Brother Rice's Muslim prayer room non-issue of the week

One of the silliest non-controversies of the last week would be the way some parents of students reacted to news that a special room at Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills would get a "special room" to pray in. Because, you know, setting aside a room for students to pray at a religious school is crazy.

Well, of course it's not. The school admits non-Catholic students, and, frankly, a Catholic church really isn't the perfect setup for praying in Islam. It makes sense why students would ask for a room of their own. 

Now, the funny thing about Catholics is, they've been dealing with other religions for thousands of years. They don't see the clergy of other religions as competition so much as colleagues. They, better than most laypeople, are in an excellent position to understand the ways in which Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are interconnected and share many of the same messages.

Unfortunately, at least a dozen Catholic parishioners, parents to Brother Rice students, are probably batshit-crazy, FOX News-watching Islamophobes who ran shrieking to news media that Muslims were worshipping at a religious institution, calling it "unconscionable" that these other Abrahamic believers were allowed to pray in a way that would "undermine" their children's religious inculcation.

Of course, if somebody, somewhere, in a special room, praying to a God other than yours undermines your beliefs, we have to wonder how fervently you believe in the first place. 

Or, as the Big J once said: "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?"