Yup, I heard this on the news today (in the context of a lawsuit.) Apparently UNC at Chapel Hill is trying to force students (via requirement to graduate) to take a course studying the Quran. A lawsuit is in the works to prevent it, the argument being: to force students to take this course is crossing the line between Church and State (UNC being a public school.) I for one, completely agree. It has nothing to do with the “Islam” specifically, I’d feel the same way if they required a course in Christianity or Judaism or any religion. How can UNC get away with such a thing??? Who’s bright idea was it to even attempt this stunt?
Well, I truly cannot imagine a similar requirement at a public institution being in place for, say, the Bible, so I’m with you. It would be helpful is anyone had a cite for more information? I haven’t seen this anywhere.
This was discussed at length here a few weeks ago.
You are misinformed about most of the facts - it’s not studying the Koran, it’s a book about Islam. It’s simply a set book, as there have been many other set books through the years. The lawsuit was raised by “Joe Glover, president of the Virginia-based Family Policy Network, a conservative Christian group”, who was actively seeking a plaintiff.
There was a thread about this over [url’“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=126625&highlight=ignorance”]here.
However, the students were only supposed to read a book about Islam, there certainly wasn’t a complete course dedicated to it, and the subject matter of the book was in line with previous assignments.
You can still argue against it by all means, but please get your facts straight first.
D’oh! Eh, I’d fix my link, but jjimm beat me to it anyway.
I would still feel a bit odd about this. If UNC is a public school, then is this a sole class or a part of some “modern studies” course?
Many apologies, I was simply relaying what I had heard on the news this morning. Figures that they’d get the details wrong. It’s not the first time. I had not seen the thread as I haven’t been to the Pit in quite a while.
But even still, to require students study a book about a religious text still crosses the line. If I were a teacher at a public school and I made my class read Billy Grahams thoughts on the Bible (I’m sure he’s written a book like that) I’d be thrown out on my ass.
It doesn’t cross any line. Studying religion in order to understand the phenomenon of the religion is a perfectly valid academic activity. One sixth of all the people in the world are Muslims; understanding the religion is a rather important thing if you want to understand world history and current events. I would say the same of the Bible. Hell, I was made to study Greek mythology in ninth grade (in a Catholic school, no less.)
The students aren’t being taught religion in the sense of “this is the truth about God.” That would be a no-no.
So would you have the same opinion if the required reading was written by a die hard southern baptist discussing Christianity?
Hmm.
There’s a huge gulf between learning a religion and learning about a religion.
I’m not American, but I would have thought that it was impossible to come to any very deep understanding of modern American society and culture, or American history, or American literature, without knowing something about Christianity. It would astonish (and appal) me if American public schools were forbidden to tell students anything about Christianity, or to require students to learn about Christianity.
And if American schools can teach about Christianity, they can teach about other religions also. Indeed, they must do so, if they take at all seriously the objective of enabling students to understand something of America’s position in the world today.
It’s a huge jump from a prohibition on the establishment of religion to a rule requiring public schools to avoid any study of an enormous social, cultural and historical force such as religion. And in my opinion it’s not a jump any enlightened society should wish to make.
Well, it’s a fair question, but for the record it’s not necessarily an analogy with the UNC situation. The book in the UNC case was written by Professor Michael A. Sells, who holds a chair in Comparative Religion, and who has a string of publications, mostly about Islam but also about Christianity and Judaism. He did his undergraduate work at Gonzaga University, which is a Catholic college, and his postgraduate work at Chicago. I don’t know whether he’s a Muslim at all, but there’s nothing in his CV to suggest that he is, and certainly no reason to suppose that he is a “die hard” follower of any religion.
Damn news channel (FOX NEWS, not O’Reilly). They reported that the book was written by a muslim and that the book specifically exluded any inflamatory text (such as the passages used by terrorists to justify their suicide bombings.)
I’ll reframe from commenting further until I have an unbiased opinion of the work, but the news this morning certainly didn’t help. I still think it’s dangerous to require all students to study a religion, maybe the religious impact, but it was my understanding that the book went over specific passages of the Koran. But then again as we’ve seen earlier my source is flawed. It’s true that my world history classes went over Christian impacts, such as the Crusades and even the founding of this country, but never were passages read from the bible. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what FOX said.
CV?
You use Fox as a news channel?
= curriculum vitae = resume
Don’t public colleges have religious studies departments?
