Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas At least a dozen students use the Muslim Prayer Room" between 2:05 and 2:35 p.m. Monday through Friday. For at least 30 minutes every weekday for the past seven years a classroom at Liberty High School in Frisco Texas gets transformed into an on-campus mosque.
The prayer room has been provided to meet the special needs of Muslim students since 2009.
Controversy over the prayer room was sparked by an article in the student newspaper the Wingspan which clearly laid out how the room is used and by whom.
That prompted State Attorney General Ken Paxton to instruct one of his deputies to send a letter to the school district warning that special accommodations for one religion over another are unconstitutional.
Liberty High Schools policy should be neutral toward religion" read the letter sent to Friscos superintendent by Deputy Attorney General Andrew Leonie.
However it appears that students are being treated different based on their religious beliefs. Such a practice of course is irreconcilable with our nations enduring commitment to religious liberty."
Principal Scott Warstler said students of other faiths are allowed to meet on campus as well but he told the student newspaper Wingspan that these other meetings are held before or after school." School-district officials told the local CBS affiliate the room is not exclusively for Muslims and any student can go there to pray or meditate.- Could a male Catholic student for instance walk into the room during the prescribed Islamic prayer time sit on the female side of the room and pray the rosary?
- Would a non-Muslim be allowed to walk into the prayer room at the designated time and not take off his/her shoes and sit next to a member of the opposite gender?
- Could an evangelical student bring his Bible and offer to close the prayer time with a reading from the New Testament?
- Could an Orthodox Christian set up an icon of Christ and venerate it with the sign of the cross?
- Are these students trusted to fulfill the Muslim duties of Friday prayer without an imam present?
- Are they performing the ritualistic Muslim requirements for foot washing before the Friday prayers and if so where are they doing this?
installing ritualistic footbaths.
The report by the local CBS affiliate suggests the state attorney general is just looking to stir up controversy where none exists. But the student newspaper clearly identifies the room for what it is a special accommodation for some students."
And those students are clearly identified as practicing Islam.
The following is an excerpt from the Wingspan:
At many public schools religion isnt talked about openly. But here on campus theres a room dedicated to the religious needs of some students.
Every day during lunches room C112 is utilized as a prayer room.
While most religions do not dictate specific times to pray Islam is different in this regard.
A call to Principal Scott Warstlers office was transferred to district spokesman Chris Moore who did not return the call. Robert Spencer editor of the Jihad Watch blog and author of several bestselling books about Islam in the West said Liberty High Schools establishment of an Islamic prayer room is just one example of why American Muslims arent assimilating. They arent expected to.In the days when immigrants to the U.S. were expected to assimilate this kind of accommodation would have been inconceivable" Spencer told WND.
Theodore Roosevelt said in 1915 There is no place here for the hyphenated American and the sooner he returns to the country of his allegiance the better."
This was the prevailing view in his day" Spencer said.
If you came to America you should become an American. No immigrant groups expected or received special privileges or accommodation above those granted to others. Any immigrant group that demanded such privileges or accommodation would have been swiftly invited to return home."
Pamela Geller president and founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and a blogger at the Geller Report agrees that assimilation is now an old-fashioned concept replaced by multiculturalism.
Assimilation is a concept from a bygone era" Geller told WND. Now the emphasis is all on a multicultural protection of the immigrants culture giving it special supremacist status."
Previous waves of immigrants in the late 1800s and 1920s would not recognize the system set up for todays immigrants she said.
Never. In those days there prevailed the concept of the melting pot. Peoples cultural differences melted away and they became Americans" she said.
American" wasnt an ethnicity race or creed it was a shared value system based on individual rights property rights and equality for all before the law Geller added.
That was the common thread uniting this great nation freedom not just for some but for everyone.
Spencer says the long-term consequences of the move to a multicultural system will be profoundly unforgiving.
What has changed is a loss of our own civilizational self-confidence and the triumph of the multicultural idea which in practice means all cultures are good except our own" Spencer said. The long-term consequences will be catastrophe and loss of the nation. As Roosevelt said in the same speech: I want to call the attention of the individuals who sing about the mother who didnt bring up her boy to be a soldier to the fact that if the song had been popular from 1776 to 1781 there wouldnt be anyone to sing it today. Likewise if we dont value our own culture we wont have any soldiers to fight for it and it will not survive.Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte North Carolina areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh North Carolina. His latest book is Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration And Resettlement Jihad.
