This. Schools should make reasonable accommodations for teachers and students who want to take off holidays that are important to them. When that gets to be enough people out of school on any particular day, it makes sense for the school to just close, and schedule some other day for classes instead.
I don’t know what NYC demographics are these days, but it seems completely plausible that there are enough Muslims in the public schools that it makes sense to close the schools for major Muslim holidays.
My local school used to run on this principle. I stayed home on Rosh Ha’shanah and Yom Kippur, and my teachers helped me catch up. (On teacher intentionally scheduled tests for those days, on the theory that it was easier to make up a test than a class. All the Jewish kids took the make-up test together the next afternoon. Worked fine.)
But a lot of the teachers were Jewish, and the school system was paying a lot in substitute salaries for the Jewish holidays, and instruction suffered. They decided it wasn’t practical, and closed the schools those days, instead. The be “fair”, they also closed for Good Friday. Very few kids and fewer teachers had missed school that day, but probably a lot were happy to have that day off.
I think practicality should be the rule, and if there are enough kids and/or staff taking off Eid that it affects instruction, then that should be a school holiday. I don’t see this as a religious fairness or religious freedom issue – that’s covered by letting the affected kids take off. I just se it as a “keep the schools running smoothly” issue.
So I wrote lying and monkey without ever writing “lying” or “monkey”? Gotcha. But me actually being called “Todd Starnes of Fox News” doesn’t count as me being called “Todd Starnes of Fox News.” Gotcha.
I was very specific about what tomndebb was making up: that the reporter misinterpreted the mayor’s statement. He did make it up; he had no evidence for it. Anyone who read my post could tell exactly what I was charging; there was no insult there at all.
I was accused by a mod repeatedly of having a pathology, called Todd Starnes, and personally attacked by another mod 3 times. I said nothing rude to either of those guys, except in defense. And I got the only warning. For “monkey”. Which I never used.
You can probably “report” one of your posts, or the mod’s posts, to ask that. I doubt that posting it in the thread is the approved method of appealing. The little red triangle above and the the right of every post should work to report it – at least, that’s what works in the other forums I use.
I’ve butted heads with JC on occasion, but he’s fair and frankly I think you’re overreacting and not generating sympathy. I won’t go further and would recommend the same of you because JC has said to take it to About This Message Board if you disagree with his decision.
That and with Black Friday creeping into Thursday and Christmas being about Santa Claus and materialism its’ arguable whether they’re really Christian holidays anymore.
I believe that I called for an example, or else, such was implicit.
Give me *one *about Islam. Don’t tell me how many you *feel *there are, or tell me of the rage in your bones against Christian fundamentalists for their intolerance. Just show me one example of anybody doing the 'far more comments, videos, jokes, insults, etc against Muslims" on Youtube.com or any other mainstream (being defined as ‘easily accessible’) channel of communication, that one could fairly call representative.
For you to equate a Jewish org. complaining about anti-Semitism from Islamic sectors is so irrelevant, and far from reasonable, that I couldn’t even stomach to inspect your other links.
Fail.
I didn’t bother to check your link to google, since I could google everything that I want to myself.
I asked for at least one link to prove a point (word ‘relevant’ being operative; word ‘using a word that andros finds similar’ is inoperative); not, as you seem to believe, a link to google. I can’t sift through your shit to try to prove a point that doesn’t exist.
Haven’t you read any of these posts?
Right. Because if you could be bothered to click a single link this foolish, inane, and entirely wrongheaded line of argument would be invalidated, and you might actually have to bring some nuance or consideration to your points.
You have in no sense successfully challenged Telemark’s point.
tom~ and I have provided evidence of of large volumes of “vitriol and sheer hatred” directed at Islam and Muslims. While, I freely admit, that’s only half the argument (the other half requiring a demonstration of less antagonism directed at Christians), you have declined to even acknowledge that much. I think it’s clear you have no interest in an honest discussion here.
tomndebb, a good analogy to your response (first): If I were to ask for payment of some service rendered to/for you in gold, you would quote a poem about a golden sunset, and demand change in gold krugerrands.
Which only shows that you cannot make proper distinctions between what you hear and what you want to hear, and/or will wrest simple statements to force your interpretation onto them.
Your earlier statement to which I was replying was:
I provided multiple examples of jokes about Allah/Muhammad/Islam and occasions when Muslims were mistreated in the U.S.
You decided that you did not like the first example I provided and refused to even look at any others.
Your dancing, here, is not impressive and calling me names because I pointed out your error is not going to persuade anyone that you understand your own words or that you are willing to engage in honest discussion.
In the time it took you to type this, you easily could have typed “Islam is Evil” into your favorite search engine and found, for example, this Youtube video. C’mon, man. This is a bogus cite request. Do your own legwork. FYI, there are many, many, many more such videos on Youtube.