[Reader-list] "Islam is our enemies' religion": Koran like Mein Kampf

[Rana Dasgupta]

Islam reading assignment draws fire 
 
University faces lawsuit for assigning book to
freshmen 
 
By Alan Cooperman
THE WASHINGTON POST 
 
Aug. 7 — No one complained two years ago when the
University of North Carolina required its incoming
freshmen to read a book about the lingering effects of
the Civil War, nor last year when it assigned a book
about a Hmong immigrant’s struggle with epilepsy and
American medicine. 

BUT THIS YEAR, the university in Chapel Hill is asking
all 3,500 incoming freshmen to read a book about Islam
and finds itself besieged in federal court and across
the airwaves from Christian evangelists and other
conservatives.
       
The university chose “Approaching the Qur’an: The
Early Revelations” by Michael A. Sells, a professor of
comparative religion at Haverford College, because of
intense interest in Islam since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, said UNC Chancellor James Moeser.
       
“We’re obviously not promoting one religion,” Moeser
told concerned university trustees last month. “What
more timely subject could there be?”
       
But a national TV talk show host, Fox News Network’s
Bill O’Reilly, compared the assignment to teaching
“Mein Kampf” in 1941 and questioned the purpose of
making freshmen study “our enemy’s religion.”
       
ACADEMIC FREEDOM VS. MORAL EDUCATION
       
To the university’s faculty and some students, the
dispute is about upholding UNC’s tradition of academic
freedom. To the university’s critics, it’s about
maintaining America’s moral backbone in the war on
terrorism. And to other schools and educators across
the country, it has a double lesson: demand for
lectures and courses on Islam is higher than ever, but
so is the sensitivity of the topic.   
        
President Bush and other U.S. leaders across the
political spectrum have repeatedly said that the war
on terrorism is not a war on Islam or the world’s 1.2
billion Muslims. Academic experts are usually careful
to distinguish among widely divergent strains of
Islam, including a few that condone violence and many
that don’t.
       
But some evangelical Christian leaders — including the
Rev. Franklin Graham, who gave the invocation at
Bush’s inauguration — have denounced Islam since Sept.
11 as an “evil” religion. Despite the furor those
remarks have caused, Graham repeated in radio and
television appearances this week that the Koran
preaches violence and that terrorism is supported by
“mainstream” Muslims around the world.
       
The controversy at UNC is a reflection of these
unresolved questions and continuing distrust toward
Islam among many Americans, a distrust so great that
even reading the Koran seems a seditious act to some.
To others, studying Islam is all right — as long as it
is taught their way.
       
The lawsuit against UNC was filed July 22 in U.S.
District Court in Greensboro, N.C., by the
Virginia-based Family Policy Network, which calls
itself a socially conservative Christian educational
organization.   
          
The suit contends that it is unconstitutional for a
publicly funded university to require students to
study a specific religion. But the Family Policy
Network’s president, Joe Glover, also argues that
“Approaching the Qur’an” is “a one-sided presentation
of Islam that entirely leaves out Suras 4, 5 and 9 of
the Koran” — the passages that contain exhortations to
kill infidels and that have served as inspiration or
justification for some terrorists.
       
“If the chancellor were to come out and be honest, he
would say, ‘We’re trying to put a good face on Islam,’
” Glover said. “If he said that, at least I wouldn’t
think he was being disingenuous.”
       
Carl W. Ernst, a professor of religious studies at UNC
who recommended “Approaching the Qur’an” as summer
reading for freshmen, said Glover is the one with a
biased view of Islam.
       
“It’s easy to take phrases out of context from any
sacred book,” Ernst said. “This is part of a long
history of anti-Islamic bias that is akin to
anti-Semitism or even racism.”
       
UNIVERSITY ABRIDGES ASSIGNMENT
       
In response to the uproar, the university last month
amended the assignment. Instead of writing a one-page
paper about the book, students who object to the
reading can skip it and bring a one-page paper
explaining their objections to campus on Aug. 19, when
groups of 20 to 25 freshmen are to discuss the book in
two-hour, non-credit seminars. But that concession has
not halted the denunciations on talk radio or the
deluge of angry e-mails to UNC officials, mostly from
people who have no association with the university,
Provost Robert N. Shelton said.   
 
