'Diversity'=Dhimmitude

Mark Steyn comments on an au courant instance of remorseless Islamization in Toronto: Muslim prayers in a public school with all "unclean" chicks expected to attend but precluded from participating. He notes that some but by no means most Canadians will recoil at the Toronto Star photo of the proceedings.



Then again,

...a lot of Canadians will glance at the picture and think, “Aw, diversity, ain’t it a beautiful thing?” – no different from the Sikh Mountie in Prince William’s escort. And even if they read the caption and get to the bit about a Toronto public school separating menstruating girls from the rest of the student body and feel their multiculti pieties wobbling just a bit, they can no longer quite articulate on what basis they’re supposed to object to it. Indeed, thanks to the likes of Ontario “Human Rights” Commission chief commissar Barbara Hall, the very words in which they might object to it have been all but criminalized.

Islam understands the reality of Commissar Hall’s “social justice”: You give ’em an inch, and they’ll take the rest. Following a 1988 cease-and-desist court judgment against the Lord’s Prayer in public school, the Ontario Education Act forbids “any person to conduct religious exercises or to provide instruction that includes religious indoctrination in a particular religion or religious belief in a school.” That seems clear enough. If somebody at Valley Park stood up in the cafeteria and started in with “Our Father, which art in Heaven”, the full weight of the School Board would come crashing down on them. Fortunately, Valley Park is 80-90 per cent Muslim, so there are no takers for the Lord’s Prayer. And, when it comes to the prayers they do want to say, the local Islamic enforcers go ahead secure in the knowledge that the diversity pansies aren’t going to do a thing about it.

Update: "Let the Valley Park children pray," beseeches an op-ed piece in the NatPo. The author, one Afsun Qureshi, argues (if that's the correct word for it)

So if 90% of a given school is Muslim, what is wrong with them having a prayer for a few minutes? Just in the same way Jewish kids in my class were allowed to leave school early for their Hebrew lessons?

The predictable retort: "If these people are coming into our country, let them adapt." How tired I am of that old refrain. First off, what if "these people" are born in Canada? And isn't it a mark of progress and enlightenment to be aware and tolerant of other cultures?

Also a mystery to me is why now the sudden fuss about female students at Valley Park not being able to pray with other students if they are menstruating? Sorry, but all those up in arms are about a few hundred years late to this debate. Not being able to pray, fast, go to Hajj etc. during that time of month, and sitting at the back of the bus to pray, is one of the intrinsic injustices of Islam...

Er, isn't that the problem, Afsun? Why should we kafirs be forced to underwrite such injustices? Luckily, NatPo letter-writers ("No place for prayers in schools") are made of wiser stuff than this gal.