[Sally II]

Ummm..... Thomas Friedman's criticism of Conservative Christians at the University of North Carolina shows a SERIOUS lack of understanding of what the education system is about. I mean, that's just great that his daughter has several books of the Old Testament as required reading in her (could it possibly be public?) school, but I wonder if he realizes that his daughter's school is an exception to the rule in education today. For as long as I can remember there has been hostility toward Christianity in public schools... and especially in Universities. You can go to the University of Santa Cruz and find mural paintings the represent every religion... except Christianity. A yoga instructor can prosletize her Yoga religion in a school, but if Christian teachers told their classes what they believed they'd be without a job. And can someone imagine what the reaction any secular university would have if the Bible became "suggested" reading for ALL incoming freshman.... just to stir dialogue?

[nonliberal]

Mein Kampf is the #1 best seller in the Middle East. Does Friedman want incoming freshmedn reading Mein Kampf?

Oh wait, they already are. It's called the Koran.

[driftless]

Friedman also misses or ignores the point that leftist professors will use this opportunity to further delude their students. Actually the study of the world's major religions (as Camille Paglia has suggested) would probably be a very valid exercise at the college level...but not to indoctrinate students in any particular religion. I don't automatically condemn learning about the Koran (or any religion), but the past history of leftist instructors has made me leery of their motives.

[Burkeman1]

He displays an astonishing lack of understanding of the issue and like all liberals reverts to standard to form idiocy about non existent "book burning" christians. Disgraceful.

It would be nice if Friedman actually had a clue as to what some Christians and Jews are upset about in this issue. It is not that they are upset that students are assigned to read the Koran (though that would be flakey enough after 9/11) but that the text they are being required to read is not a true representation of the Koran. All the parts about slaughtering Christians and Jews and Jihad are not included in the UNC text. It is not a true picture of the Koran. It is not the Koran that Muhammed Atta read and that billions of Arabs read. For UNC to require students to read a watered down Koran that is not read by Muslems around the world is a disgrace. Tht Friedman seems totally unaware of this- just typical for him.

[SouthernFreebird]

I'd just like to know where all these people who defend this required religious reading are when it comes to Christianity in the schools?

He compares the voices of opposition to Bin Laden and the Islamic rule as a way to bop us on the head, while igoring the fact we don't want our children hoodwinked by the very religion that spawns the Bin Ladens.


And I would say that unless his children are going to private Christian school that he is lying about the required reading.

Heck, Kids aren't even allowed to mention the books of the Bible on hallowed public school property much less be required to read them.

[o_zarkman44]

The theory behind forcing students to study Islam is this: teach them our ideals so they better understand us, then they will agree with us because they will learn that to disagree with Islam is considered a death sentence. Scare the students into compliance and servitude.

The forcing of the issue by religous groups citing seperation of Church and State is the same tactic the anti-christians have been using against Christians for years. Now that it has been used against them they cry foul!! What was the issue was the mandatory reading of a selected religous material while ignoring other religions. And the state (sponsored University) cannot promote any one religion over another. I say great job people!

[Constitution Day]

NC ping!
Please FRmail me if you want to be added to or removed from this NC ping list.

[aculeus]

Smug pompous Friedman ... his self-worship is apparent everytime he's on television ... can't seem to make the connections made by the intellectually and ethically superior Dennis Prager.

QUOTE

townhall.com

Dennis Prager

August 28, 2002

UNC is confused about 9-11

Moral and intellectual confusion has become the norm at our universities, with the most recent example coming from the University of North Carolina.

In order to equip incoming freshmen with a better understanding of the Islamic terror attack of 9-11, the chancellor of the university has assigned as required summer reading a book containing the early revelations of Muhammad. "Approaching the Qur'an" contains those chapters (suras) of the Koran, assembled, translated and commented on by Haverford College professor of religion Michael Sells.

The amount of intellectual and moral confusion in this policy has eluded nearly all those who have commented on it. Defenders of the UNC policy say that it is vital that in order to understand Islamic terror, Americans must become acquainted with Islam, and how better to begin than by reading the Koran?

Let's deal with the confusion step by step:

1. On September 11, 2001, deeply religious Muslims from the Arab world, in the name of their religion, tried to murder tens of thousands of Americans, and did murder more than 3,000 completely innocent men, women and children, on airplanes, on the ground and in office buildings. Tens of millions of Muslims, largely in the Arab world, either denied that Muslims committed the acts, either attributing them to Israel and the CIA, or simply rejoicing over them.

2. There are one billion Muslims in the world, but not one authoritative Muslim organization anywhere has condemned Islamic terror generally (some have condemned 9-11 specifically). All have come out in favor Palestinian terror against Jews, and none has condemned the cult of death developed among Palestinian Muslims in which God is depicted as supplying 72 virgin women to any teenage Muslim boy who blows himself up while murdering Jews and Americans.

