Public Employee Press

DC 37 presses for Muslim school holidays

DC 37 is supporting a grassroots campaign to require the public school system to recognize two major Muslim holidays.

DC 37 Treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin testified Sept. 26 before the City Council Education Committee in favor of a resolution that calls upon the Dept. of Education to include the two most important Muslim holidays in the school calendar: Eid ul-Fitr, or Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, and Eid-ul-Adha, which occurs the day after Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

“Granting the day off to all students will raise awareness about how important these holidays are to New York’s Muslim community and make a statement that the Muslim community is an important and accepted part of our great city,” said Uddin.

An immigrant from Bangladesh, he is also president of Accountants, Statisticians and Actuaries Local 1407. “It is important for Muslims to be with their families and community on these holidays.”

DC 37 is working with the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays — which includes 60 unions, community organizations, advocacy groups, religious institutions and civil rights groups — to support the City Council Resolution 1281, which is co-sponsored by Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson.

The time is now
“The time has come for the enormous population of Muslim school children and their classmates to have major Muslim holidays off,” said Zahida Pirani, director of the New York Civil Participation Project, the labor-community group that helped found the coalition in 2006. From 600,000 to 700,000 Muslims reside in New York City, and over 120,000 Muslim children attend the public schools, 12 percent of the enrollment.

Advocates say including the holidays would reflect a growing trend in the United States, where an estimated 5.7 million Muslims live. Cities such as Trenton and Paterson, New Jersey, include the two holidays in their school calendars, Pirani pointed out. Cities in Michigan, with its large Muslim population, recognize Eid as a school holiday, she said.

In his testimony, Uddin noted that as the Muslim population has grown in the United States, Muslims’ holidays have become a subject of collective bargaining. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, for instance, successfully fought for Eid to be a paid holiday at a poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., where many of its members are Muslim.