The decision of a school to suspend lessons for a day to allow Muslim students to celebrate Ramadan, considered the sacred month of prayer and fasting in Islam, has divided the population of Pioltello, an Italian town characterized by a strong presence Islamic on the outskirts of Milan.
Recently, the school board of Iqbal Masih High School unanimously decided to close the institution on April 10, which marks the end of the month in which Muslims fast from food and drink from dawn to dusk and perform a series of prayers and reflections.
According to the director of the school, Alessandro Fantoni, the measure was taken because the institute has 40% Muslim students and in recent years, during the celebrations at the end of Ramadan, the absence rate was very high, that is, they only attended lessons three or four students.
Despite the justifications, Fantoni ended up under the eyes of public opinion and was the target of threats and insults, also receiving criticism from the deputy prime minister and minister of transport, Matteo Salvini, and from the minister of education, Giuseppe Valditara.
For Salvini “this is an unacceptable choice, against the values, identity and traditions of our country”. “This is not the model of Italy and Europe that we want”, he said.
Valditara underlined that he had asked “the Ministry officials to verify the educational reasons that led to the decision to modify the regional school calendar and its compatibility with the legislation”.
The Minister of Education stated that “schools cannot directly or indirectly establish new holidays” and guaranteed that their objective “is to enforce the law, legality, the rules”.
MEP Silvia Sardone, of the ultra-nationalist League party, also called the decision “worrying”. But for the mayor of Pioltello, Ivonne Cosciotti, of the Democratic Party, it was “an act of civility”.
Amid the controversy, the school board explained that the decision was taken based on the decree on the autonomy of each school and that, in order to remain closed on April 10, it brought forward the start of lessons by one day in September.
Italian legislation states that this autonomy is «a guarantee of cultural pluralism which takes shape in the planning and implementation of educational, training and didactic interventions aimed at the development of the human person, adapted to different contexts, the needs of families and the specific characteristics of the context» . subjects involved”.
In this way it leaves the institutes with their own administrative, didactic and organizational autonomy, which also allows schools to modify the school calendar.
Iqbal Masih Institute includes a nursery, primary and secondary school and is named after a Pakistani girl who died at the age of 12 in 1995 after being sold by her father to a carpet merchant and forced to work in chains. However, the boy rebelled and has since become the symbol of the fight against child labour.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and Muslims believe it was the date the holy book, the Quran, was revealed. According to the Muslim religion, the cycle teaches us to have empathy with the poorest people, to exercise control over oneself and to show devotion to Allah. .
Source: Terra
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