Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Special treatment alleged for Muslims

|
|
 
  
Published: July 26, 2007 at 9:46 AM

NEW YORK, July 26 (UPI) -- Debate is growing as to whether U.S. schools and universities are giving Muslim students preferential treatment pertaining to Islamic law, USA Today reported.

At least 17 universities have foot baths to accommodate Muslims who wash before praying five times a day, and at least nine universities have prayer rooms for "Muslim students only," the Muslim Students' Association's Web site claims.

That doesn't sit well with Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center, an advocacy group for Christians.

"What (school officials) are doing ... is to give Muslim students religious benefits that they do not give any other religion right now," Thompson told the newspaper.

It's also an issue the American Civil Liberties Union, which has often sued schools for permitting Christian prayer, is studying.

"If you start carving out time in the school day that you would not do but for the need to let students pray, then it begins to look like what you're trying to do is to assist religion," said David Blair-Loy, legal director for the ACLU in San Diego.

Topics: Richard Thompson, Thomas More
© 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 27
Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego wins Finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
View Caption
Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego, California watches confetti rain down as she wins the two-day Scripps National Spelling Bee championship, May 31, 2012, in National Harbor, Maryland. Nandipati successfully spelled the word .* guetapens *, meaning to lure or ambush. UPI/Mike Theiler
fark
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters
Passenger jet crashes into apartment building in Nigerian capitol. Over 150 princes, bank officials,...
I'll see your zombie apocalypse, and raise you "swarms of deadly spiders" invading a town in India...
Photoshop this woman at the wheel
New book is full of girls in their bedrooms, will be read by people who need to have a seat right...