Though couched in concerns for federal spending that are easy to understand, the objections of U.S. Rep. Walter Jones to a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that provides a community college with educational resources about Islamic culture cannot help but resound with intolerance.
“It is appalling to me that a federal agency like NEH is wasting taxpayer money on programs like this,” Jones said in a news release condemning the grant to Craven Community College in New Bern. “It makes zero sense for the U.S. government to borrow money from China in order to promote the culture of Islamic civilizations.”
While on one hand Rep. Jones, the Farmville Republican whose district includes a portion of Lenoir County, has long opposed federal money going to such programs, he said that there should be a balance and that the college should give equal exposure to books about Christianity and America’s rich Judeo-Christian heritage.
The Craven-Pamlico Christian Coalition has committed to donating 25 books on those topics.
Put aside the fact that exposure to our Judeo-Christian heritage isn’t hard to come by in this part of the world. Jones’s reaction — or overreaction — ignores the presence in his district of a Muslim population, the need for understanding in an area where military deployments make Muslim culture much more than an abstraction and a community college’s mission to educate.
It’s a stretch to cast the NEH collection as tools of indoctrination, rather than education. The collection includes 25 books, a DVD, two short videos about Islamic art and architecture, and a one-year subscription to Oxford Islamic Studies online.
Book titles include: “The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam,” “The Story of the Qur’an,” “Muhammad,” and “A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America.”
Seven North Carolina colleges and universities received “Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys” grants.
CravenCommunity Collegehad support in obtaining the grant from the New Bern-Craven County Public Library, Carteret County Public Library and Interfaith Refugee Ministry.
“This fits in the mission of the college of improving and enhancing the lives of individuals and communities by providing opportunities to prepare students for a global society,” Judy Eurich, a spokeswoman at the college, told the New Bern Sun Journal.
Carol Mattocks, chairwoman of the college’s Board of Trustees, put it this way: “An institution of higher learning is always looking for ways to navigate a global society,” she told the newspaper.
We should trust college administrators to ensure any materials made available to students about religious cultures, regardless of faith, work to broaden understanding, rather than promote a particular religion.
