{"id":25361,"date":"2011-03-29T21:26:36","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T21:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/usa_today_editorial-teachers_leave_request_neednt_turn_into_a_federal_case\/"},"modified":"2011-03-29T21:26:36","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T21:26:36","slug":"usa_today_editorial-teachers_leave_request_neednt_turn_into_a_federal_case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=25361","title":{"rendered":"(USA Today) Editorial&#8211;Muslim teacher&#39;s leave request needn&#39;t turn into a federal case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2008, nine months into her job as a math teacher in Berkeley, Ill., Safoorah Khan made an extraordinary request: three weeks off in December for a pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the hajj in her Muslim faith.<\/p>\n<p>The school board said no \u201d\u201d not an unreasonable reply to a relatively new employee whose leave would occur at a critical time, the end of a semester. Khan quit, went on the pilgrimage and lodged a religious discrimination complaint. The Justice Department has now intervened on Khan&#8217;s behalf against the school board.<\/p>\n<p>So what could have been a teachable moment has instead turned into yet another federal lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/printedition\/news\/20110329\/editorial29_st.art.htm\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2008, nine months into her job as a math teacher in Berkeley, Ill., Safoorah Khan made an extraordinary request: three weeks off in December for a pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the hajj in her Muslim faith. The<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=25361\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,42,111,426,114,155,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-religion-news-commentary","category-education","category-islam","category-law-legal-issues","category-other-faiths","category-religion-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}