[lbo-talk] US Campaign| Defend Academic Freedom

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Sep 21 10:33:29 PDT 2004


Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu, Tue Sep 21 09:58:36 PDT 2004:
>>When Muslims say "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most
>>Merciful" in letters and the like, my brain automatically
>>translates it into "Greetings and Salutations!"
>>--
>>Yoshie
>
>...confirming your botness. It's as offensive for purported allies
>to talk about God in public policy spheres as it is when enemies do
>it. Have some logic and standards, if you are able.

It's up to you if you want to be a purist-atheist and refuse to sign a petition about defending academic freedom just because the petition is sent out by the Muslim Student Association and has a Muslim greetings and salutations at the beginning. It's a free country, as they say. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the coalition that forwarded the petition to me and other subscribers, is a non-religious organization, however, so if the secular US Campaign can promote the petition, so can all other broad-minded secular organizations and individuals.

As for myself, many people I work with in local organizing are religious leftists -- Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. including my partner (his father is a retired Presbyterian pastor) and his family. If you want to work on the left in the United States, you have to be at least tolerant about an occasional invocation of God or two. To take just one example, at the "The-World-Says-No-to-the-Bush-Agenda" anti-RNC march, Dr, Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches <http://www.ncccusa.org/news/2000GA/edgar.html>, offered a prayer before the march's kickoff. -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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