Government Sponsorship of Religious Rituals Found To Be OK — If You've Got the Right Religion, Anyway.

AUTHOR

ACRU Staff

DATE

April 12, 2007

Whether a public college is impermissilbly entangled with religion would appear to depend on the college — and even more on the religion. In her column today in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Katherine Kersten discusses what gives every appearance of being a double standard when the Minneapolis Community and Technical College tackled the entanglement issue. Religious practices linked to Christmas were put on the Bad List, while, we now see, those linked to Islam were put on the Good List.

Ms. Kersten’s entire column is worth reading, but a few paragraphs, quoted below, sketch out this disturbing case:

[Minneapolis Community and Technical] officials say the college, a public institution, has a strict policy of not promoting religion or favoring one religion over another. “The Constitution prevents us from doing this in any form,” says Dianna Cusick, director of legal affairs.

But that seems to depend on your religion.

Where Christianity is concerned, the college goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of what the courts call “entanglement” or support of the church. Yet the college is planning to install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers, an apparent first at a public institution in Minnesota.

Separation of church and state is clearest at the college during the Christmas season. A memo from Cusick and President Phil Davis, dated Nov. 28, 2006, exhorted supervisors to banish any public display of holiday cheer: “As we head into the holiday season … “all public offices and areas should refrain from displays that may represent to our students, employees or the public that the college is promoting any particular religion.” Departments considering sending out holiday cards, the memo added, should avoid cards “that appear to promote any particular religious holiday.”

Last year, college authorities caught one rule-breaker red-handed. A coffee cart that sells drinks and snacks played holiday music “tied to Christmas,” and “complaints and concerns” were raised, according to a faculty e-mail. College authorities quickly quashed the practice.

They appear to take a very different attitude toward Islam. Welcome and accommodation are the order of the day for the college’s more than 500 Muslim students. The college has worked with local Muslim leaders to ensure that these students’ prayer needs and concerns are adequately addressed, Davis told me.

Muslim prayer is an increasingly controversial issue. Many Muslim students use restroom sinks to wash their feet before prayer. Other students have complained, and one Muslim student fell and injured herself while lifting her foot out of a sink.

Some local Muslim leaders have advised the college staff that washing is not a required practice for students under the circumstances, according to Davis. Nevertheless, he says, he wants to facilitate it for interested students. “It’s like when someone comes to your home, you want to be hospitable,” Davis told me. “We have new members in our community coming here; we want to be hospitable.”

So the college is making plans to use taxpayer funds to install facilities for ritual foot-washing. Staff members are researching options, and a school official will visit a community college in Illinois to view such facilities while attending a conference nearby. College facilities staff members are expected to present a proposal this spring.

Ms. Kersten’s entire column can be found at

https://www.startribune.com/191/story/1115081.html

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