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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.

Submitting....

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Reader comments (17) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
crying foul ...always ! ! ! [93 words]Phil GreendMay 26, 2007 17:5794696
Don't fool yourself. [209 words]Cindy SaroyaAug 2, 2006 16:3551541
Lies, lies and more lies [230 words]WalterAug 2, 2006 22:4251541
Christians wanting to convert Jews are not anti-Semites [160 words]Ted HewlettJun 30, 2006 14:1848578
conversion in Israel [87 words]Fred SchlomkaJul 3, 2006 01:1348578
Re: Fred Schlomka's comment on my comment [227 words]Ted HewlettJul 3, 2006 16:1448578
religious conversion [427 words]Fred SchlomkaJul 4, 2006 16:3148578
Re Mr. Schlomka's comment on my comment on his comment [279 words]Ted HewlettJul 6, 2006 03:1448578
Dear Mr. Hewlett [232 words]Fred SchlomkaJul 7, 2006 00:5948578
to Fred Schlomka: on religious conversion [241 words]Anubhav SinghAug 3, 2006 09:4848578
I stand corrected [6 words]Fred SchlomkaAug 3, 2006 17:1348578
No one is perfect or Ideal except God [477 words]Kalyug EraAug 4, 2006 11:0948578
Seeking Parity vs. Vindictiveness [241 words]AhrimanJun 21, 2006 19:2848015
Common Sense [81 words]tianxiangJun 21, 2006 11:1847997
common sense [106 words]MuhammadJul 18, 2006 10:4047997
Beware [74 words]JaladhiJun 19, 2006 10:3247894
iran was anti genocide. [62 words]mehranJun 18, 2006 07:0647851

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