UNC changes assignment for students offended by book on Islam

oh lets see its a false book, a false religion and more cult like. Islam is the enemy of America, oh liberal commie teacher! I don't need no stinking page to tell you this either.

This Pisses Me Off To Know End.........., Let The Lawsuits Begin......

I think this is fine as long as students will stand up and make their objections known. The students should however base their objections not on religous reasons but on Constitutional reasons. This would be an excellent opportunity to stand up in front of class and rip the school a new one.

Why do they keep trying to tell US about Islam?
Please see the original: "Will the Real Islam please stand UP!"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/548001/posts

"To be educated and not have a clue about what that means, then we have a ways to go."

Which is precisely the aim of this book, which sugar coats islam. I could understand a straight translation of the literal text, then students could consider, for example, whether a verse such as the following could qualify as remotely "religious" or is jingoism from an expansionist cult:

"Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low."

editorial commentary

Will The Real Islam
Please Stand Up?

Stop telling me about Islam. Shouldn't the media and talk shows hosts really be instructing 'wayward' Muslims and their followers who have 'hijacked' Islam about the true meaning of the Koran and Islam. I really don't care about their religion. Tell them about their religion! Just tell the Muslims who have their Koran and the Prophets' message all wrong that they have it backwards and inside out. They seem to be the ones who need to understand the 'true' meaning of the Koran and Islam. by Van Jenerette, Major, U.S. Army(ret) Ph.D. Candidate, University of South Carolina Monday, October 15, 2001

I really don't give a rat's explicit about Islam.
...Tell the Muslim's who have hijacked Islam about their religion!

Why can't I turn on the television or read a newspaper or magazine without being bombarded by some instruction from the media on how I should 'understand' Islam? Thanks, but no thanks. I really don't give a rat's explicit about Islam. I just don't like Americans being killed by anyone - and I like it even less when someone comes into my country to do the killing. I don't care to hear any reason this or excuse that or please understand their anger explanations. I just want to hang the people who did it and never let anyone think they can do it again. Not here. I live here.

Anyway, it's been over a month since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and there seems to be hundreds of TV talk-show hosts, news people, Islamic experts, roaming Imams, and Muslim clerics who keep telling me how I should get aquatinted with the 'real' Muslim world of the Koran, Hadith and the Sunna and how these terrorist guys who pulled off the 9/11 attacks don't really represent the actual Islamic faith or the teachings of the prophet.

If this is true, why should I be the target audience on what 'true' Islam really is? I didn't crash a plane in to the WTC, and I didn't send my children out into the streets to cheer the deaths of thousands of innocent people. If I have it right, all the people who did this were Muslims. Correct?

Shouldn't the media and talk show hosts really be instructing these 'wayward' Muslims and their followers who have 'hijacked' Islam about the true meaning of the Koran and Islam? I mean I already know what they did was wrong as do most honest American's, so why are you telling me? I don't really care about their religion. Tell them about their religion!

Yes, tell the Muslims. Now there's a thought, just tell the Muslims who have their Koran and the Prophet's message all wrong - that they have it backwards and inside out. To me, they seem to be the ones who need to understand the 'true' meaning of the Koran and Islam. After all; according to the television 'experts', Islam means peace, not surrender or submission as I've read in Arabic.

See, at this point as an outsider, I really don't know who has the Koran right - the Islamic Fundamentalist or the Islamic Traditionalist - the Sunni or the Shii Muslims, the Wahabis and who ever else is involved, including an assortment of Islamic terrorists themselves. I've heard so much talk from the experts that even Jihad is beginning to sound like a cross between a personal love fest or a pretty violent and murderous enterprise depending on who you are listening to at the time.

So please, to all the media types and so-called Islamic experts - stop giving me your line on how these guys have hijacked a religion and just have the guts to tell Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Taliban and other Muslims who agree with them, that they have the Koran and the Prophet Mohammad all wrong. Period.

Like it or not, in the big picture there seems to be no shortage of Muslims who agree with Bin Laden and other Terrorism Inc. members, et. al. But, even worse is the fact that they live all over the world and there are millions of them! From, China to Chechnya, to Indonesia, to the Philippians, back to India, into Saudi Arabia, south to Nigeria and about 50 other places you might not want to visit. To top it off, they come in a variety pack of all races and colors - brown, white, black, blue-eyed; black hair, beards, turbans, suits and ties. Wow! You've got to wonder; which Koran are these guys reading? I mean, someone has to have the Koran right and someone else has to have it wrong! Right?

