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International Herald Tribune - Oct. 2, 2006
Supreme court declines to take case from parents
objecting to teaching Islam to seventh-graders
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a lawsuit by parents objecting to a three-week class for seventh-graders on Islam.
Jonas and Tiffany Eklund say pupils at a public school in California were given pages from the opening chapter of the Koran to read and studied Islam's Five Pillars of Faith in a world history unit on Muslim culture.
The Eklunds wanted the Supreme Court to find that the world history unit entitled "The Roots of Islam and the Empire" violates constitutional guarantees separating church and state.
"Parents entrust public schools with educating their children, not indoctrinating them in religion," the Eklunds' lawyers stated in a brief asking the Supreme Court to take the case. "The public school here had children become Muslims for three weeks."
The Byron Union School District "moved far beyond a mere explanation of the historical or literary significance of Islam," the parents' lawyers argued. The district is east of San Francisco.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Islam program activities were not overt religious exercises and therefore did not raise U.S. constitutional concerns……
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/02/america/NA_GEN_US_Teaching_Islam.php
Argus Observer – Oct. 2, 2006
Nyssa (California) parent takes
exception to educational unit on Islam
By Jennifer Colton
One Nyssa parent said she is upset about the amount of time and detail the school district has allocated for an educational unit on Islam in her son's seventh-grade social studies class.
Kendlee Garner said her son studied world geography for one week and then the class launched the Islam unit that has already spanned four weeks.
She said that isn't right.
"I bet if you took a world map into the middle school, not one kid could plot Iraq, but now they can all put on a Muslim headdress," Garner said.
The class has spent far too much time studying Islam, she said.
"When they only spent a week on geography, I figured if they were only going to spend a week on Islam it wouldn't be so bad," Garner said. "But it has just dragged on and on."
The unit has involved guest speakers, skits and reports, but an activity on Thursday where students in all three social studies classes dressed in traditional Islamic outfits upset Garner because of the religious nature and the lack of parental notification.
She said she did not want her children putting on garb from other religions, and when she complained, her son was given an alternative assignment and sent to the library.
"The only reason I knew about it was because my son told me about it," she said. "They sent him to the library instead of stopping what they were doing. I'm sure people would be outraged if they dressed up as the Pope."
Nyssa School District Superintendent Don Grotting said as part of Benchmark 3 of the state standards, the school has taught similar units in the past.
"I've been here six years," Grotting said. "This is the only person who has ever voiced, to me, a complaint about it."…
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2006/10/02/news/local_news/news02.txt
Los Angeles Times – Oct. 3, 2006
Workplace bias against Muslims,
Arabs on rise, advocates say
By Alana Semuels
The restaurant manager from Morocco, the Armenian caterer from Syria and the Yemeni sailor aren't all Muslims and hail from different homelands. But all three say they suffered discrimination at work after Sept. 11, 2001, because of their national origin or perceptions that they were Muslim.
Now, they are among those who have filed lawsuits through the California offices of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - reflecting increasing discrimination against people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, according to advocacy groups.
"I did not think this would happen when I came here," said Abdellatif Hadji, who moved from Morocco to the United States in 1989 and recently filed an EEOC suit against a Mendocino County restaurant where he was a manager. "America is the land of opportunity."
Reports of workplace discrimination against people perceived to be Muslim or Arab soared after the Sept. 11 attacks and then declined, government statistics indicate. But some advocates say they've seen a resurgence in the last year that corresponds to global political events.
"Anytime there's anything in the news . . . that is related to the Middle East, you see a spike in hate-motivated and employment-related incidents," said Kareem Shora, director of the legal department of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
After 9/11, the EEOC introduced a category of employment discrimination against people who are or are perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian or Sikh. Nationwide statistics from the EEOC indicate that such complaints - so far exceeding 1,000 - have decreased each year since 2002.
However, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations says it processed more civil-rights and workplace discrimination complaints in 2005 than ever before. The annual total jumped to 1,972 in 2005 from 1,522 in 2004. The discrepancy may indicate that victims fear reporting discrimination to the government.
"We only see the tip of the iceberg," said Joan Ehrlich, district director of the EEOC office in San Francisco. "It's probably not even reflective of the amount of discrimination going on because people are afraid to come to the government for help."…
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-eeoc3oct03,1,3563037.story
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