School district accused of kowtowing to CAIR

A public school district stands accused of instructing principals and school teachers not only to accommodate the religious holidays of Muslim students but also to participate in them.

A letter to the Dieringer School District in Washington state, reportedly sent by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, asks for two Muslim holy days to be added to the school calendar, and also requests for teachers not to schedule student assignments on those days and to allow fasting students to spend their lunch period in the school library.

During the month of Ramadan, CAIR asks teachers to greet Muslim students with the religious greeting “Ramadan Mubarak” or “Ramadan Kareem,” and the letter even goes on to ask Dieringer to accommodate school staff and students during “Jumm’ah,” known in the West as Friday prayers, which start at noontime and last from 45 to 90 minutes.

“A Muslim employee should be able to complete Friday prayers during an extended lunch break,” the CAIR letter states. “A Muslim student should be provided with a clean, quiet, and appropriate place to pray on campus during this time.

Dieringer, located in Lake Tapps, is home to approximately 1,500 students.

LifeSiteNews.com first reported on the letter after the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund was alerted to the requests by a concerned teacher and parent.

FCDF told LifeSiteNews that a CAIR attorney, Amanda Misasi, authored the letter and also claims that Superintendent Judy Martinson enacted CAIR’s suggestions as “official district policy” at Dieringer.

A letter to Martinson from FCDF, dated May 6, states the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of public school students to exercise their religious faith, but the letter goes on to name the “pitfalls” in CAIR’s requests and also warns Dieringer that it is cooperating with an anti-Semitic “syndicate” that poses a “grave threat” to the public school district.

FCDF also informs the superintendent that it learned through a public data request that Martinson circulated the letter to principals, who then distributed it to school staff.

A spokesman for FCDF told LifeSiteNews that instructing teachers to bless Muslim students is “running roughshod” over the First Amendment, when teachers would never be allowed to greet Christian students to celebrate Easter.

It’s unclear from FCDF’s correspondence to Martinson which CAIR-endorsed policies were welcomed at Dieringer.

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