Since Sept. 11, Islamic studies are “very hot,” in
both senses of the word, said Sells, the editor and
translator of “Approaching the Qur’an.”
       
“It’s different in degree and kind from the rise of
interest that occurred during the Khomeini revolution
or the oil crisis,” he said. “I probably gave 50
lectures this year outside the university. The
audiences that would have been 20 people last year
were 200 people this year. The audiences that would
have been 40 are now 400.”

Sells and other scholars say publishers are reissuing
long out-of-print books on Islam. Universities are
scrambling to add courses and faculty positions.
Graduate students with newly minted doctorates in
Islamic religion and literature are getting multiple
job offers.

But because of the “lightning-rod quality” of Islamic
studies in the United States, many academic experts
find themselves defensively telling audiences, “I
study Islam, but I am not a Muslim,” said Bruce B.
Lawrence, a professor of religion at Duke University.

Since the furor over the UNC assignment, Sells in
particular spends a lot of time defending his
patriotism and trying to make the point that teaching
about Islam is not the same thing as proselytizing it.
  

Fox News Network’s Bill O’Reilly compared the
assignment to teaching ‘Mein Kampf’ in 1941 and
questioned the purpose of making freshmen study ‘our
enemy’s religion.’ 

The great irony of the UNC controversy, Sells said, is
that when he wrote the book several years ago, his
goal was to avoid “the whole argument about the
violent or nonviolent nature” of Islam.

“The point of this book is to say, let’s put that
vital question aside for a moment and ask, ‘What is it
in the religion that makes 1.2 billion people see it
as meaningful?’ And present that just as you would
present what it is in the Christian story of the death
and resurrection of Jesus that is meaningful to
Christians,” he said.

The book contains fresh translations and multiple
interpretations of 35 suras, or passages, that Muslims
consider to have been the earliest revelations to the
prophet Muhammad but that come toward the end of the
Koran.

“If you buy a Koran and start reading it, you’re
jumping into it backwards from the way most Muslims
approach it. ... It’s as though you began reading the
Bible in the middle of the book of Kings, all these
complicated tribal rivalries and historical battles,
and that’s the stuff with the violent passages that
Glover wants to get into,” Sells said.

Most Muslims read those passages in the context of
ancient wars, not as general directives for today, he
added. “Islam, like all the other major religions, is
a religion of peace or of violence depending on who is
interpreting it, and if you look across the Muslim
world, you’ll see very different answers,” Sells said.
       
IMMEDIATE MOBILIZATION

According to Glover, the Family Policy Network learned
about the summer reading assignment in May and
immediately began casting about on Christian radio
shows for UNC freshmen willing to bring a lawsuit.
Ultimately, it chose three. Citing fear of retaliation
by the university or fellow students, they have
remained anonymous and are listed as John Doe No. 1,
John Doe No. 2 and Jane Roe — an evangelical
Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew.   

Glover said that his organization does not oppose the
teaching of Islam and that, in fact, universities
should offer such courses — as electives. He argues
that as a public-supported university, UNC has crossed
a legal line by forcing students to study a religious
belief and by assigning a book he maintains is not
neutral about a religion.

“Approaching the Qur’an” is “not a bad book, as far as
it goes,” Glover said. The real problem, he said, “is
not the sin of the author, it’s the sin of the
university, which knows this book presents nothing
controversial about Islam. ... Anybody who has read
this book and this book alone is still going to be
ignorant about why people are killing other people in
the name of Allah.”

University officials declined to comment on the
substance of the lawsuit but said they are confident
that the assignment, which has no grade attached, does
not violate the Constitution. UNC’s lawyers also asked
a judge last week to disqualify the plaintiffs because
the three students are unnamed and the Family Policy
Network has no standing to sue, as it will suffer no
harm from the reading.

“Whether this is the optimal book to teach people
about the Koran, I’m sure that’s debatable,” said
Shelton, the provost. “But it’s a place to start.”

Student body president Jennifer Daum, 21, of Pewaukee,
Wis., agrees.

“At the very least, it starts a dialogue,” Daum said.
“My feeling is that if you’re not prepared to read
ideas that are not your own and that you might
disagree with, you do not belong at an institution of
higher learning.”


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