TORONTO, CANADA, September 19, 2001 (The Beacon Herald): A demonstration outside Toronto’s public-school board headquarters turned into an ugly, bitter confrontation over the Toronto District School Board’s controversial policy to allow prayer in the city’s publicly funded, secular school system.
“We are here because religion has no place in our schools,” said Ron Banerjee, of Canadian Hindu Advocacy. Allowing “fundamentalist teachings” in school “effectively amounts to oppressing the children, brainwashing of the children,” he asserts.
About three metres away, on the other side of the police line, supporters of the policy, many of them young students, tried to shout down prayer opponents.
“I am here to support the board for letting us pray in school,” said Aayman Karin, 13, one of about 100 Muslim students who pray on certain Fridays in the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School, on Overlea Blvd.
“Everyone has the right to practice their religion,” Karin said, adding students feel more comfortable praying in school with their classmates.