Schools in New York City have decided to bow down to Islam by shutting down on two Muslim holidays: Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr. All public schools in NYC will be closed during the holidays, depriving students of receiving an education during that time.
The holidays celebrate complete submission to Allah, as do many Muslim holy days. The first holiday celebrates the story of God playing a cruel prank on a man named Abraham by psychologically torturing him into believing Abraham must sacrifice his son in order to appease Allah’s blood lust. At the last minute, though, Allah reveals that he was just testing Abraham; a behavior that modern psychologists consider to be extremely abusive and destructive to relationships. In the story of Abraham potentially sacrificing his son, Allah behaves like an insecure, infantile megalomaniac. Nonetheless, this is one of the holidays that NYC schools have embraced.
The second holiday, Eid al-Fitr, is a celebration of the end of Ramadan. During Ramadan, Muslims appease God’s need for further proof of their devotion by starving themselves to please Allah. It is unclear why anyone would think a loving father would want his own children to be deprived of food, but again, this is what NYC schools have decided to condone.
It is unfair, though, to single out Islam in the discussion of the absurdity of religion and religious holidays in general. Most religions feature an equally abusive God who plays mind games with his followers and demands outrageous behaviors to satisfy his thirst for power. Christianity joins Islam in celebrating a murderous, hateful, vengeful God. As Richard Dawkins puts it:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
In fact, God in the Old Testament has committed more murders than any character in fiction or even in real life. By some estimates, God of the Old Testament committed over two million murders according to the numbers provided in the Bible itself.
The Koran is also chock full of violence, bloodshed and mayhem as Allah slaughters entire armies, townships, and huge groups of people through a variety of methods including fire, earthquakes and famine, among others.
Most religions including Islam condone mass murder and violence. This fact is written in black and white in the so-called holy books that are the foundation of, and provide guiding principles for, the resulting belief systems. While some Muslims have cherry-picked the non-violent passages of the Koran, many have embraced Allah’s murderous ways and seek to slaughter all non-believers. This is Islam, and now, NYC schools have decided to uphold the violent ideals espoused in the Koran by closing on two Muslim holidays.
Religion of any kind has no place in public schools. As such, those schools should not close down on holidays that are meant for strict religious observances. It is a violation of the separation of church and state outlined by Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. Non-Muslim children should not have to suffer being deprived of educational time because of Muslims’ beliefs, which are based on fiction anyway. Further, Islam is the religion most deleterious to women, and as such, should never be condoned on any level in a public school or any other public setting.
