After clicking with initial suspicion, I have to say I like this ESPN story about the predominantly-Muslim football team of Dearborn, MI’s Fordson High holding practices in the wee hours since, for the first time in decades, the preseason coincides with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan:

Cutting practice wasn’t an option at football-crazy Fordson, which is coming off a one-loss season and has won four state titles and three runner-up seasons since it was established in 1928.

But nobody wanted to lessen the significance of Ramadan in the Detroit suburb widely known as the capital of Arab-America.

The moonlight practice is tailored for Adnan Restum and fellow Muslim teammates.

Illuminated by the night lights on the football field, Restum recently joined a scrum of teammates at the end-zone water fountain, taking a break from a grueling preseason football workout to guzzle a drink.

In just a few hours, he wouldn’t be able to take a sip. But the 17-year-old defensive tackle could rehydrate guilt-free during the 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. practice, and succumb to tempting boxes full of granola bars and chocolate milk, too.

“It feels really great,” said Restum, who has been fasting since he was about 10. “If we’re doing it during the day, we wouldn’t have water and it would be really hot and everything.”

I’m curious to hear what other NROers and Cornerites think, but to me, this is what stage-one assimilation looks like. Grueling late-summer football camp (my high school had two-a-days!) is as quintessentially a part of what it means to be a teenage boy in America as it gets, and I dig that that experience is available — and embraced — by Muslim-Americans, and that it can be made compatible with their religion without either institution suffering. Is it a stretch to say there’s shades of Sandy Koufax not pitching on the Sabbath here?

Believe me, I was looking for gripes when I read this, but it’s hard to find any. Fordson coach Fouad Zaban got the blessing of the school district, the players, their parents, and police before flipping the schedule, and sent explanatory letters to residents who live near the field. The team’s few non-Muslim players seem to have embraced the late-night scrums, and even the fasting, as a team-building exercise (90 percent of high school athletics is about the bond that comes from shared misery). School’s still out, so the queer hours won’t affect academic performance, and have the added benefit of alleviating heat stroke. And any one worried about creeping Sharia should note that Zaban — a real hard-a** from the sounds of it –  has made this special dispensation only because it’s the preseason. When Ramadan falls during the regular season, practices are held during the day.