California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed legislation making two Islamic holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, official state holidays, granting Muslim state workers the right to take those days off and allowing public school districts to close in observance. The move has drawn sharp criticism from religious leaders and family advocates who say it creates an unequal legal standing between faiths in the state’s most populous and politically influential jurisdiction.

The inequity is hard to miss. Christmas is the only Christian holiday recognized by California as a paid state holiday. Good Friday and Easter have no equivalent status. A separate bill Newsom signed does address Jewish holy days, but only requires schools and universities to make reasonable efforts to avoid scheduling major events on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a standard far below what the new Islamic holiday law provides. Muslims represent roughly 1% of California’s population, Christians 55%, and Jews approximately 3%.

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Who is praying on the wall?

From CBN:

The law gives Muslim state workers the right to take those days off, and public schools may choose to close in observance of the holidays.

“The state of California doesn’t honor any other religion. But now suddenly they’re kowtowing and catering to what is effectively Sharia law,” Barclay said.

“Our objection is to the state authorizing and promoting the celebration of specific religious holidays inside public school classrooms,” the organization states. “Students should be free to observe their own religious holidays, but the state should not commission curriculum guides telling schools to acknowledge and celebrate the theological meaning of religious observances. That crosses a line from accommodation into state-sponsored religious promotion.”

The provision that troubles critics most is the one allowing individual school districts to decide whether to close for the Muslim holidays. Rabbi Michael Barclay, who spoke to CBN News about the legislation, argued that the framing of Ramadan as a month of peace misrepresents the holiday’s significance within some interpretations of Islam and that California’s political leadership is motivated by a bid for votes and influence rather than genuine religious accommodation. The California Family Council raised a related concern: that state recognition of these holidays will lead to publicly funded classroom instruction that promotes the theological content of Islamic observances, blurring the line between accommodation and state-sponsored religious promotion.

The broader backdrop is a years-long alliance between Muslim advocacy groups and progressive political networks in California. Critics argue that alliance has produced policy outcomes that would be constitutionally suspect if applied to Christianity or Judaism. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others, and opponents of the new law argue that the tiered system now in place, full paid holidays for Islamic observances versus a scheduling-consideration standard for Jewish ones versus no status at all for Christian holy days, cannot survive that standard once it reaches a court.

Let’s pray for California’s public school students, that classrooms would remain places of learning rather than arenas for religious promotion, and for parents who want their children taught their own faith at home and at church, not shaped by curriculum guides from Sacramento. Let’s pray for legislators who voted for this law, that they would reconsider what it means to treat every faith equally under the Constitution. Let’s pray for Muslim neighbors in California, that they would encounter the love of Christ through Christians who speak truth without hostility. And let’s pray for a generation of believers who will not surrender the public square but will stand firm, remembering Proverbs 29:4, that a king who gives justice gives his country stability.

How are you praying about this issue? Share your prayers and scriptures in the comments below.

(Excerpt from CBN. Photo Credit: DustyPixel /Getty Images Signature via Canva Business).