Excerpt:
The Islamist insistence on religious accommodation is now being felt in Canadian school boards. Some Muslim parents are objecting to music classes for their children, citing this as a religious rights issue that must be honoured. The imagined threat to their extreme form of religiosity comes from music classes for their kids, something they regard as sinful.
Boards across Canada have made music education mandatory for elementary school children, and for good reason. Children who take music lessons generally perform better in school. Not only that, but music helps define our heritage and exposing children to this aspect of our cultural identity forms an important part of the curriculum. Children should also be exposed to different fields of endeavour in order to know themselves better and to realize what talents they have.
But Mohammad Nouman Dasu, a Quran teacher who leads prayers at a Scarborough mosque, wanted his children exempted from music classes. He also started a petition signed by over 130 parents. This is all detailed in a recent Globe & Mail story.