According to The Post Millennial, the public school committee in Portland, Maine, is considering new restrictions on classroom pets after a Muslim district official complained that dogs are considered "impure" in Islam.
Citing local reporting from WGME, the outlet noted that the policy review began after Ocean Avenue Elementary School launched a program to foster dogs that students could interact with during the school day. At-Large School Board Member Maya Lena explained that "students, at certain times, are offered an opportunity to come and come into the play pen and sit and read with the dog."
During an October school committee meeting, Abdullahi Ahmed, the district's Somalia-born Assistant Superintendent for Student, Family, and Community Partnerships, raised religious objections to having dogs inside school buildings. "The Muslim community members do not oppose or hold hostility against animals," Ahmed told the committee before pointing to "some ritual kind of purity that Islamic traditions, you know, state and Muslims exercise."
"So, for example, the dog saliva is considered impure," Ahmed said during the meeting. He added that some members of the community have also had "negative" interactions with dogs in the past.
While acknowledging that service animals belong in a separate category where "the need comes first," Ahmed argued that "if there is a dog or any other animal for as a you know class pet or the for the school, students and staff should not be required to interact." He further insisted that students and staff "generally must not be asked or required to interact with, or to be with close proximity, the dogs should not be in the common areas where they can prevent from access some of the students, and parents should be informed in advance where the dogs will be present."
Ahmed told board members that he consulted with "community elders or imams" ahead of the meeting regarding the district's animal rules. Warning that the presence of dogs could "restrict the students' access to education," he urged the committee to adopt an opt-in requirement rather than an opt-out policy.
Under a draft classroom animal policy currently before the Portland school committee, principals would be required to notify parents in advance before bringing an animal into a classroom. Parents would then have to notify the school if they do not want their child to be around those animals.
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