[Reader-list] Varadarajan poison

[William Mazzarella]

Dear all, and further to Yasir's posting -

You might be interested in the following declaration by my friend Jeremy 
Walton at NYU

Dear friends,

There is something of a controversy and scandal brewing here at NYU that 
I thought might interest you. A professor in the business school, one 
Tunku Varadarajan, writes a weekly column for Forbes; this week, he 
wrote about the tragic events at Fort Hood, coining the phrase "Going 
Muslim" in analogy to the American idiom "Going Postal". You'll find a 
link to his noxious comments below, along with a letter that I have 
written in response to the president of NYU and the dean of the business 
school. I'd be curious to learns your thoughts...

Best,
Jeremy



http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/08/fort-hood-nidal-malik-hasan-muslims-opinions-columnists-tunku-varadarajan.html

Dear Dean Cooley and President Sexton,

I regret having to write to you in this context, but as a member of 
NYU’s Religious Studies Program, it is my obligation to condemn, in the 
strongest language possible, Professor Tunku Varadarajan’s recent column 
in Forbes (9 November) on the tragedy at Fort Hood earlier this week. As 
you no doubt know by now, Professor Varadarajan has coined the 
unfortunate, chauvinistic phrase “Going Muslim” to describe the actions 
of Major Nidal Malik Hasan and to insinuate viciously that any American 
Muslim might harbor a similar, incipient tendency to violence. This is 
nothing short of hate speech, and it contradicts the ideals of NYU as an 
institution in every respect. In my current undergraduate course, “What 
is Islam?”, I devote significant class time and conversation to 
disabusing students of the all-too-prevalent Fox News ideology of Islam 
as necessarily anti-democratic and, in Professor Varadarajan’s own 
vitriolic words, “founded on bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels a
nd an obligation for piety that is more extensive than in other 
schemes.” While it is not the role of scholars of religion to define the 
beliefs and practices that they study and teach, it is nevertheless 
eminently clear to even the most casual student of Islam that such an 
exaggerated, one-sided caricature of Muslims bears little relationship 
to the historical and contemporary diversity of the tradition. It is 
deeply frustrating that a fellow colleague can so glibly undermine the 
sincere efforts on the part of the many faculty members at NYU committed 
to the serious study of Islam, and in such a public venue. This is 
especially the case given that Professor Varadarajan lists his NYU 
credentials first in his biographical blurb at the bottom of the piece, 
thereby directly implicating the university in his intolerance. In order 
to justify his demagoguery, Professor Varadarajan claims to be a lone 
warrior in a battle against ‘political correctness’. Do not be misled—his st
atements not only defy the political sensibility of our university as a 
whole, they also militate against its aspiration to balanced, thorough 
and impartial intellectual inquiry. I urge you to repudiate his remarks.

Sincerely,