Suit filed against UNC seeks to block required reading of Islamic book

You know, I thought the point of going to a university, at least at some level, was to learn about things you didn't already know. And that most universities had requirements you had to fulfill. But apparently, requiring people to learn about other cultures and religions is unconstitutional. I suppose one might find out that other people think about things in different ways if one read books and such about them, and that would be bad bad bad bad BAD. Clearly, it's better to just sail on in ignorance.

It turns out that CNN and AP (it's a wire release) are severely underreporting what precisely Family Policy Network's objection to the text is. To quote their lovely press release: The leader of a national pro-family organization and alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) today criticized the school for requiring incoming freshmen to read passages from the Koran and attend a discussion on Islam. Terry Moffitt, Chairman of Family Policy Network, said UNC is violating the separation of church and state by forcing students to study Islam without offering an alternative course for those who find being forced to read the Koran offensive. ... "Forcing students to read and discuss the Koran is wrong, especially since there is no option for studying a different religion in its place. As a state university, UNC should never be allowed to demonstrate this kind of prejudice toward any particular religion." (The press release is at http://www.familypolicy.net/nc/unc-islam.shtml, if you care to look it up; I would just as soon not show up in their referrer logs, thank you kindly. However, I do recommend that people read their mission statement. It's vastly entertaining.)

So apparently, the University of North Carolina -- in the heart of the Baptist Bible Belt, mind you -- is being accused of proselytizing for Islam, and persecuting Christians by not requiring people to read "an equivalent text" on other religions.

Good grief. What utter and absolute YAHOOS.

In any event, I daresay that the Family Policy Network representatives will be dismissed from the lawsuit for lack of standing; no idea what will happen to the rest of it. Although it would be nice if the judge would say something like, "You go to university to learn, so LEARN SOMETHING, YOU IDIOTS." It's a federal lawsuit, and not a state one -- a tactical error, that -- so it's entirely possible that the judge could do just that. One can but hope.

(Interesting little side note: In looking up the group that CNN mistakenly calls the "Family Police Network", I discovered an interesting feature in Google. It used to just highlight typing errors by saying, "Did you mean correctly typed word?" Now, for about a tenth of a second, you get the page of your results with that line, and then it does the search for you ANYWAY. Um ... Sometimes I don't mean correctly typed word and in any event I'd just as soon do my own searches, thank you kindly.)

While I share your annoyance at this Google feature, it should be noted that it does this only when the search term you provide has no matches. If there's even one match under the original spelling, they'll show you that, not their best guess at what you meant.