Since last week’s column about Canada’s schools turning into mosques, I have received a flood of emails from people concerned about such an outcome.

This scenario is a real possibility; prayers are already happening in schools. The issue that faces the Peel District School Board is whether to grant a degree of autonomy to students to prepare their own sermons. The Board is to make its decision on December 12.

The Board must be made aware of what most people are thinking, otherwise it may ignore the sentiments of ordinary Canadians.

I wrote last week that Islamists are adept at organizing themselves efficiently and are hence far more strident than other communities in their demands for religious accommodations. Because of these demands, they can arrange prayers and sermons on public school property, a privilege which more diffident religious communities have not pursued with the same determination.

Nor should they. Otherwise we would see religious assemblies on properties that ought to be free of any religious preferences or persuasions. We cannot witness a scramble for primacy among rival groups. The assertive Islamists must be barred from pursuing their agenda, or they win the competition by default.

I have therefore decided to voice some concerns of people who wrote to me on this issue.

One respondent is convinced that Board members will cower under pressure from Islamists because they are simply afraid.

Another told me that Western feminists ought to be outraged that girls sit behind men in these prayer services and especially that menstruating girls are simply barred from performing prayers.

One respondent is rightly concerned about the proliferation: while such organized prayers were unheard of two decades ago, they are thriving in many of Canada’s jurisdictions.

Yet another believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is actively involved in Canada’s schools and that the Muslim Student Associations are its youth branch.

This respondent believes that the Brotherhood is pursuing a “civilization jihad”— an insidious agenda to change Western society’s social and cultural parameters.

He may just be right. According to an article authored by Tom Quiggin and published on the Mackenzie Institute website, “Another Muslim Brotherhood front group, formed in the USA but now active in Canada as well, is the Muslim Student Association (MSA). This student group was formed as an educational and recruiting program for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Our laws are liberal and open enough to allow even unwelcome opinions to be expressed in such a systematic way, but it is worrying that there are several such MSAs all across Canada.

The kinds of views espoused by members of the Muslim Brotherhood are disconcerting to begin with. They believe in a puritanical and obscurantist brand of Islam that has absolutely no place in our schools and authorities need to be vigilant about its determination to spread its tentacles all across Canada.

Our youth, in particular, must be protected from such ideologies.

Boards across Canada have the authority to stop such ideologies from proliferating among our young. The kinds of practices that have taken place in our schools, such as the discrimination against girls, and the use of gyms for prayer to the exclusion of other student activities, run counter to the philosophies of school boards.

We should all hope that on December 12 the Peel Board will make a decision that aligns with the values Canada stands for.