At least a dozen Muslim families, newly arrived on the Canadian prairie, have requested that their children be exempted from phys. ed and music classes for religious reasons.
This isn’t about religion. It’s a self-invented superstition on a par with a girl I knew in high school who thought she could avoid bad luck if she lifted her feet off the floor of the bus as we passed over railway tracks. To paraphrase from noted atheist Christopher Hitchens, just because you say something is sacred does not make it so.
The Muslim objection to phys ed. and music classes is derived from a perverted literal interpretation of Islamic texts that has also led to cultural clashes in Minneapolis, where taxi drivers have refused to pick up riders with alcohol or seeing eye dogs, insisting that contact with either would make them unclean. [National Post] Read more [via National Secular Society]
