In order to accommodate religious practices, Niles West offers prayer passes so that students can pray in a quiet space when they need to. Followers of Islam may pray five times each day, and some of those times fall during the school day. Though prayer passes have been available for some time, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) has made efforts improve the passes for this school year.

MSA Co-sponsor and English teacher Ainee Fatima wanted this new prayer pass to be implemented because of the issues with the old one.

“We’ve had instances where kids would abuse the pass. [For instance,] they get the pass and go walk around for 10 minutes…so we’ve implemented having their parents get involved in their prayer pass,” Fatima said. 

In order for students to receive a prayer pass, they need to visit their school counselor to pick up a prayer pass form. They then need to get a signature from the teacher of the class they will miss as well as from their parents. Lastly, they will get the pass approved by their counselor, allowing them to leave class only for their designated praying time. The only location available for students to pray is behind the bleachers on the Main Gym balcony.

Though it is strongly encouraged that students pray during a free period, this new pass allows students to miss ten minutes of class time to pray.

Assistant Principal of Student Services Page Powell is new to Niles West and sees value in continuing to offer students a prayer pass.

“I think it is really important to be able to balance school and your individual identities,” Powell said.

Junior Salwa Mohiuddin is the Co-Activities Coordinator for MSA and she helps plan activities and events like Friendsgiving and Ramadan. She has had a prayer pass since her freshman year and has been able to see the pass improve over the years.

“My freshman year, you could get [a pass] from an MSA sponsor, but it wasn’t really used, especially because our prayer location kept changing…Now it feels like there’s actually some structure, plus it minimizes the amount of people who take advantage of the system,” Mohiuddin said.

Fatima is grateful for the chance Niles West has given to students who wish to pray during school hours but cannot during their free periods.

“As a public school, [Niles West] does not have to offer this option. They have no responsibility or reason to do this, but the fact that we had this option is really nice. It shows inclusivity…and we’re really glad to have this option,” Fatima said. 

Currently, the prayer pass is not active because Islamic prayer time falls outside of school hours, but beginning Nov. 3, students will be able to use their prayer passes.