Walt is still waiting for Christian clerics to say something -- anything -- about the Toronto District School Board's decision to allow Muslim imams to lead Friday prayers in their schools. Bishops and pastors may be silent, but, inevitably, constitutional law experts are starting to cast a few pearls.
Donning the boxing gloves lawyers use to pick flyspecks out of pepper, the University of Toronto's Ed Morgan told parentcentral.ca cases under the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms have said ... you cannot accommodate the desire for prayers or religious instruction in a public school. Something after school, or on weekends, would be fine, he added. So it would seem the Charter operates only during business hours!
Another way around the problem is suggested by Shaikh Yusuf Badat, imam of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto. "I trained students from Lester Pearson Collegiate near our centre in Scarborough to do [run] their own Friday service.... They’ll write sermons about things like honesty and I provide the readings for them from the Qu’ran. There are no hard and fast rules about it having to be led by an imam, and if there are concerns about an outside person coming in, even a Grade 8 student can be trained to deliver a sermon," he said. Of course, he added, it would have to be a male. Of course.
Our last comment today comes from TDSB trustee Gerri Gershon, responding to questions about what "accommodation" is made for Christian students. "The system is set up to accommodate Christian students; Christmas and Easter are already holidays," she said. Ms Gershon is, errr, of the Hebrew faith.
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