But Ruediger Seesemann, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Northwestern, said academic institutions have a responsibility to encourage spiritual formation.
These Muslim students want to integrate their Muslim identity with their identity as college students,” he said. “Why not let them bring their prayer rugs, let them pray and let them enjoy the basketball game?”
“I personally think it can be settled in a very easy and uncomplicated way,” Seesemann added. “The fact that it becomes a matter of debate is significant and points to the sensitivity of the issue.”
That sensitivity, he said, stems from fear and a lack of knowledge about the Islamic faith–nothing a dialogue can’t fix. A student senator representing the Muslim constituency on campus, senior sophomore Hibah Yousuf, hopes to launch that dialogue with administrators next week. — from this article
Transparent apologetics by Ruediger Seesemann. And who decided to ask his opinion? Is he an expert of some kind on the subject of pedagogy, or on the favoring of religion, or of one religion, by the government? Perhaps Ruediger Seesemann is unacquainted with the Establishment Clause or the constitutional history of that clause; if so, he might learn a bit before making pronouncements about this country, its laws, its customs, and a good deal else.
And one wonders how it is that he is quoted at all. And the statement by him about how “academic institutions have a duty to encourage spiritual formation” is nonsense. They don’t. Some, those specifically connected to this or that religion, may find it their duty. But others do not. Not if “spiritual formation” is defined as changing long-established rules in order to accommodate the rituals of this or that belief-system.
Does Ruediger Seesemann, and do the Muslims in question at Northwestern, really wish to have the tenets of Islam held up for public inspection and critical scrutiny? Do they really want a public of non-Muslims to take a good look at the Qur’an, and 5.82, and 9.29, and 9.5, and more than a hundred Jihad verses? Do they want that public to realize that it can go to www.quranbrowser.com and insert a word into the Search box, and find out what the Qur’an has to say, in various translations (that the searcher can specify) that it would not be good for Infidels to find out too much about?
Does Ruediger Seesemann, does Amir Siddiqui, does Ahmed Rehab, really want Infidels to find out about Islam? Would they be pleased if everyone started to visit the websites where the “authentic” Hadith of Bukhari and Muslim can be read — read with astonishment, read with increasing horror, by any sane Infidel? Do they want Infidels to find out about what Muhammad did, that model of deportment, uswa hasana, that Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil? Do they want Infidels, in order to have that “dialogue” with Muslims, to really find out about the mass decapitation of the bound prisoners taken by Mohammad, about the attack on the farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, the murders of Abu Afak and Asma bint Marwan, and about little Aisha, and so much more?
Do they? Because that is what they will get. The period of total ignorance and willful idiocy is over. It took a while, but it is over. There is too much observable behavior of Muslims, in Thailand and Pakistan, in Indonesia and the Sudan, in Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon and Nigeria and Somalia, and in France and England and Denmark and Belgium and Norway and Sweden and The Netherlands and Russia and everywhere that Muslims have shown that they do indeed divide the universe between Believer and Infidel, do indeed think that they have no need in the countries where Islam dominates to treat Infidels as equals but can deal with them as they see fit, discriminating against them, persecuting them, driving them out, even mass-murdering them.
And at the same time, no matter where large numbers of Muslims have settled, they have made demands for changes in the legal and political institutions and social arrangements of the Infidels in whose lands they have been so carelessly allowed to settle — and make those demands, each one more outrageous and incredible than the next, without the slightest hesitation, without the slightest shame, despite the clear record of Islam in its mistreatment, over 1350 years, of every non-Muslim people whose lands have been conquered and they themselves offered the possibility of death, conversion, or the status of dhimmi, which is to say a status of degradation, humiliation, and permanent physical insecurity.
Let them make an issue of this. And then start educating others, or educating yourself, about the real contents of Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, and the real, not sanitized, history of Muslim Jihad-conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.
It will be a good teaching moment. And more than anything else, Teaching Moments are what are needed.