Posted on 08/02/2002 8:12:09 AM PDT by Overtaxed
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:55:44 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
GREENSBORO, NC -- Lawyers for the University of North Carolina are asking a judge to dismiss from a lawsuit five people who claim a requirement for new students to read a book on Islam violates their First Amendment rights.
The suit was filed last month by a Christian organization, the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, on behalf of three unnamed students and two taxpayers.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
Ditto. However, I am tempted to pick up the phone on the next fundraising campaign just so I can tell them where to go begging for money!
Yes, I saw that thread. All the more important for "our representatives" (assuming we can find any....my aren't I pessimistic today!) to take the house and senate in the GA. Let's see if "Mrs. Qatar" can make up for budget cuts.
POW! Right in the kisser! I bet the politically correct namby-pambys just about passed out.
Gotta love those Mississippi-based Christian Group Lawyers.
Huh?
The was only one nut who sued over the "under God" phrase.
Do these clowns read the newspapers?
Why? For trying give their incoming freshmen a college level education? In any case, the reading assignment is not mandatory. This is from the UNC Summer Reading Program page:
This year's reading is Approaching the Qur'án: The Early Revelations, translated and introduced by Michael Sells. Although the summer reading is required, if any students or their families are opposed to reading parts of the Qur'án because to do so is offensive to their own faith, they may choose not to read the book. These students should instead complete their one-page response on why they chose not to read the book.My take is that the students are intellectually lazy -- to lazy to read the book and too lazy to write an essay.
As for the book itself, here's an excerpted description:
Approaching the Qur'án: The Early Revelations, translated and introduced by Michael Sells, consists of thirty-five suras, or short passages from the chief holy book of Islam, that largely focus on the experience of the divine in the natural world and the principle of moral accountability in human life. Easily accessible to any college-level reader, these suras are poetic and intensely evocative, beautiful meditations, comparable in many ways to the Psalms of David and other classics of world literature. This book includes a CD with recitations in Arabic from the reading.Easy reading and informative: sounds to me like it would be pretty much apropos for freshman level humanities. In fact, it sounds downright interesting; I may try to find a copy for myself.Michael Sells, the editor and translator of Approaching the Qur'án, is a distinguished professor of religion at Haverford College. A widely published author and highly regarded expert on Islamic literature, Sells provides clear translations of the original Arabic, brief commentaries on each sura, and a concise introduction to the Qur'án's literary and historical context. Relying on this material, students and discussion leaders from all backgrounds will need no additional preparation for discussing this edition.
You might want to try sending a letter through the snail mail. Emails are impersonal. Personally sent letters carry more weight for the most part.
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