“What they are asking for is something that is a normal part of the practice of what it is to be a Muslim: the call to prayer delivered from the mosque.”
I don’t think the school is obligated to be the PROVIDER of that, any more than they are obligated to provide an eruv for Orthodox Jewish students, a sukkah for Reform Jews, or communion wafers for Catholics.
Now, the Jewish or Catholic student associations may use their funds and manpower and arrange to have / make / buy those things for their members’ use, but that’s within their own discretion. I agree that’s a fine line, but I think it’s an important one.
I personally think it’s an argument against. I don’t see the equivalency between church bells ringing (which pretty much just announce that it’s 9 am on Sunday, and has zero religious meaning) and broadcasting a Muslim call to prayer, which is, in essence, starting a prayer service by broadcasting a prayer to all within hearing range. To be clear, this has nothing to do with any feelings towards Islam - I would find the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema or “God is imaginary” equally inappropriate to be broadcast by the administration from a bell tower or loudspeaker on a secular college campus. They can, however, play the college fight song if the team wins. That’s secular!!
If, of course, the Catholic / Jewish / Muslim students are gathering in their own meeting space, they can pray in whatever fashion and to whatever God, dog or flying spaghetti monster they want.
Another way of putting this is - “it’s my religion” doesn’t mean “and therefore you have to arrange for it.”
I mean, it would be an unwise BUSINESS decision, and have poor optics, for a college that wants to play in the big leagues to not offer (for example) a Jewish student association or a Muslim student association, or to offer an option for kosher / halal food, but it’s not a legal obligation as far as I understand it to be. (Even Notre Dame has a Jewish and Muslim student association and offers kosher / halal dining options. But they still have crucifixes in the classrooms, which they’re entitled to do - and if you don’t like it, don’t go there.)
In my opinion the translating bit takes it over the top and out of the realm of religious accommodation and into the absurd, actually. It’s impossible to pretend this is anything but a misguided effort to be culturally over-sensitive and it backfired badly.
It is rather unlikely that the finer points about the translation and the like really made any difference among the backlashers, including both those making criminal or terrorist threats and those trying to get people to stop donating. The backlashers probably just saw a public display of a religion that they did not like, and that was enough for them.
Well, I’m not going to try to ascribe ulterior motives to the backlashers. There are lots of reasons to backlash. The stated goal was to celebrate diversity which is different and distinct from accommodating religion and I choose to believe them. I also agree with those who say it was unbelievably tone-deaf, perhaps intentionally.
The repetition in English doesn’t sit right with me, as that smacks of proselytizing. But as I’ve seen the original plan described, I don’t think there was anything inappropriate about it.
Not knowing Duke, I can’t speak to the logistics here is, but I don’t assume that the sound is being broadcast into every dorm room, dining hall, and classroom. Rather, I would imagine that, like church bells, it is something you would hear if you’re walking around campus or if you’ve popped a window open sufficiently near to the chapel. In that sense, I’m not sure why it is terribly different, in terms of level of obtrusiveness, from what would happen if you had the marching band performing out on the quad for a certain amount of time each week.
Furthermore, it doesn’t seem to me that the Muslim students were asking Duke to do anything but give them permission to make use of a certain technology. They aren’t asking that the university pay someone to read out the call for prayer, or make any particular arrangements, from what I can tell. It is a comparatively painless way of supporting someone’s religious expression.
As for the question of parity - could a Jewish group ask to say the Shema, or an atheist group declare “religion is the opiate of the masses” from the loudspeaker -, I think it comes down to good faith (no pun intended). The Shema is an important prayer in Judaism, but there is no tradition of that kind of public recitation - if students tried to start one in response to a Muslim call to prayer, it would be purely to make a point. Similarly,I don’t have much respect for atheists who, say invent rituals"required" by the Flying Spaghetti Monster in order to mock and perhaps even render impracticable the concept of religious accommodation. Without expecting universities to be splitting hairs over theological nuances, it seems reasonable to me to distinguish between a request to perform a common religious practice and an obvious attempt to score ideological points.
“It is rather unlikely that the finer points about the translation and the like really made any difference among the backlashers, including both those making criminal or terrorist threats and those trying to get people to stop donating. The backlashers probably just saw a public display of a religion that they did not like, and that was enough for them.”
Exactly. It seems as though the backlashers are the ones who still think that “Duke is a historically Christian (Methodist) campus” and should stay that way and are horrified than a non-Christian might use the chapel in the first place. It’s very clear that there is a difference between a principled “I don’t think that any religion should be ‘broadcast’ like that - and I’d say the same if it were the Lord’s Prayer” and the ignorant “Muslims, Islam, taking over our country, Sharia-law, what are they doing besmirching our 'murcan universities” crowd that was behind the backlash.
The repetition in English is not a small part of the original plan and until someone can come up with a good reason for this I’m sticking with it was a really dumb idea. And, I would say the same thing about the Lord’s prayer translated into Arabic and broadcast every Friday, too.
If Muslim prayers are offensive to atheists and others, how is the Lord’s Prayer not offensive to atheists and others? It certainly says “OUR Father” etc., and coming out of a school’s loudspeaker, how can anyone NOT interpret it as being a position of the university?
Isn’t “there is no God but Allah” the same as one of the Ten Commandments, knowing that “Allah” is the same name that Arabic Christians use for their god?
Duke has a reputation for being very Christian-centric, at least from people I have dealt with. Actually going as far as broadcasting the Lord’s Prayer is shocking to me though. My friend who is Jewish left Duke grad school early because she could not take the second-class citizen treatment of anyone who was not openly Christian. Apparently it was worse in the grad school or perhaps her program.
The best way to deal with religion on a campus where no religion is noted in the school’s constitution or history is to talk to religious leaders in the area as well as campus religious groups. I would have no problem with having a mosque on campus as well as a synagogue and church. And church bells vs. calls to prayer in a language most people don’t understand are not offensive to me, but NOT from the campus bell tower.
I can’t speak for any group, obviously, but I doubt most atheists are “offended” by broadcasted prayers. Most of them probably don’t care, and others are simply annoyed by it. Using my usual analogy, like if they had to hear a Santa Claus voice going “Ho Ho Ho” on the loudspeaker every day or every week.
I guarantee that if a Hebrew prayer were uttered over a loudspeaker on a regular basis, there would be protests by pro-Palestinian students who would feel offended.
So Billy Graham’s kid calls up Duke donors and tells them they better threaten to stop donating because Duke wants to let Muslims have calls to prayer on campus? That’s any different than pro-Palestinian students not liking Hebrew prayers?
And as an atheist, Ho Ho Ho by a Santa Claus is different than a prayer. But hey, that’s just me.
I really don’t want the campus to broadcast anything over a loudspeaker, it would be like a freaking airport:
“CLASSES ARE ENDED FOR THE DAY. PLEASE ENJOY THE REST OF YOUR DAY.”
Hey, I was born at Duke Hospital - does that count? Anyway, according to this article from The Atlantic, the associate dean at Duke “suggested it {the call} would hardly be loud enough to be heard outside of the immediate vicinity.”
I’m an atheist who wouldn’t be offended by a call to prayer, even in English, unless I thought it was loud and prolonged, or unless it seemed to be the school endorsing that religion and trying to convert me to it. I don’t think Duke would be trying to convert me to Islam by allowing this broadcast, so for me, the issue would be how obnoxious and disruptive the prayers would be. And I’d have the same reaction to any group, religious or not, wanting to do something loud and disruptive.