The Supreme Court reject the appeal on the constitutionality of that "Be a Muslim for a Month" public middle school unit.

The suit challenged the content of a seventh-grade history course at Excelsior Middle School in Byron in the fall of 2001. The teacher, using an instructional guide, told students they would adopt roles as Muslims for three weeks to help them learn what Muslims believe.

She encouraged them to use Muslim names, recited prayers in class, had them memorize and recite a passage from the Quran and made them give up something for a day, such as television or candy, to simulate fasting during the month of Ramadan. The final exam asked students for a critique of elements of Muslim culture.

The students and parents who sued argued that the class activities had crossed the line from education into an official endorsement of a religious practice. A federal judge and the appeals court disagreed, saying the class had an instructional purpose and the students had engaged in no actual religious exercises.

Linda Lye, a lawyer for the school district, said the same instructional material remains available for classes, though it is not required.

"I’m delighted that the Byron Union School District can put this case finally behind it and get on with educating children and exposing them to the world’s great cultures and religions in an appropriate way,” Lye said.

Edward White of the Thomas More Law Center, an attorney who represented the plaintiffs, said the Supreme Court’s rejection surprised him. The case "presents significant issues of national importance with regard to public school education and religious indoctrination of children,” he said.

I am really, really trying hard to imagine the scene if this were a be-a-Christian for a month course, and students were memorizing passages from the New Testament. I’m also having a bit of a hard time seeing how this is not an infringement on the religion of the individual students. (and don’t pull the school prayer thing on me – I’m on record as opposing prayer in public schools. That’s why Catholic schools were established, after all – to get Catholic students out of Protestant religious observance in public schools.)