Well, don’t say you weren’t warned. After a discussion on a book called "Approaching the Qu’uran," which was required reading for incoming University of North Carolina freshmen, the impressionable kids converted en masse to radical Islam. Libraries were converted into mosques, coeds were stoned for immodest clothing, and young men loaded up their LL Bean backpacks with plastic explosives and crashed their mountain bikes into the Bell Tower.

Of course, I made that up. The image is absurd. But that seemed to be the image that was ruining the sleep of opponents of the reading assignment, who took the University to Federal Court to keep the students from even discussing the book. In a last-minute ruling, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that allowed the University to do what universities are supposed to do: discuss ideas.

Some people apparently believe that ideas are like viruses. If you get exposed to a dangerous one, you’ll immediately become infected and abandon everything you hold dear. But in college, you’re exposed to a plethora of ideas, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Capitalism, Communism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Atheism, conservatism, feminism—all banging up against one another in the noisy marketplace of ideas. Despite the hysteria of people who are convinced that our universities have turned into mind-control factories imprinting our children’s brains with sedition, multiculturalism, or even, God help us, liberalism, you find college graduates falling everywhere along the political, religious, and cultural spectrum. If they’re lucky, the main thing they took out of college was the ability to look at different ideas, to weigh them, and to make up their own minds.

For example, when I was a college student, one of the elective courses I took was one on Shamanism. You know, witch doctors, seers, and holy men of tribal cultures. It was pretty interesting, actually. And never once did I find myself compelled to ingest powerful mind-altering potions and dance around beating a drum with a necklace of animal bones around my neck. Well, okay, once. But it was right after exams and I needed to blow off a little steam.

Hold onto your hats here…I, your Humble Columnist, actually own a copy of the Qu’uran, also known as the Koran. It has a place on the shelf behind the computer where I keep the reference books I use most often. It’s right beside my well-thumbed King James Bible and my copy of the Bhagavad-Gita. It may surprise people that I’ve actually read some or all of each of these religious texts. And guess what? In the Qu’uran I’ve found passages of great beauty. I’ve found passages that are deeply disturbing. I’ve found passages I don’t understand at all. Of course, I’ve found exactly the same types of passages in the Bible.

But a perusal of the Qu’uran has not turned me into a Muslim. I don’t believe that if I die killing infidels, I’ll be transported to Paradise and given 72 virgins as a reward (actually, I’ve never really understand the appeal there. After the first fifty or so, it’s got to start seeming a lot like work. But I digress.)

It may very well be that the opponents of "Approaching the Qu’uran" are merely acting out their pique about the whole prayer in the schools thing. This would explain our General Assembly, who really should be concentrating on getting us a state Budget, spending their time on considering a bill that would deny financing to the university if it did not give equal time in the classroom to "all known religions." After all, they "reason", the federal guvmint says teachers can’t read the Bible to high school students, so college classes can’t require the Qu’uran. So there. Nyaah.

This willfully ignores the simple fact that there is a world of difference between reading a religious text and asking "so what do you think? Do you believe this?" and presenting it to a class as the Revealed Word of God. The first is allowed by the Constitution, the second is not. This should be evident, even to legislators who have trouble holding on to any concept too complex to be put on a bumper sticker.

So what about the students? Among the ones interviewed, the biggest complaint was not that the book was about Islam, but that it was boring. Those who broke through the boredom, however, discovered the first step on the staircase of wisdom: the realization that they don’t know everything. "From what I knew from the news, I would have perceived them [Muslims] to be a violent people," said incoming freshman Mary Allison Lee, "so I see one thing on TV, and another in the book." She added, "I'm not sure what to think."

Congratulations, Mary Allison, you’ve just taken the first step into the real world, where information can be contradictory and confusing. Learning to make up your own mind is hard work, but the future depends on it.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.