So many Muslims today make it sound like there are two versions of the Koran floating around out there. If so, what is the difference between the Koran that the Terrorists are reading, and the Koran that the rest of the Muslim world is reading? Is there an Original Koran and Revised Koran? If so, who is reading which version? Why is there an absence of direct condemnation and action targeted at millions of wayward Muslims who follow the terrorists? Why is there no overt and highly visible attempt to re-educate error-laden-believers to the 'true' message of Islam and the Prophet Mohhamad? I'm confused.

This leads to some pretty difficult questions that I would like some brave souls or the members of the media to ask some Muslim leaders or other Islamic experts and try to get some straight answers:

#1) Why is there such a huge effort to convince Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims that Islam is a peaceful, tolerant, kind, respectful religion, but there is no such direct effort to convey the same messages into the Mosques and the Arab Muslim world; especially to those Muslims in Gaza, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Tajikistan, the West Bank, etc.? In the same breath, why are Christian churches, Christian worship and Christian preaching banned in so many Islamic nations if Islam is so tolerant of all faiths?

#2) Where are the Muslim world's media television, talk-show hosts', news people, Islamic experts' and roaming Imams' and clerics' voices with the message that people should not listen to Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other Muslims who use terrorism. Why aren't they saying that the terrorist interpretations of the Koran and the Prophet's teachings are all wrong?

#3) If the Terrorists and the Islamic Fundamentalists have 'hijacked' Islam to further their own agenda and are not following the Koran; why haven't the clerics and Imams issued a fatwa (religious decree) in full view of Muslims everywhere; as set forth in Islamic law and the Koran, for those who have decried the 'true' faith and edicts of Islam? Does anyone remember the author Salman Rushdie? They didn't waste anytime putting a price on his head and all he did is write a book that broke Islamic Law.

#4) Why hasn't the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC); who represents nearly one-fifth of the world's population, named Bin laden directly and condemned him and other terrorist organizations as apostates to the Muslim Religion? Better yet, if in truth Islam is a religion that prohibits the murder and killing of the innocent, why haven't Muslims everywhere; including the OIC, condemned the bombing of Disco's, Pizzeria's, or the killing of civilians and of school children in Israel?

#5) If Jihad, by definition does not include the concept of a violent 'Holy War', why do so many Islamic clerics and followers of the Muslim religion keep using it for justification of their killing of other people of other faiths or nations? Can millions of readers of the Koran have it that wrong?

#6) Pardon my ignorance of the Koran, but if a Catholic Priest did a 'such-and-such' terrible deed, the Bishops, the Cardinals, and the Pope would all condemn the actions and excommunicate the offender. Why is there no such action against the terrorists who (according to all the Islamic clergy and American and Muslim experts who are 'educating' the American public to Islam) have violated the Koran?

#7) Finally, can the Muslims have it both ways? Either the Koran is specific or it is not. Either the plethora of Islamic terrorists organizations are following the literal edicts of the Koran and the Sunan, or they are apostates that must be destroyed by other Muslims with even more vengeance - that which is extended to non-believers. Which way is it?

I would really like some direct and specific answers. I don't want to hear history about the Crusades, or the U.S. foreign policy crap, or the rage of Muslims, or the Palestinians claims to the same lands as the Israelis, or comparisons to Christianity and Judaism, or stories of poverty or hunger, or the CIA, or other 'look-behind-you' and 'blame-the-victim' excuses. Most of what has been said in the media has been either pure bull or a lesser mix of lies and rumors. At this point, the majority of Americans don't want to hear excuses. We want action. Save the excuses for a more Politically Correct time period and a more gullible audience.

Not that it matters, but I'm still not sure if I'm considered a non-believer that Muslims should live in peace with or if I am an infidel that should be killed for my corrupt life style, or my religious belief of Jesus Christ and the trinity of God. I need to have the 'real' Islam please stand up.

I suppose for the time being we are stuck and must consider that there are but two possibilities: in the least, either the majority of Muslims aquiecese to the 'hijacking' of their religion, or at worst, they give tacit approval to the murderous actions the Islamic terrorists have done in the name of Allah.

