Islam School Flap—Maybe Not Everybody In Friendswood Is Lousy

Recently the principal of Friendswood Junior High School, here in the Houston area, held an assembly where a local Muslim group explained the central tenets of Islam.

This was in response to an incident of harassment against Muslim students.

The Friendswood school board reassigned this principal after parents complained. The controversy was whipped up by a local “Christian”  group and by talk radio.

After this, it was easy to condemn the people of the Friendswood school district as intolerant.

No doubt many of these folks are, in fact, intolerant.    

However, at a school board hearing after the trouble, the majority of speakers stood up for the principal.

It’s often the few that get the attention. And it’s not hard to see the school board as less than a Profile In Courage.  

I’ve reading a biography of Mark Twain.

Twain once met Frederick Douglass. Douglass told Twain how his daughter had been kicked out of a school in Rochester, New York after parents complained about a black child being enrolled the school.

Douglass insisted that the kids be allowed to vote on if the girl should be allowed to remain. Not one student voted to expel the girl.

I’ve no way of knowing for sure, but I bet the great majority of students in Freindswood were not offended to learn about Islam.  

Sometimes it seems that a job of parents is to make sure their kids acquire the same fears and prejudices they were left with by their parents.    

In any case, some of the good people in Friendswood did speak up. And I believe many young people in this country grasp that a new day of greater acceptance of others is ahead.

Above is “Woman With A spray Of Flowers.” This is Islamic art from 16th century Iran.