A public school in Nashville permitted students to leave class to pray, offering accommodations for Ramadan. According to a report from the Nashville Banner, John Overton High School in South Nashville offered food-free zones and prayer spaces.
“The school makes it such a point to make it known that it’s Ramadan,” said Revas Barwari, a teacher at the school. “What school do you know that actually changes their whole bell schedule to work around students being able to go pray?,” she added. “I don’t think the kids really even understand how important that is or see that like, ‘Wow, my school’s doing this for me.’”
A school spokesperson clarified that the bell schedule was not changed, but that students were instead provided with religious accommodations. “Students were provided accommodations, as needed, during prayer times so they could briefly leave class. Similar accommodations would be considered for students of other faiths based on individual needs and circumstances,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to the outlet. “The activities referenced … were student-led and voluntary.”
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) has criticized the rise of Islam in the United States. The congressman recently issued an open letter to Muslims leaders in the United States, challenging them to condemn recent attacks across the country.
“In the past three weeks, our nation faced a series of violent attacks by Muslims citing religious justifications for their bloodshed,” the letter says, going on to describe attacks in Austin, New York City, and West Bloomfield.
Ogles emphasized that “zero American mosques have publicly condemned this pattern of Islamic bloodshed and disavowed the attackers. This silence legitimizes the concerns of millions of Americans that Islam requires such violence.” He went on to challenge the Islamic leaders to “publicly and unequivocally condemn these specific attacks, disavow the perpetrators, reject any religious justification for terrorism, and state clearly that murdering innocents or targeting houses of worship has no place in Islam of America.”
