Stopping Christmas is just fucking retarded. It's not religious for me, it's about getting drunk, fat, and gifts. When I was in school, come Christmas time, everyone has fun, even the Jewish people around here participate in the festivities, which I thought they were against. Being for/against Christmas does NOT in any way make you an anti-American asshat, though.
In a nearby school, a Muslim girl protested the Christian prayer that is given at the graduation ceremony for seniors at the High School. It wasn't just the fact that she didn't want to hear the prayer, though.
There was some bullshit started over it, and her parents threatened legal action. They felt that she shouldn't be subject to our religious ways. (I say 'our' in the sense of 'Americans') We must be doing something extremely wrong, however, since they're from Iran, and came here to our country. I've got the same anger, if not more, than the OP, about this subject.
The fucked up thing was, she prayed 2-3 times a day in school, aloud, in class. The other people in the school didn't bitch about having to hear her pray in a different language. They had to listen to her everyday, and her religious practices are safe in this country due to our laws. However, the fucked up thing is, our religious practices are NOT safe in our OWN fucking country. Our religious figures have all been removed from schools (at least in this area) and even the Pledge of Allegiance is disputed because of the word, "God". Now, she didn't want to have to hear the Christian prayer, that's said once for the 90% Christian community that has to listen to her pray every day? Kinda hypocritical to protest this shit. I think most Muslims are hypocrites when it comes to religion and how they deal with other people's religious choices.
Prior the graduation ceremony, she was seen at Wal-Mart, and had the shit kicked out of her.
Anyhow, the smart Christians found a way around it, which really singled her out and gave her a lot of negative attention. The ceremony was carried out as planned, with the Christian prayer included, while she was in the hallway. After the Christian prayer, she was called into the auditorium where the rest of the people were, and the tension could be cut with a dull blade.
This incident was just one of many religious and racial tensions (white and black disputes here are rare) that we face in this region. The girl got her wish in a way, she didn't have to hear our prayer anymore.
This dispute came up a few weeks before the end of school. When the solution was met, there were several parents threatening MORE legal action until their kids did not have to listen to other people's prayer. For her remaining days as a student in school, she was made to pray in the hall, where it would not disturb the class!
I'm not a religious person, and if I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I'd choose N/A. Christians (and Catholics for that matter) follow a book written which is, in my opinion, a book of fiction. I can't grasp the concept of somebody writing a book in which a man walked on water, made pigs run off a cliff, and did all the shit Jesus did without the writer being on some sort of opiate. The beginning chapters state that a woman was made from the leftovers of a man, making her inferior. And the chicken/egg thing, just doesn't work with the bible. Muslims (as I've read, not without a measure of skeptical intellect) are separated into two groups, Sunni and Shia (sp?), warring over who should have taken Mohammad's place as the next leader of Islam. Women aren't treated well by Muslim men. The Catholic Pope very well indeed did state that Muslims are warmongers, and they proved him right with their actions following his words - naive and predictable bastards. If they really wanted to prove their non-violent ways, they could've done it without burning effigies of the Pope.
They have their rights to believe in what they believe in, though, but if I had a book to believe in, it's definitely Next by Michael Crichton. What really bites my pickle is that everyone thinks that since the USA is largely Christian, that anything non-Christian is anti-American.
Evolution FTW.