Massachusetts High School remembers September 11th with a Muslim anti-American poem rather than the Pledge of Allegiance

  The Concord-Carlisle high school in Massachusetts decided to remember September 11th in a rather unusual way; there was no Pledge of Allegiance (even with those two certain words omitted) but rather the reading of a Muslim poem about a woman washing her feet in a public bathroom prior to praying to Mecca.

  The school principal is defending this decision by saying that the Pledge of Allegiance was on the schedule for the day but the student who was supposed to read it did not attend school on September 11th. Apparently he either could not find anyone else who could recite it or couldn’t be bothered to look. He went on to say that this anti-American poem was not a replacement for the Pledge but was supposed to be read in addition to the Pledge.

  Here is part of what School Committee member Philip Benincasa had to say:

We had the well-being of students at the forefront of our thinking when we chose to acknowledge 9/11 by reading a poem that focused on cross-cultural understanding rather than unsettling words and images associated with the event,” the principal’s statement read. “We greatly respect all those who died and suffered loss on 9/11, the responders who gave their lives, as well as those who have served and continue to serve our country. We remain grateful for these heroic citizens.”

“I’m disappointed at the reaction that some of my community,” said School Committee member Philip Benincasa. “I think what the principal was doing was an attempt to offer young people a glimpse of what binds us together as people. This was an attack carried out by extremists, not by a religious group that is as peace loving and valued member of our community, our culture, and our world as any other

  Basically he is saying that instead of focusing on what actually happened on that day he thought it was important to celebrate diversity and he is upset that people in his community would be offended by this decision.

  Here is part of the poem the principal of Concord-Carlisle High School thought was more important to recite than the Pledge:

Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown

as they notice what my grandmother is doing,

an affront to American porcelain, a contamination of American Standards

by something foreign and unhygienic…

They fluster about and flutter and I can see

a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom.”

“‘You can’t do that,’ one of the women protests,

turning to me, ‘Tell her she can’t do that.’

‘We wash our feet five times a day,’

my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.

‘My feet are cleaner than their sink.

Worried about their sink, are they? I

should worry about my feet!’

  The last example of celebrating diversity that we have from Massachusetts comes from the sanctuary city of Cambridge which welcomed the Tsarnaev brothers into their community…..how’d that work out?