Toronto public school: menstruating girls must sit at the back

For three years, Valley Park Middle School has allowed a local imam to conduct Muslim prayer services in its cafeteria on Fridays. Students who choose to participate are allowed to miss time from classes, supposedly because this is more practical than allowing students go to a nearby mosque.  The National Post reports that 80-90 percent of the student body are children of Muslims.

As Jackson Doughart persuasively argues,

[A]llowing Islamic religious services to be conducted in a public school is unfair to non-Muslims, non-believers, and even Muslims themselves. If students are to be categorized based on their parents’ religion (itself a mistake), then the school board is obligated to treat all such groups equally. There are only two possible ways to do this: open the school to every [religion], or erect a wall of separation between public schools and religion.                                                        
Choosing the first option would fundamentally alter the character of public schools.    

First, it would involve the inclusion of religious officials into the school environment who are not educators and who may not be accountable to school regulations. This is one of the problems facing Valley Park Middle School, as the imam who conducts the prayer sessions is not a teacher but rather a religious official selected by a group of Muslim parents.

Second, this model opens the door to religious proselytizing in schools, from which all students should be protected.

Third, it would undermine state education as a public institution by creating autonomous groups that act outside of government supervision. In this case, the school board has acknowledged that it does not involve itself with the prayer exercises in any way, even though staff members from the school convert the cafeteria to a makeshift mosque every Friday afternoon. 

Finally, the doctrines that are promoted by some religious groups directly compromise the social objectives of public education, including the promotion of gender equality, the alleviation of social pressures on gay students (many Muslim imams and Christian priests vociferously object to equal rights for homosexuals) and the full integration of students from different backgrounds. Identifying groups of students by the religion of their parents, and subsequently inviting religious officials into schools, serves only to divide students. Social exclusion is explicit in this current case, as non-Muslims are prohibited from entering the cafeteria during the prayer sessions.

It is admirable that Doughart goes to the trouble to differentiate between children and their parents' chosen religions.  But what he doesn't mention is that at Valley Park Middle School prayer sessions, students are segregated based on gender: boys pray at the front; girls pray behind the boys, separated by tables.  Even worse, girls who are menstruating must sit on their own at the back of the room and may not participate in the prayer, as shown in the image above.

The Toronto District School Board claims it is obligated to provide accommodation for students' faith needs, but does not address how this policy of segregation (and, some would argue, public shaming) violates laws on discrimination.

The Muslim Canadian Congress is threatening legal action. Founder Tarek Fatah has said that the Toronto District School Board is using tax money to tell girls that they are "second-class citizens":

"Deep inside is a racist view that Muslims are not considered equal human beings, and that they can treat women how they want, and it’s nobody else’s concern."

Go here to sign a petition calling on the Toronto School District Board to end this odious practice.