The U.S. government is suing a suburban Chicago school district for refusing to grant a Muslim teacher unpaid leave to go on a Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
Attending the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca once in a lifetime is one of the five central tenets of the Islamic faith. Safoorah Khan, a middle school teacher in the Berkeley school district, about 15 miles west of Chicago, applied for an unpaid leave of absence in 2008 to go on the Hajj, but her request was denied. [AOL News] Read more
