Required Reading on Koran Provokes Bitter Battle

In the 1920s, the North Carolina Legislature banned the teaching of evolution in public schools. In the 1960s, state lawmakers banned Communists from speaking on state-supported campuses. Last week, a state House committee moved in to prevent the University of North Carolina from requiring incoming freshmen to read a book on the Koran--Islam’s Scriptures.

The action was the latest in what has been a growing controversy since the university decided to require 4,200 new students to read a book called “Approaching the Qu’ran: The Early Revelations,” and to discuss it at a two-hour orientation session next week.

Radio talk shows are abuzz. The major TV networks have chimed in.

And last month, the requirement that students read the book by Michael Sells, a Haverford College professor of comparative religions, led to a suit by a conservative Christian group against the university in federal court on behalf of three unidentified UNC-Chapel Hill freshmen.

The lawsuit contended that the students’ 1st Amendment right to religious freedom was being violated. But on Thursday, a federal court refused to intervene, allowing the university to proceed with the orientation, in which students will meet to talk about the book in groups of 20, led by 180 faculty members, administrators and staff members.

This is not the first time the university has required incoming freshman to read a book. Two years ago, freshmen were required to read a book about the lingering effects of the Civil War. Last year, they read about a Hmong immigrant’s struggle with epilepsy and American medicine.

The choice of this year’s book was occasioned by the events of Sept. 11. Robert G. Kirkpatrick, a professor of English at UNC-Chapel Hill who headed the committee that selected the book, said Sells’ book had been chosen because it presented “in relatively short space some fundamental but unfamiliar information in an intellectually challenging and interesting way; it did not require a vast body of previous knowledge ... and it was certain to provoke lively discussion.”

Joe Glover, the president of the Virginia-based Family Policy Network, which sued the university, said the reading--which includes 35 suras, or passages, from the Koran and a CD with a collection of recitations in the original Arabic--amounts to an exercise of religion. “The question is whether they’re indoctrinating students,” Glover said. “The answer is yes. If you want to know Islamic doctrine, that’s indoctrination.”

Glover’s arguments reached state legislators, who said that teaching about Islam undermines national unity in a time when the United States is at war. Legislators said they had heard from people across the state who said they were offended by the choice of the book.

“If you stop and think about what 9/11 meant to this country--homeland security, guards everywhere,” said Republican state Rep. Wayne Sexton. “Just think of what it costs to protect ourselves from this faction, and here we are promoting it.”

In its action last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted 64 to 16 to deny public funding for the program unless all other religions are offered in “an equal or incremental way.” The debate was heated.

Everywhere, it seemed, people were wondering whether the required reading amounted to a violation of the 1st Amendment because it required students to read Scripture. But several scholars rejected that idea and suggested that it rests on a misunderstanding of court rulings on 1st Amendment issues.

When the Supreme Court banned prayer and devotional readings from public schools in 1962 and 1963, it added a reminder that the study of the Bible or religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, was not only permissible, but part of a broad-based education.

“There’s still a good deal of misunderstanding of the court’s ruling,” said Warren A. Nord, director of the Program in Humanities and Human Values at UNC-Chapel Hill and an expert on the teaching of religion in American education. “Probably the court ruling has a chilling effect on schools and institutions. But if it has a chilling effect, it also had a legitimizing effect on higher education.”

In a concession to opponents, the university is allowing students who do not want to read the book, because it offends their religion, the option of writing an essay explaining their objections based on their faith.

But William Van Alstyne, a professor of constitutional law at Duke University, said the university does not need to provide an alternative. The question is not whether the university can require that the book be taught (he thinks it can) but rather how it is taught. As long as the teachers approach the book with a critical distance, there is nothing unconstitutional about it, he said.

“My impression is that, assuming the material is dealt with academic detachment, it’s very doubtful there’s anything to this,” Van Alstyne said.

Teaching with academic detachment means that students can’t be told what to think or believe; they can’t be told what’s right or wrong.

But they can be taught what Islam teaches--just as they can be taught what the Declaration of Independence or the Communist Manifesto says.

That hasn’t satisfied conservative Christian groups, many of whom believe that their faith has been ignored.

“Many conservative Christians look at the curriculum and don’t see their faith treated seriously,” said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at The First Amendment Center, in Arlington, Va.

“The resentment comes out at times like this,” he said. “They say, ‘This is typical. We’re always excluded. You won’t assign the New Testament, but here you are assigning the Koran.’ ”

In this sense, the fight over the assigned reading is really not about Islam as much as it is part of culture wars.

Many Christians believe that their faith has been forcefully removed from the public square and they don’t want to see another take its place.

Glover admitted as much.

“Taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for religious indoctrination they don’t believe in,” Glover said.

“The majority of Americans find it offensive to teach about Islam,” he said.