So to sum up, the principal of a school in Colorado encouraged some sort of multicultural program at his school. As part of this people were allowed to recite the pledge over the loud speaker at school other languages besides English. Spanish and French had already been used with no complaints.
However, on the day in question they recited it in Arabic, which of course means that "God" was translated as "Allah," because that is the Arabic word for god and would be used by Arabs no matter what religion they belonged to. Unfortunately, our country is filled with those who are, shall we say, linguistically ignorant. Because of this, people in his school district have become angry, claiming that this is un-American and and promotes Islam.
What strikes me as funny is that I cannot count the number of times that I have had Christians tell me I was overreacting to things like the "under God" in the pledge or the "In God we trust" on our coins. When I suggest that I feel as though those of us who do not believe are not being treated equally as citizens with such things on our coins and in our pledges I'm told that I am "being too sensitive" or I'm making too big a deal out of it.
I've often wondered how those same believers would react if they felt that someone was asking them to pledge allegiance to some god they didn't believe in. Of course I've asked, but I've never been able to get a real answer from them. I suppose I have my answer now.
If I thought it would do any good I would point out to them that if "under God" wasn't in the pledge in the first place this wouldn't have happened. This sort of thing is exactly why we should be keeping religion out of government in the first place.
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