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Appeals court won't bar students from reading and discussing book about Qur'an
Just hours before 4,200 freshmen and transfer students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were scheduled to discuss a book about the Qur'an that university officials assigned over the summer, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an injunction that would have stopped it.

Three anonymous freshman and the conservative Christian Family Policy Network had sued the school over its assignment of Michael Sells's Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, saying it amounted to religious indoctrination.

The organization's main beef wasn't necessarily that the college was informing students about Islam, but that it wasn't informing them about Islam's violent side. "We do not believe the university is trying to indoctrinate in the sense of strict proselytizing," said the students' chief lawyer. "The goal is not to convert them to Islam but to coerce them into believing a positive view of the religion."

A lower federal judge had denied an injunction on Thursday, rejecting the organization's claim that the assignment infringed on religious freedom. He pointed out that the school offered students the option not to read the book (and instead write a one-page response about why they didn't). Furthermore, no grades are given at the "required" seminars where the book was to be discussed by the freshmen—faculty don't even take attendance, and last year only about half the students showed up. "In other words, a student who elects not to read the book is not penalized in any way," said Judge N. Carlton Tilley Jr.

After that ruling, Family Policy Network president Joe Glover called it a victory. "The judge said there is no required reading, there's no requirement to attend Monday and there's no requirement for students to reveal their innermost religious thoughts," he told The News & Observer of Raleigh. "I would submit to you that everything has changed. This is one of those rare instances where a loss is actually a great victory."

The American Family Association didn't see it that way, and its Center for Law and Policy appealed the case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Glover was similarly upbeat about today's ruling. "Just about everyone has learned something new as a result of this controversy," he says in a statement on the organization's website. "Taxpayers and legislators learned educrats think no one should hold them accountable. UNC administrators learned religious instruction can't be required. And millions of Americans have learned there's a dark side to Islam that left-wing liberals would rather hide from everyone else."

Many of the students, however, are already tired of the debate—even before the official discussions begin at 1 p.m. eastern time. "I really just think it's become such a mess that people are just, like, 'Who cares anymore?' " freshman Lauren Brown told The News & Observer. "People have become apathetic to it."

Not everyone, however. Newspapers around the country continue to editorialize on the assignment.

What the Family Policy Network and other critics "really oppose is the effort to study Islam objectively, without presuming at the outset that it is inherently evil," The New York Times says today in a particularly nasty editorial. "Let's hope for the sake of the students and the state as a whole that their despicable efforts fail."

The religious conservatives were working against their own earlier victories, says USA Today. Had the court ruled in their favor, the paper said last week, it "would set back a tradition of treating religion as a valid subject for public classrooms." The editorial adds, "Instead of encouraging much-needed understanding of different cultures, critics of the book risk fueling animosity toward an entire religion because of the actions of a fringe group of fanatics." Is it talking about Islam or Christianity?

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August (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46