Islamophobic much?

Wow, it's really been a while since I last posted. But you know how it gets - professional staff training, then getting ready for the RAs to come back, then the RAs are here and you spend your days training them and your evenings preparing for more training sessions and then suddenly it's time for opening and you're running around, handing out keys, trying to memorize the names of as many new students as possible, answering questions of new exchange students until 11 pm, making plans for student organization executive board retreats and and and.

But that's not what I want to talk about now because I have something else I need to get off my chest. One of my friends recently posted this article from the Blaze on his Facebook Wall: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/report-eu-school-calendars-scrub-christian-holidays-keep-muslim-ones/
Now clearly, forgetting to include Christian holidays in the new EU calendar was a pretty dumb mistake. The tiny "evil" part of me thinks it may serve all these Christians right for feeling what every othe religion had to feel like for years when they were excluded in calendars; but that kind of thinking and behavior doesn't get us anywhere and so the "good" part of me strongly believes that if we include religious holidays, we should try to include ALL of them - or at least as many as possible and clearly not forget one of the dominant religions in the EU.

But that's all not really point. When I was reading this article, the one thing that really made me mad was how the fact that Muslim holidays were included was emphasized. Start with the headline: "Report: EU School Calendars Scrub Christian Holidays, Keep Muslim Ones" - no, WRONG! On so many levels. They didn't just keep Muslim ones - they kept Jewish, Hindu and Muslim ones. Why are we singling out Muslim ones?

And it's not just the headline. Here's how the article starts,"A new 2011-2012 school calendar for children published by a branch of the European Union has omitted references to Christian holidays but has kept its references to prominent Jewish, Hindu, and even Muslims holidays, according to a Catholic news outlet." Was it really necessary to write "...and even Muslim holidays."

Islamophobic much? Jeez, if you're angry that they forgot the Christian holidays, that's one thing - but then be angry that they forgot those and included all of the others. The last thing we need in this world is more hatred against Muslims. We got enough of that already.