August
14, 2002, 9:00 a.m. Teaching
Islam
Is that UNC
Koran class a problem?
By James Bowman
he
question of whether or not Michael Sells's book, Approaching
the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, should be required reading
for the incoming freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill has already become one for the "culture wars." Pavlovian
responses on both sides suggest that no one really wants a "debate,"
as such affairs are routinely but erroneously called. For the Left, the
normally repugnant fact that religious study of a sort is being sponsored
by a state institution is trumped by the fact that the religion belongs
to the latest enemies of the United States, a.k.a. "The Great Satan,"
and its world hegemony. For the Right, routine complaints about a too-rigid
separation of church and state have given way to a semi-bacteriological
theory of religion: that he who touches Islam will be contaminated by
the philosophy of the terror-state.
Yet
things are not so bad as either side likes to make out — and both
sides would have good points to make if there were a genuine debate. Mr.
Sells's supporters, the ACLU and the characteristically spineless university
administrators at Chapel Hill are perfectly correct in saying that it
is completely unfair of conservatives to imply that they are apologists
for terrorism just because they believe in studying Islam. But the conservatives
are also right to say that the version of Islam given in Mr. Sells's book
is bowdlerized, and many of the more bloodthirsty texts from the Koran,
particularly those to do with the slaying of infidels — by which
is intended most of those who will read these words — are silently
omitted.
The
Sells/UNC gang is right to reply that there's also a lot of stuff in the
Jewish and Christian scriptures about smiting the unbeliever that no one
(or hardly anyone) takes seriously anymore. The religion as practiced
by the vast majority of Muslims is no more violent than Christianity or
Judaism. But, reply the conservatives, the minority of Muslims who are
prepared to kill the infidels is much larger than any similar minority
of Christians or Jews. As the Wall Street Journal put it, "The
next time a terrorist cites Joshua as his rationale for murdering thousands
of innocent civilians, let us know." Besides, there is the matter
of good taste and decorum. Reading the Koran now, says Bill O'Reilly,
is like reading Mein Kampf in 1942.
That
may be a little over the top — and some might say that, on the principle
of know-thine-enemy, 1942 was just the time that a sensible man would
have chosen to read Mein Kampf. But it is a remark which suggests
the kind of cultural chauvinism that rings all the Left's Pavlovian bells
— even if it cannot be quite true that, as Mr. Sells claims, "behind
the lawsuit" being brought by Christian students at UNC "is
an old missionary claim that Islam is a religion of violence in contrast
to Christianity, a religion of peace" and that therefore, "in
effect, the plaintiffs are suing the Koran on behalf of the Bible."
Yet it would be idle to deny that at least part of the objection to being
forced to learn about Islam does seem to be based on a belief in the superiority
of Christianity.
To
that, conservatives might want to reply: What's your point? Christianity
is superior.
And
there is the nub of the matter. Mr. Sells is a professor of "comparative
religions." Neither Haverford College, where he teaches, nor the
University of North Carolina could continue to exist as academic institutions
(except in the sense that the Islamic madrassahs are academic institutions)
if they thought that it was possible to say that one religion was superior
to another. Yet their strictly neutral, "comparative-religions"
approach to the whole question is hardly one that it is reasonable to
expect from either Christians or Muslims themselves. Presumably, the believers
belonging to both faiths think that theirs is superior. If they didn't
they would be professors of comparative religion rather than practicing
believers.
The
mistake being made on both sides is to suppose that the academic study
of religions can have anything to do with influencing the kinds of things
that people are prepared to do in their name. Belief is not a matter of
studying history or theology or Biblical (or Koranic) exegesis. All these
things come later and can scarcely make sense anyway without the belief
which renders them important. But without the kind of dabbling in them
that the students of comparative religions engage in what would the "tolerance"
industry have to do? It should be remembered that the whole business began
as a kind of memorial to the events of September 11 and in the mistaken
belief that those events had something to do with intolerance of different
religions.
In
fact, we don't even know if the hijackers were believing Muslims. Certainly,
some of the things they did while living undercover in this country were
inconsistent with such belief. We also know that many of the suicide bombers
in Israel are avowedly secular in their motivations. But even if they,
or those on whom we are now making war, should claim to be Muslim "fundamentalists,"
how does learning about what to most American teenagers must appear their
bizarre religion make greater tolerance likely? The sad fact is that,
like most academic studies these days, the UNC teach-in is all for the
sake of making the teachers feel better, and more virtuous, for showing
off their own tolerance in public. And why does the state sponsor that?
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question of whether or not Michael Sells's book, 
