An e-mail in response to “Prayer in School? Only for Muslims” points out an imprecision in my argument:

From: darwin
Subject: prayer in school
Date: 8 September 2005 5:20:04 AM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

You wrote: “Everybody knows that prayer isn’t allowed in school—for Christians.”

As I understand it, this ruling is nothing new... Christians can pray in schools, privately, during non-class time. As this case appears to be about a Muslim girl who wants to pray during lunch (not class time) I don’t see what the big deal is.

I’m a fan of Brain Terminal and your movies, but I think you’re overreacting to [this case.]

=darwin

Darwin,

Yes, as I now understand it, voluntary student-initiated prayer is permissible during non-class time. If that were the extent of the case, then I don’t think there would be much discussion. I don’t have any problem with Muslim students praying in public schools, so long as the rules for them are the same as for anyone else. So, if this portion of the original news item is the only salient point, then it seems the Muslim student has a legitimate gripe:

While her classmates were eating lunch, she wanted to go off by herself for a few moments to pray. The 14-year-old was told she couldn’t, and went home distraught that afternoon in October 2003.

However, the same article, entitled “Schools loosen limits on prayers,” implies that some sort of special consideration is being sought:

Her case was part of a nationwide grass-roots effort by Muslim parents to make public schools more friendly and accommodating to Muslim students.

...and that schools are changing their procedures in response to that effort:

“You’re seeing a lot of schools becoming more sensitive this way,” said Michael Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

If the schools are following the existing rules, then they accommodate Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc. students equally. If they are not following the existing rules and are somehow treating Muslim students worse than any other group, then that is wrong and it should stop. But it sounds like the problem is that because strict Muslims need to pray five times a day, they are asking for special consideration from the schools beyond what is granted to anyone else.

Should American school schedules be reworked to make it easier for Muslims to pray? That’s a point that can be debated. But it seems to me, over the last 50 years, American schools have become much less welcoming to the practice of Judeo-Christian faiths during school hours. So I find it odd that as our society continues to stamp out any trace of our own religious heritage, we would start bending over backwards to embrace the religious practices of others.