Conflict Avoidance

Zakia Hyder, in today's Enquirer, suggests that Muslim teenagers should be denied any accommodation for their faith in public schools.

The students themselves, in Mason Ohio, went to a place away from the cafeteria during their Ramadan fast. Hyder sees all of the uproar that has resulted from this clash between cultural sensitivity and religious freedom and decided that it's better to steer clear of the whole thing - these are special accommodations and they should be forbidden in public school.

This conclusion isn't drawn form any constitutional analyses of the dilemma - but simply the fact that people are arguing with each other. Any legal or policy principles are reduced to the bland aphorism "school is for school". Conflict avoidance becomes a primary virtue in this treatment of the problem.

Without any core, commonly held principles in these types of arguments we are in the land of mushy uncertainty. No special rights for Muslim kids at school in the form of a classroom? What about the Korean Students Union - are they allowed to meet? How about the 17 year old boy who is taunted brutally for being gay, and wants to eat his lunch away from the others? Get back in the lunchroom kid, and fend for yourself.

The heart of the problem is that we know we have some obligation to apply some basic sensitivity towards different people in a pluralistic society. It's at the root of American culture - which has been constructed, painfully at times, with immigration and integration. But this obligation has been taken to a ludicrous extreme and transformed into multiculturalism and political correctness by many on the left, people who have made their careers screaming about identity politics. And these folks just can't find a way to be consistent when it comes to religious freedom. They would like to be sensitive to Muslims, but that means they have to include Christians - and for political reasons that's unpalatable.

Now I know everyone hates the centrist - but this simply seems like a situation where rational middle ground can be made consistent with the constitutional basis for society. If anyone actually reads the document they will see that the framers didn't erect a firewall between church and state - it reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Elaborate contortions have been made to suggest different interpretations of this sentence.
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http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061028/EDIT02/610280336/1021/EDIT01

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061026/VIDEO/61026006/1077/COL02