I am a fifth-year senior at the University of Maryland. I was just reading about the controversy involving the Quran being assigned to students by a University professor.
I just think the controversy speaks to the closed-mindedness that is characteristic of the South and that is also characteristic with those who don't understand anything about the cultures who are involved with this new war we are facing. I have close ties to Mississippi, so do not assume I'm some "Yankee" speaking about the South.
But I feel this gives people another reason to say the South is still backward. I urge all student leaders to help dispel stereotypes and get your student body to be more sensitive and willing to learn about religions that may not be their own.
I think the controversy is absolutely juvenile and reminds me of the arguments that many high schools face with controversial books in their curriculum.
We are all are adults and should be able to decipher between learning about others and blatant imposing of a religion on a group of people.
Are we not allowed to learn about each other's differences?
But people have singled out a certain religious group and for many decades they will be looked at as an "evil" religion as one top official in the Bush administration said. People who study Islam are not the enemy, a particular section of that community is our enemy, but not an entire religion.
Christians have been part of the KKK and church bombings and other religiously driven crimes, but no one has ever called Christianity an "evil" religion. Why? Because many of us understand the basics of Christianity even if we aren't Christian. I was crying right along with my fellow Muslim students on Sept. 11, and to blame a religion for what has happened is crazy.
Miesha Lowery
College Park, Md.
