go ahead secure in the knowledge that the diversity pansies aren’t going to do a thing about it.
Education lawyer Stephen Birman said the school could easily comply with the Education Act by having students who want attend the service do so during lunch or spare period. The Peel public board, which also serves a significant Muslim population, allows students to miss class for private or small group prayer, but does not permit religious leaders to conduct services. At least six York Region schools allow students to attend Friday prayers on school property during lunch period so they don’t have to leave to worship and maybe not return.
Email this post
