Labor and immigrant groups are applying pressure to Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, trying to convince him to put two Muslim holy days on the New York school system’s holiday calendar. These groups have already compelled the City Council to vote for the holiday resolution, although its vote is not binding. Mayor Bloomberg is the final arbiter of this resolution and has made it clear that the Muslim holy days will not be recognized by the school system.

The Mayor’s stance is simple. If every religion’s holy days were recognized, there would never be a free day for school. H.L. Mencken once counted all the known gods there have ever been worshipped and came up with a number in the tens of thousands. If each of these gods and religions were given educational notice, there would be no time left for actual education. Then the validity of religious conviction would predictably come into play. If the feast of Artemis (Greek god) and the tribute day to Odin (Norse god) were presented to the school board, how could they ever deny such a request after this decision?

The Mayor has made it clear that a religious holy day will be given holiday schedule recognition if it’s a religion that “a very large number of kids practice.” The function of school is to equip students with knowledge, an impossible objective if Druid rituals are taking up classroom time. However, Muslim leaders are calling for change. They want their holy days recognized alongside Christian and Jewish days, and they are making a strong argument. Over 600,000 Muslims live in New York City, representing around 8% of the city’s population. 12% of the city’s students are of Muslim descent. Furthermore, as the Muslim holy days are floating ones, changing dates each year, at least one of the two will fall on an off day each year for the next decade. Nonetheless, Mayor Bloomberg claims to have made up his mind.

Muslim leaders are threatening to make their discontent clear at the polls, as 2009 is an election year for Bloomberg. According to the New York Times, “Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, a leader of the campaign to add the holidays, said that if the mayor continued to oppose the move, the results for him at the voting booth could be ‘catastrophic.’” The calamitous effects are being met by the students, say many Muslim parents, who see their children forced to skip several days of school in order to practice their religious faith.

Mayor Bloomberg is in a very sensitive position that calls for a precision weighing of issues. Although recognizing religious practices is socially important, a potential slippery slope could be that our students miss even more vital days of educational instruction. As the United States tries to regain its once venerable position in international scholastics, having more days in school and less religious days off may be an opportunity that Mayor Bloomberg decides to NOT passover.