Not going to school on holidays is common all across the US. We get a five and a half day weekend for Thanksgiving, and most schools get about a week for Christmas.

But there are many other holidays that don’t get celebrated nationwide as holidays with days off from school or work.

Eid is a holiday which happens twice a year that every Muslim in America most likely celebrates with their family. Eid Al-Adha is an Islamic holiday held on September 24 every year to commemorate the loyalty of Ibrahim to God.

Nevertheless, Muslim students all across the United States continue to miss school and fall behind in order to celebrate a holiday which does not count as a “real” holiday because they live in a country where only 2% of the entire population is Muslim.

But why does it matter if they miss one day and go back the next day, why can’t they catch up on the work they missed? Most people would compare it to taking a sick day, but anyone who takes one or two sick days in a row will disagree.

By taking one day off or even two in some families cases, the workload for the next couple of days doubles and causes more stress than most people already have due to school or work. Most people have a busy schedule almost year-round and adding on the work accounted for two days on top of the stressful daily routine is something they cannot afford.

Many Muslims even decide to go to school and not celebrate the holiday to keep up their school work.

Many holidays which get celebrated and get a day or two off from work and school get questioned.

Columbus Day, for example, celebrates the man who began the Atlantic slave trade with Native Americans from the Caribbean Islands. Columbus slaughtered millions of Native Americans and his actions led to the African slavery in early America.

Yet most people celebrate his actions every year and spend the day at home, relaxing.

Making Eid a nationwide holiday would show our country’s respect to every Muslim in America and other Muslim countries across the world.

If you ask any Muslim how they feel about Islam in America, you will probably hear varying answers, but almost every Muslim can say they feel the discrimination and Islamophobia which has become a growing issue in our country.

To say to American Muslims that they too, are citizens who have rights just like every other person in our country, and then turn around and let every other faith celebrate their holidays with a day off from school/work and declare zero Islamic holidays does not help the situation in our country at all.

The first step to a solution is showing America’s respect to Islam a by declaring Eid a federal holiday and letting American Muslims celebrate their faith without having to stress about work or school.