Suppose an atheist commits a mass murder -- would that be your problem just because you are an atheist, too? If you don't think so, you might refrain from attributing collective responsibilities for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish fundamentalists to Muslims, Christians, and Jews who aren't fundamentalists respectively.
>Meanwhile, you're accusing me in print at my own workplace of being
>an opponent of religious tolerance. If your letter sees print, you
>can anticipate being sued for libel in federal court.
In print? I have not sent any letter to the Portland State University Vanguard or any other newspaper. There is no such need for anyone to send any letter to any paper, as you have already put your bigoted statements into public record yourself by gratuitously posting them to a listserv that has a public archive that gets crawled by search engines. Your words condemn themselves on a medium that gets more widely circulated than any letter to the editor.
You made harmful insinuations that the Muslim Student Association, which has members at your school (who may be among your students in the past, present, or future), does not "recognize that co-habitation and even collaboration with infidels is necessary, that the whole world is never going to become Muslim" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040920/021056.html>), that a person signing the MSA petition defending academic freedom with regard to the denial of Professor Tariq Ramadan's visa "risk [s] supporting religious fascists" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040920/021056.html>), and that a standard Muslim invocation of God ("In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful") is "boilerplate fundamentalist phraseology" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040920/021097.html>). A scholar and educator ought to take an attitude of critical inquiry and religious toleration and learn about American Muslims in general and the MSA in particular before making negative insinuations about them. -- 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/>