“Chanman,” a public school teacher, wrote in to describe his own experience with Islamic prayer in school:

Two years ago, I taught at a high school in the Sacramento area. One day during lunch, I walked to the lounge of the social studies department to make some copies. There were two girls wearing hajibs, standing outside the door of the lounge. They stopped me from entering because, “our friend is praying in there.” Their friend, a Muslim, was using our teachers lounge to pray toward Mecca because she felt funny about doing it outside. Meanwhile, I am stopped from performing my teacherly duties because a Muslim was using the teachers’ area to pray. Of course the head of our department was all for this and was quite tickled with himself at his showing of tolerance and compassion. I couldn’t help but wonder, would he have shown the same tolerance and compassion if a Christian girl had asked if she could use our teachers lounge to pray? To ask the question is to answer it.