Seeking Parity vs. Vindictiveness
Reader comment on item: "Muslim Group Targets Jewish Holidays"

Submitted by Ahriman (United States), Jun 21, 2006 at 19:28

Anti-semitism in some portions of the American Muslim population may be a fact, but the incident treated by this post does nothing to establish it. The demand seems to be for parity in treatment by the state of religiously observed holidays. Since disaggregated data on religious identification at the county level is not usually available, it will be difficult to argue that the Jewish Holidays claim is more worthy because there are more Jews in Baltimore County than those practising Islam. It may be the other way around or not.

If the state will permit certain 'official' religious holidays, it should permit others as well, especially if there is no demographic basis for inclusion. Does this mean Hindu, Buddhist or Animist observances have to be codified in the official calendar? Maybe! In countries with large, diverse, and vocal religious groupings like India the concomitant proliferation of religious holidays has been critiqued. I am not advocating that this be the case in Baltimore (or in extension, the US). Perhaps people should take the religious holiday that they want or are 'entitled' to. How the state will regulate this entitlement, or its basis is unclear to me.

But clearly, at the moment, the differential treatment is more pro-Semitic than the protest against it is anti-Semitic. Though the Treaty of Tripoli famously declared the US is 'not a Christian state', it didn't actually mention that the state is more Judeo-Christian than Islamic any day.

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