Imagine having to choose between Christmas morning with your family or taking a 10th-grade biology test; or between observing Rosh Hashana and giving a presentation to your 5th-grade class. Students in New York City’s public schools don’t have to imagine such choices. Schools close for these holidays.

Now imagine a Muslim student having to sneak out of his school and risk truancy in order to rush to a local mosque for the Eid Ul-Fitr prayer, and then dash back to class still outfitted in his holiday finest. Imagine a Muslim school girl sitting in her homeroom on the morning Eid Ul-Adha, her hands decorated with fancy henna tattoos for the holiday, only to have her teacher report her to the administration because of the alarmingly suspicious “cuts” on her wrists. Imagine an 11th-grade student who stays home on a Muslim holiday and takes an “excused” absence, but is forced to make up any missed assignments or risk a failing grade.

Just last week over 100,000 Muslim school children and their families in New York City faced these and similar scenarios on the occasion of the Eid Ul-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan. They’ll endure this dilemma again this December on the Eid Ul-Adha, the second of Islam’s two major holidays. Where, then, is the justice in compulsory education for all when it infringes on the free exercise of religion for some?

To its credit, the Education Committee of the New York City Council, under the chairmanship of Councilman Robert Jackson, recently took a dramatic first step toward correcting this injustice. On September 26, 2008, the Education Committee heard testimony on Resolution 1281, calling on the Department of Education to incorporate the Muslim holidays of Eid Ul-Fitr and Eid Ul-Adha as observed school holidays.

The testimonials cut through the Islamophobic rhetoric of the post-9/11 era and laid out the basic facts that justify passage of Resolution 1281: The changing demographics of the city since the 1960s, the recurring failure of existing school accommodations for religious observance, and the emerging crisis of civic belonging facing American Muslim youth in the post-9/11 era.

According to recent studies conducted by me and my colleagues at Teachers College and the School of International and Public Affairs, New York City is home to at least 600,000 plus Muslims. Foreign-born Muslims and their offspring make up over three-quarters of the total. African-American Muslims, the single largest subgroup in the city, amount to as many as 120,000 members, followed by a small but growing number of Latino and non-Hispanic white converts. Foreign-born Muslims come from all over the world: Africa, Asia, the Balkans, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Expansion of the city’s foreign-born population since the sweeping immigration reforms of 1965 means that Muslim school children will continue to be one of the fastest growing religious minorities in our public schools. The Muslim Youth in New York City Public Schools Study of Teachers College estimates that there are at a minimum 100,000 Muslim children, roughly 10 to 12 percent of the student population, in New York City public schools—enough kids to fill Yankee Stadium more than twice over. Muslim children are believed to make up as much as 20 percent of enrollment in some elementary schools in neighborhoods where the population density of foreign-born and indigenous Muslims is high.

Current accommodations that permit students release time to attend religious observances simply don’t work. Not only are most students and their families unfamiliar with the existing regulations, but many teachers and even some administrators are woefully ignorant of them as well. New York state is now careful to avoid scheduling standardized tests on any religious holidays, as it regrettably did several years ago on a Muslim holiday. This, however, does not prevent individual schools or teachers from assigning major assessments like exams, projects and presentations, or threatening to fail a student for being absent.

Muslim school children and their families fear that the growing intolerance toward Islam threatens to delegitimize their American citizenship. Of the 330 Muslim high school students surveyed in the above Teachers College study, almost 70 percent feel suspicion from mainstream society and 90 percent feel increased discrimination against Muslim Americans after 9/11.

One of the most disconcerting findings from the study is that a third of students reported that 9/11 has made them ambivalent about their Muslim identity. Some are so stigmatized that they resort to changing their Muslim-sounding names or try to pass as members of a different ethnic group. Many students simply keep their identity closeted, letting other students or teachers assume that they are some other ethnicity.

The incorporation of the Muslim holidays of Eid Ul-Fitr and Eid Ul-Adha as observed school holidays should thus wait no longer. New York City has no excuse but to follow the example of school boards in New Jersey and Michigan that have already added the two Eids to their school calendars. What’s more, adding the two Eids is a calendar setting issue that the New York City Department of Education can easily accommodate without reducing the mandatory 180-day school year.

The addition of the two Eids as school holidays will guarantee the right to a quality education for Muslim school children. Equally important, it will safeguard their fundamental right to the free exercise of religion for them and their families.

The author is a lecturer in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College. He is the Principal Investigator of the Muslim Youth in New York City Schools Project.