CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina
A conservative Christian group last week sued the University of North Carolina (UNC) for requiring all incoming freshmen to read and discuss a book about Islam, saying the assignment is an attempt to use taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate students into Islam.

Each summer, UNC chooses a book for incoming freshmen, who are asked to read and discuss the text. This year, the school chose Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells, a professor of comparative religion at Haverford College.

“We chose the book because since September 11 many of us have wondered what the core teachings of Islam really are,” UNC Chancellor James Moeser said in a statement. “We’re not spoon-feeding [students] a set of beliefs. We’re asking them to read and tell each other what they think.”

The Family Policy Network (FPN), a socially conservative Christian group, argues otherwise, saying the assignment “will have the effect of endorsing, advancing, and indoctrinating students in the religion of Islam.”

The FPN sought out three UNC freshmen — an evangelical Christian, a Catholic, and a Jew — as well as two local FPN members, and filed suit on their behalf, saying taxpayer dollars are being misused.

It’s a view that has been voiced in sound bites from TV preachers and talk-show hosts, including the Fox News Network’s prominent Bill O’Reilly, who compared the UNC assignment to teaching “Mein Kampf” in 1941, saying it was an exercise in teaching “our enemy’s religion.”

Rev. Franklin Graham, who gave the invocation at President Bush’s inauguration has espoused similar views, denouncing Islam as an “evil” religion that advocates terrorism on behalf of “mainstream” Muslims around the world, reported the Washington Post.

Sells, author of the book assigned by UNC, dismisses such statements as vitriolic hyperbole. “Islam, like all the other major religions, is a religion of peace or of violence depending on who is interpreting it, and if you look across the Muslim world, you’ll see very different answers,” he told the Post.

“The whole question of how to handle issues of religion in public institutions is one we need to grapple with better,” Sells added in an interview with the North Carolina Charlotte Observer. “My hope is that out of this controversy there will be some serious discussion of these issues — how to teach about religions in a society founded on a separation between church and state, and how to discuss the relationship of religion and violence.”

The fate of such discussions — at least at UNC — may be up to the courts, which have been asked to penalize the university for requiring its 3,500 incoming freshmen to read and think about Islam.

In the wake of the controversy, the university amended its assignment, allowing students to skip the book as long as they write a one-page paper explaining their reasons.

“At the very least, it starts a dialogue,” student body president Jennifer Daum told the Post. “My feeling is that if you’re not prepared to read ideas that are not your own and that you might disagree with, you do not belong at an institution of higher learning.”