The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was sued this summer for assigning 4,200 incoming first-years and transfers a book on the Koran as part of its First Year Book program, where students write an essay about a text and participate in a group discussion. The Family Policy Network, a conservative Christian group, filed a lawsuit against the university claiming that requiring students to read Michael Sells’s Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations was equivalent to an endorsement of the the Muslim religion and hence a violation of the First Amendment right to religious freedom. In the wake of the controversy, UNC decided to allow students who did not want to read the book to write an essay explaining their objections.
A federal court in Greensboro, N.C. ruled that the university did not violate the First Amendment, a decision upheld in an appeals court in Richmond, Va. this week, but the North Carolina House Appropriations Committee recently voted 64 to 16 to ban using public funds for UNC’s First Year Book program unless all other religions were given similar attention.
These events are disturbing for several reasons. First, having students read an interpretive text about an unfamiliar and often misunderstood religion is not tantamount to proselytization. Especially in light of recent world events, recommending, or even requiring, that university students learn more about Islam is preferable to allowing them to remain ignorant, when ignorance all too often leads to prejudice.
Second, the attempt by the North Carolina State Legislature to ignore the rulings of the federal court and inhibit academic freedom in its state’s universities sets a poor precedent. Students, teachers and researchers must retain the right to explore all aspects of human knowledge, regardless of political considerations. If the House Appropriation Committee’s decision is allowed to stand, it opens the door for state legislatures to ban any text or program that they find controversial or offensive.
Third, while there are concerns about the message of Islam in the wake of last September’s events, allowing media-fueled hearsay about Islam serves no one. Having students read a well-researched scholarly work on religion allows them to judge for themselves, rather than be influenced by any number of pundits with no expertise in Islam, but only a political ax to grind.
A college education should emphasize thinking deeply and critically about issues that affect our world, and there is no issue with a more direct bearing on our country’s current political and cultural atmosphere than the Islamic faith. Exposure to new ideas and the opportunity to interpret them is at the very core of a liberal arts education, and when we allow legislature to censure that exposure, we are heading down a very slippery slope.