3. There are almost no Muslim democracies in the world; in the Arab world, there are no Muslim democracies.

4. Wherever Islamists take power, a totalitarian regime is set up, and the most primitive denials of basic human rights follow. One or more of the Islamic regimes -- Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya -- have either engaged in genocide or supported Islamic regimes that have, have forbidden all other religious expressions, have exported terror, and have relegated women to a status well beneath that of a woman in 10th century Europe. They are, with the exception of North Korea, the cruelest places on earth.

Now, exactly how will reading "Approaching the Qur'an," with its selected lovely suras from the Koran, explain any of the above?

It won't. Such readings are in fact irrelevant to any of the above, including understanding 9-11.

So, the intent of the University of North Carolina assigned summer reading is not at all what it purports to be. It was not chosen to help students understand 9-11; it was chosen to help students not to understand 9-11 by deflecting their attention from the contemporary Arab Islamic reality and onto selected ancient Islamic texts that bear no connection to that reality.

It would be as if after Hitler and Nazism rose to power and began subjugating countries and slaughtering Jews, some American university assigned readings from Goethe and required listening to Bach so that their students could better understand Nazi Germany. To understand Nazi terror, you study the hate-filled texts of Nazism, not the beautiful novels of German writers or Bach's cello suites. To understand Islamic terror, you study the hate-filled texts that are published daily throughout the Arab world; you assign the hate-filled sermons that are preached every week in the Muslim mosques in the Middle East and Iran.

But none of that will be noted, let alone assigned, at the University of North Carolina or any other major American university one year after 9-11. Our universities are not really interested in having their students understand America's enemies. They are, incredibly, more interested in having their students sympathize with them.


Contact Dennis Prager | Read his biography


©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

townhall.com


END QUOTE

[js1138]

It would bother me, though, if I were Muslim. It would bother me that people have been awakened to my faith by an outrageously destructive act perpetrated in its name — rather than by some compelling attractiveness of countries that claim to reflect Islam's vision of a just society.

From a thread a couple of weeks ago: There are millions of muslims living in Scandinavia; there are four Scandinavians living in the middle east.

[Gritty]

The notion that U.N.C. violated constitutional prohibitions against state-sponsored religion — by asking freshmen to simply read a book, "Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations" — has been rightly dismissed by the courts as nonsense.

I'll bet if UNC had required, not "asked" (as the NYT so tenderly - and falsely - asserts) incoming freshmen to read books of the Bible, they would be in enraged dudgeon about fundamentalist "book-burners" and The Hallowed Constitutional Principle Of Separation Of Church And State!

With the New York Slimes and it's sychophantic writers, you just can't win unless you're a born-again lefty or Islamic anti-American sympathizer. All others will be uncompromisingly trashed in their worthless newspaper, which hides the real news and substitutes virulent tomes promoting their socialist political and social agendas.

[glory]

I think this line sums up this person's ideological viewpoint in a nutshell:

I understand that *SOME* people feel it's not right that terrorists kill 3,000 Americans

[glory]

Don't worry, it has been my pleasure to recently find out that God has not been banished out of all the schools. I don't want to ruin it for us here by naming where I am specifically, but our friend is a coach who says prayers before games with his students all the time and as you walk out of thier locker room, dh told me they have a sign that reads with God all things are possible. There has not been a complaint *yet*.

[Windom Earle]

UNC is simply not responsive to what the majority of North Carolinian's think on this issue.

It should be, because this is a taxpayer funded public university. I, for one, am sick and tired of my tax money being used to fund and further some leftist agenda.

[marron]

I discovered the other day that my 17-year-old daughter, who is a 12th grader at a Washington-area public high school, was reading Genesis, Luke, Psalms and Job as part of a summer assignment for her A.P. English class. I'm glad. I wish she had also been assigned the Koran.

This seems rather unlikely.

Nevertheless, this is the point. There is no way to understand Western Civilization, or Western history, or even Western literature without a reasonably extensive study of Biblical scripture.

This is true whether one is Christian, Jewish, or a non-believer. This is entirely apart from any study one might do as part of one's religious devotions. Anyone, Christian, Jew, atheist, or otherwise, must have an understanding of both New and Old Testament scripture or you do not understand Western Culture.

A study of the Koran is likewise legitimate and important. The objection is that the UNC is demanding a sympathetic study of the Koran while either rejecting any study of the Bible, or banishing its study to some "religious studies" Siberia.

There would be nothing wrong with likewise requiring some study of Bhuddist and Hindu texts. But not in an explicitly anti-Christian or anti-Jewish context, as is the norm in current US academia.