Cuckoo in Carolina

New York Times ^ | August 28, 2002 | Thomas Friedman

[Sally II]

Cuckoo in Carolina By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

he ruckus being raised by conservative Christians over the University of North Carolina's decision to ask incoming students to read a book about the Koran — to stimulate a campus debate — surely has to be one of the most embarrassing moments for America since Sept. 11.

Why? Because it exhibits such profound lack of understanding of what America is about, and it exhibits such a chilling mimicry of what the most repressive Arab Muslim states are about. Ask yourself this question: What would Osama bin Laden do if he found out that the University of Riyadh had asked incoming freshmen to read the New and Old Testaments?

He would do exactly what the book-burning opponents of this U.N.C. directive are doing right now — try to shut it down, only bin Laden wouldn't bother with the courts. It's against the law to build a church or synagogue or Buddhist temple or Hindu shrine in public in Saudi Arabia. Is that what we're trying to mimic?

As a recent letter to The Times observed, the problem with the world today is not that American students are being asked to read the Koran, it is that students in Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim lands are still not being asked to read the sacred texts of other civilizations — let alone the foundational texts of American democracy, like the Bill of Rights, the Constitution or the Federalist Papers.

The fact that they ignore such diverse texts is the source of their weakness, and the fact that we embrace them is the source of our strength. What we should be doing is driving that point home, not copying their obscurantism.

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 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.

I understand that some people feel it's not right that terrorists kill 3,000 Americans — in the name of Islam — and then we go out and make the Koran a best seller to try to figure out who they are. But that doesn't bother me as an American. 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.

The freedom of thought and the multiple cultural and political perspectives we offer in our public schools are what nurture a critical mind. And it is a critical mind that is the root of innovation, scientific inquiry and entrepreneurship.

Right after 9/11, the majority of books on Amazon.com's top 100 best-seller list were about the Middle East and Islam. But there has been no parallel upsurge in interest in American studies, no new intellectual ferment in the blinkered, monochromatic universities and madrasas of the Arab and Muslim worlds since 9/11. One is reminded of Harry Lime's famous quip in the movie "The Third Man" — that 30 years of noisy, violent churning under the Borgias in Italy produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance, while 500 years of peace, quiet and harmony in Switzerland produced the cuckoo clock.

"A monolithic framework does not create a critical mind," remarked the religious philosopher David Hartman. "Where there is only one self-evident truth, nothing ever gets challenged and no sparks of creativity ever get generated. The strength of America has always been its ability to challenge its own truths by presenting alternative possibilities. That forces you to justify your own ideas, and that competition of ideas is what creates excellence."

I would bet that Islam is taught in virtually every state university in America — and was before 9/11. I first studied Islam and Arabic at the University of Minnesota in 1971.

America will always be a strong model for how a nation thrives in the modern age, as long as our culture of curiosity, free inquiry and openness endures. And the Arab Muslim world will continue to struggle with modernity as long as 12th graders in public schools there are never challenged to read Genesis, Luke, Job and Psalms over their summer vacations.

[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.

[Overtaxed]

UNC Chancellor Defends Stance In Quran Debate
Moeser: 'Matter Of Academic Freedom'
Kamal Wallace, Staff Writer

POSTED: 6:10 p.m. EDT August 27, 2002
UPDATED: 6:18 p.m. EDT August 27, 2002

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- UNC Chancellor James Moeser defended the school's choice of a controversial book for incoming freshmen.

The book, Approaching the Quran, is at the center of the controversy. The book, which contains passages from the holy book of Islam, is a summer reading requirement for incoming freshmen. Last month, three unnamed freshmen and the Family Policy Network, a conservative Christian organization, filed a lawsuit over the assignment.

Speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, Moeser said he stands behind the choice in the name of academic freedom.

"Even if this were the wrong book, even if I totally disagreed with the faculty of Carolina about the book, I should have defended their right to choose the book as a matter of academic freedom," he said.

Moeser said the university's integrity had not been compromised by the choice.

---

I wouldn't bet the University on that, Moser...things are different in the real world.

[Deport Billary]

His child's class probably did read parts of the Bible. But the teachers will discuss what it "really" meant or analyze it as they would some sort of fairy tale.

[Deport Billary]

Orange County citizens are divorced from reality.

[Overtaxed]

Tell me about it! :) I'm only 3 miles away from them.

[Eala]

I still think those making the ruckus are missing a bet. Instead of protesting the reading, they should be publishing and circulating the portions of the Koran that were ignored by the book -- that way the students get the full picture: the entire teachings of the Koran, and how the leftwing faculty are, in effect, lying to them.

[Overtaxed]

Instead of protesting the reading, they should be publishing and circulating the portions of the Koran that were ignored by the book

That and apply to hold some Christian event on campus...and sue their butts for religious discrimmination when they're refused.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Orange County citizens are divorced from reality.

Except for a very few of us...

[demnomo]

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.

Bingo. My homeschooled son and I have read the Koran and Hadith. We studied Islam more than a year before 9/11. We also studied other world religions. At the time, we were shocked by the Islamic beliefs, but never believed that the majority of Muslims would take them literally. Islam's end-game is to conquer, via violent holy jihad, and then subjugate the entire world under a freedom-denying, barbaric 7th-Century Sharia or Islamic law.

The UNC's required-reading book (which I have recently read out of curiosity) does not deal with the consequences of Sharia, along with a lot of the other negative, violents aspects of the religion. It focuses on the earlier teachings of Mohammad...the quasi-peaceful ones that were thrown out the window by the Koran's end when an angry, vengeful Mohammad realized that the local Christians and Jews weren't buying into his prophetic gig.

[demnomo]

I still think those making the ruckus are missing a bet. Instead of protesting the reading, they should be publishing and circulating the portions of the Koran that were ignored by the book -- that way the students get the full picture: the entire teachings of the Koran, and how the leftwing faculty are, in effect, lying to them.

Excellent idea! The same tactic could be applied to the despicable NEA's plan to indoctrinate public school children with more FALSE, misleading, blame-no-one-because-it-might-make-some-people-uncomfortable garbage that they have foisted upon the nation's teachers to discuss with students on the anniversary of 9/11.

[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