Dan, I don’t know why anyone would object to this. High school kids who play hockey have dealt for years with practices in the wee hours. They do it because the ice time is cheap. To structure the football practice schedule to facilitate a spiritual observance for kids who want that is at least as good a reason. I wouldn’t be crazy about it if 30 kids were being forced to do it in order to accommodate one or two Muslim students. But this is described as a predominantly Muslim team. And if the non-Muslim kids are fasting out of solidarity with their Muslim teammates — and not because of external pressure to do so — that sounds fine to me, too.

Last year, the Jets moved a home game up three hours to accommodate fans who needed to get home for Yom Kippur. In the good old days, baseball teams used to avoid scheduling day games on Good Friday. These are reasonable measures that underscore the respect we have for religion. In fact, during our terrorism trial in 1995, we used to take breaks during the day so the defendants could observe their daily prayer obligations — it was an easy thing to accommodate, and I was happy to agree to it. There are worrisome aspects of Islamic doctrine, but prayer and fasting are not among them, and I don’t know why anyone would interfere with them if they can be accommodated within reason.