Sightings 10/14/2010

*Muslims, Middle Schoolers, and Lawsuits*
– Joseph Laycock

In May, Wellesley Middle School took a class field trip to see the Islamic
Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury. The curriculum had
previously included field trips to a synagogue as well as performances of
gospel music and lectures by Hindu religious leaders. As with most
middle-school field trips, students must bring permission slips and parents
are recruited as chaperones.

While the school had organized field trips to mosques before, this was their
first trip to the ISBCC, which opened in 2009. The ISBCC is the largest
Islamic center in New England, featuring an elementary school, an interfaith
center, an exhibition space, and a morgue for Muslim burial services. Its
weekly services are attended by Boston Muslims of 27 different ethnicities.
It hosts visits from numerous youth groups and learning institutions,
including Harvard.

But the ISBCC has also been plagued by controversy. Construction began in
January 2004 amid allegations that Dr. Walid Fitahaihi, an ISB leader, had
made anti-Semitic comments. In October of that year, opponents of the
project formed the group,  ¢â‚¬Å“Citizens for Peace and Tolerance ¢â‚¬  (CPT). The
group ¢â‚¬â„¢s website tracks the  ¢â‚¬Å“radical links ¢â‚¬  of several ISB leaders. In a
maneuver that is now all too common, a handful of comments and financial
connections are used to implicate an entire community center that serves
thousands.

When an anonymous Wellesley mother who volunteered to chaperone contacted the
CPT, she was asked to videotape the field trip. The tape was then edited and
uploaded onto the opponent group ¢â‚¬â„¢s website in a ploy similar to those used
against ACORN and Shirley Sherrod. The edited footage shows that after the
students received a history lesson from an ISBCC representative, five
students participated in the midday prayer, at least somatically, by bowing
towards Mecca. The chaperone does not intervene but whispers the words  ¢â‚¬Å“Oh
my God! ¢â‚¬  in apparent horror.

To be certain, this scene was not ideal pedagogy and seems to reflect a lack
of communication between school officials and ISB representatives.
Generally, religious practitioners are not experts in the history of their
own traditions or the constitutional distinctions between teaching and
proselytizing. The task of the teacher is to incorporate the voice of the
practitioner into a balanced and critical perspective of the course content.
But the footage does not show the teachers ¢â‚¬“ ¢â‚¬“who are presumably licensed and
competent ¢â‚¬“ ¢â‚¬“preparing students for their visit or debriefing them afterwards.
In fact, it is impossible to discern what message students took from the
field trip as their voices have been completely absent from the ensuing
media coverage.

Now, attorney Robert N Meltzer has stepped forward, representing the
anonymous mother and claiming that the field trip violated the students ¢â‚¬â„¢
First Amendment rights. He is quoted saying  ¢â‚¬Å“We believe that a school cannot
bring middle-school children to any house of worship. Period. ¢â‚¬  Most
jurisprudence concerning religion in schools debates the Establishment
Clause of the Constitution, rather than the Bill of Rights. Rather than
arguing that the field trip represents government support of Islam, Meltzer
is claiming that it violates the religious freedom of students *not* to set
foot in a mosque. The fact that students chose to enter the mosque and
participate in a prayer is irrelevant, it is argued, because
middle-schoolers lack the autonomy to make such decisions for themselves.
However this argument fails to address the fact that parents signed
permission slips and were physically present when the five students
participated in prayer.

Meltzer has announced that the lawsuit will go forward unless the school
district agrees never again to offer field trips to places of worship.
Regardless of the lawsuit ¢â‚¬â„¢s outcome, this will have a chilling effect for
public schools across the country. This may be a local conflict, but the
collateral damage is national education. The fear of lawsuits not only
deprives students of a genuine multicultural experience in a curriculum
increasingly dominated by standardized tests, but it also stymies religious
literacy at a crucial time in our nation ¢â‚¬â„¢s history.

*References*

The Pluralism Project profile on
the Islamic Society of Boston Community Center.

Kathleen Burge,  ¢â‚¬Å“Mosque trip violated rights, lawyer
says, ¢â‚¬ 
*Boston Globe*, September 22, 2010.

The official website of Citizens for Peace and
Tolerance

Joseph Laycock is a PhD student in religion and society at Boston
University, and the author of *Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern
Vampirism *(Praeger Publishers, 2009).