Just a random grumbling, but I felt like grumbling.
This afternoon all the first grade students -- a bit over 100 kids -- were lined up and marched to the gym, sat down, and given a brief lecture on how America is the best country, freedom is the best thing, and freedom comes from (the Christian) God. They were then led in a brief prayer, and sent back to class.
This minor feat of inserting a prayer session into the public school was accomplished by having the Kiwanis donate a book on the Statue of Liberty to every single student in the first grade, and the Kiwanis foolishly picking some slightly senile old geezer to do the presentation. He didn't know what to do, but he knows that God is his Savior. I suspect he does not know how many non-christian children we have in our first grade classes, and he's probably just dumb, not evil.
I'm curious what would happen if the local Mosc tried to buy a 15 minute introduction to Allah with a box of children's books -- but not very curious. This is the American South, so there'd be a spurt of grumpy parents complaining, some nasty Facebook posts, and some performative moral outrage, and then that'd be that. What I'm really curious about is if they are getting any of that from the Kiwanis presentation. I have pretty much insulated myself from that sort of drama, so I may never know.
I do know we will absolutely never get an A/B trial of such a thing, because no one is stupid enough to try an Introduction to Allah assembly; you have to be a locally hegemonic cultural institution to try this sort of nonsense. Seriously, people, don't try to convert other people's babies.
But, also, the upshot of this is that it doesn't really matter. Trying to lead 100 six-year-olds in anything is an iffy proposition, and the speaker also didn't really understand how the microphone worked. He half mumbled and half blared his prayer into the void, was roundly ignored, and even God felt slightly embarrassed by the whole thing. But the kids didn't notice.