A Muslim school teacher who had just started working in a Chicago Middle School wanted to take three weeks of unpaid leave to go visit Mecca, and claimed "discrimination" when she didn't get it. This claim, which has been taken up by the (Barack Hussein) Obama Justice Department, is obviously lame, pointless, and stupid—every school teacher in Chicago receives two months paid leave every year—it's called "summer."

And when teachers work 42 weeks in a year, taking an extra three weeks off for whatever reason is not likely to be acceptable, especially in a teacher who just started.

The other irony is using the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to go to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia didn't officially abolish slavery until 1962, de facto it still exists there.

Saudi Arabia practices religious segregation—Mecca, where this schoolteacher wants to go, is barred to non-Muslims on pain of death, and sex segregation—Saudi Arabian religious police prevented schoolgirls from leaving a burning building because they weren't wearing Islamic dress. 15 of them died.

So this teacher is suing under American civil rights laws for the right to take time off work to go to a country where she won't have civil rights.

U.S. sues school over denial of leave for Muslim pilgrimage

December 15, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government sued a suburban Chicago school district Monday for denying a Muslim middle school teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca that is a central part of her religion.

In a civil rights case, the department said the school district in Berkeley, Ill., denied the request of Safoorah Khan on grounds that her requested leave was unrelated to her professional duties and was not set forth in the contract between the school district and the teachers union. In doing so the school district violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to reasonably accommodate her religious practices, the government said.

Ms. Khan wanted to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia which every adult Muslim is supposed to make at least once in a lifetime if they are physically and financially able to. Millions go each year.

Ms. Khan started as a middle school teacher for Berkeley School District 87 — about 15 miles west of Chicago — in 2007. In 2008, she asked for almost three weeks of unpaid leave to perform the Hajj. After the district twice denied her request, Ms. Khan wrote the board that "based on her religious beliefs, she could not justify delaying performing hajj," and resigned shortly thereafter, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago.

Berkeley School District compelled Ms. Khan to choose between her job and her religious beliefs, the lawsuit said.[More]