I don’t understand your objection.
A. UNC sets a book that deals with some important issue to be read by incoming freshmen every year. This year it’s a book that introduces students to Islam, next year, it’s will be something else.
B. Your comparison to a book of Christian evangelism is nonsensical. Sell’s book is a discussion of the meaning and various interpretations of contained in the Qu’ran, to help the reader gain insight into the major religious themes of Islam.
C. A book on the themes on Christianity is superfluous–the USA is overwhelmingly populated by Christians, most Americans have at least a passing familiarity with the themes and writings of Christianity, and the religious right ensures that the message of radical Christians has a loud voice. Islam, however, is largely an unknown, alien, and scary faith to the vast majority of Americans, and, given the events of last September, the message of Islam, a faith adhered to by 1/4 of the world’s population, ought to be understood with greater clarity by any adult who wishes to engage in world affairs.
D. A university is the ideal place for students to grapple with new and often intimidating ideas. If students want to be insulated from education, they ought to just skip school and not waste their parents’ money.
What really bums me is that not one of the Gobear-haters here, like TwistofFate, will ever read this post.
The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” and this also applies to states through the incorporation doctrine. It does not say “Government can not mention religion or anything related to religion.”
The Establishment Clause means that the government can not establish a state religion or force people to subscribe to one set of beliefs. The UNC policy does neither. Learning about a religion simply isn’t establishment. UNC is not saying Islam is the one true religion and is not even saying it’s better than any other religion. What they are saying is that it is important to a liberal education for students to understand the world. Given the large number of Muslims in the world, UNC has determined that understanding Islam is necessary to understanding the world. That’s perhaps a debatable academic decision, but it’s not the establishment of a religion.
If requiring some knowledge of a religion violates the First Amendment then we’re doomed. The government couldn’t require its Middle East analysts to do any research or reading on Islam or any other religion. I submit to you that it’s exceedingly difficult to truly understand many of the world’s hot spots without an understanding of religion (for a non-Islam example, take Northern Ireland.)
The book:
It was published in 1999, so it was not written in the context of the 9/11 attacks.
It does contain extracts from the Qu’uran. They “largely focus on the experience of the divine in the natural world and the principle of moral accountability in human life”. In light of that, I suppose you could say that it “specifically exluded any inflamatory text (such as the passages used by terrorists to justify their suicide bombings.)”, but only in the sense that a commentary on the Psalms “specifically excludes” biblical texts dealing with the life of Christ, or a book about the Bill of Rights “specifically excludes” other provisions of the US Constitution.
I don’t think the issue of passages from the bible/the Qu’uran changes matters. The idea that you can leqwrn about religion in a public school from secondary texts but not from primary texts is just as bad as the idea that you cannot learn about religion at all.
The CV:
Thanks. My fear isn’t about learning about Islam. I’ve took two comparative religion courses when I was in college, I had no objection then because I knew what I was getting into before hand. My fear is that schools will use UNC’s example and include similar works (Bible for ex.) I know this is a hypothetical, but still, what if Billy Graham wrote a book discussing Christianity using direct quotes from the KJV (or which ever he uses) for example, John 3:16?
What about a book discussing Atheism?
I don’t know enough about the specifics of the UNC course or the book in question to judge whether either is worthwhile. So, I’ll stick to generalities here.
If the UNC administration’s attitude is, “Islam is an important force in the world today, and a well-educated American student needs to know what it’s about,” I think that’s a perfectly reasonable and valid point. I can see where it would be beneficial for students to read from the Koran, and to learn a lot more Middle Eastern history.
The one problem I have is that, from the little I’ve read and heard, the UNC administration is saying MORE than that. It appears (and I could be mistaken here) that the administration is implying, “We’re afraid that ignorant American yahoos are going to attack Arab and Asian students, so we have to create a course to teach them how WONDERFUL Islam is, and how admirable Moslems are.”
IF that’s the tone the course is taking (again, I don’t know that it is), then it amounts to propaganda, rather than to education. Even at most Christian or Catholic colleges, history courses don’t gloss over the sins of Christians throughout history. A history course on Islam that glosses over Islam’s sins is, at best, a waste of time.
Billy Graham doesn’t have the same qualifications as a professor of comparative religion, so the situation’s a little different. The key is that his book would most certainly be evangelical in nature, and that’s not OK. A book about atheism would be no problem, so long as it’s an academic overview and not a persuasive work.