POST SCRIPT Note:

Before the 11th of September, I really didn't care what Islam was all about. Actually I didn't give a rat's a#@!; it was just another religion with it's share of contradictions and eccentric notions. Outside of some studies of the Koran and the Sunan while at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, I never gave Islam much thought. In that case, I opened the book on this most 'interesting' religion only when confronted by some Muslim Officers from Arab countries who tried to convince me about the rightousnous of 'Honor Killing' for wayward daughters at the hands of their own families. A pretty chilling concept for a American father with six children. At least in their Muslim world my sons were safe. Small comfort - four of my children are girls. According to them, the female population of America would dramatically decrease; but improve, overnight once we 'saw the light.' Whew. That's a real scary thought.

About the Writer....

Van Jenerette is a Senior Policy adivisor to U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, 1st Congressional District, South Carolina. He served as a Congressional Staff Assistant to U.S. Rep. Arthur Ravenel, Jr., 1st Congressional District, South Carolina from 1992 to 1994 and was a candidate for the 1st District Congressional seat in the 2000 election. Jenerette is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of South Carolina, where he has also taught Sociology. Van presently teaches Political Science and Sociology as a full time faculty member at Southeastern Community College, and he teaches Social Theory at Coastal Carolina University. He is a U.S. Army veteran; he has studied five languages and has lived in three foreign countries and is the father of six children.

Jenerette is married to Katherine Schmidt of Newport News, Virginia who served with the US Army in Operation Desert Storm and now teaches American History and Western Civilization.

www.jenerette.com

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I've got no problems with anyone wanting to understand a different religion and culture. I have difficulty with someone forcing another to defend their own religion or to learn a one-sided perspective of another religion.

This makes little sense. How can you do an adequate critique without reading the book. You can object to Islam but not to the book if you see what I mean.

but those who don't will have to write a one-page paper about their religious objections to the book.

They can print out a full page image and turn it in. Something like this one:

Make it a poster and put it on the commie teachers wall!

but those who don't will have to write a one-page paper about their religious objections to the book.

Ping to you. Looks like the folks over at Orange County Community Tech are having second thoughts about forcing the 'religion of peace' on incoming freshman. I still don't like this solution though. Makes it very easy to label the 'troublemakers'(read those who are conservative or Christian) for their freshman professors

Here's a solution I often pass along to prospective students at Harvard: DON'T GO THERE. There are plenty of less PC friendly colleges and universities to choose from, and the fact that this touchy-feely bullshit course is REQUIRED at UNC-CH leads me to believe that it is lacking in important courses of study.

I would agree that it is fine except for one fact; it is REQUIRED, or in the parlance of academia, a "Core Curriculum" course. The subject matter is clearly not "Core Curriculum" material except in the minds of university administrative nabobs more interested in "sensitivity" and "diversity" than they are in providing a quality education.

If these academic elitists want to shovel this crap down students' throats, let them apply for a university job in Qatar or Bahrain, where people are more willing to be brainwashed....

My religious opposition to Islam.

1. Muslims are homophobes (they execute them)

2. Muslims hate women (sort of self explanatory)

3. Muslims are against abortion ( yeah ain't that somethin)

Now, Mr. or Ms. Liberal pointy head, elitist left wing, professor since you and I share the same religion, humanism, why do you want me to know about Islam. You go ballistic when Christians are said to be 1 & 2 & 3 above, when are we going to read a book about that faith?

That quote from the article is different than this quote from the same article:

The new option makes the situation worse by requiring objectors to defend their religious beliefs in class, critics said.

I wonder which is it? religious objections to the book ? or defending a religious belief ?
How do I write a paper about religious objections to the book unless I've read the book ?
Under what circumstances anywhere must I defend my religious beliefs ?

To UNC: First thing to do when you are in a hole is: stop digging !

If someone wants to take a comparative religions class, I see no problem with the Koran being a part of it .... when I was in college I took a class on Eastern religions that included a study of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc. and found it quite interesting.

But such a course, with such readings, should be elective, not compulsory.

Imagine the outrage if all incoming freshmen were required to read the 4 Gospels of the Holy Bible ..... or even segments of the Old Testament!!!

Can one be truly educated without being familiar with the history of the Old Testament? .... or the Psalms? ...... or the writings of the Prophets? Those questions are every bit as legitimate as the supposition of the professor that one is not truly educated without being familiar with the Koran.

All the ridiculous arguments about separation of church and state only seem to apply if the "church" part of that is Judeo-Christian.

So now instead of becoming Jihadists they'll all become good little commies?

The Quran is a text of central importance to a billion people....

If that's the criteria then they should be forcing students to read and study the Bible too....it's of central importance to far more than a billion people.

These educated fools are as transparent as Saran Wrap.

Excellent writing. Thanks for the post.