Rep. Walter Jones (R-NCrazy) is throwing a fit about a grant given to a community college in his district to buy books about Muslim culture. And apparently he thinks that the only people who would possibly want to learn anything about Muslim culture are Muslims:
Craven Community College, a small school in New Bern, was recently awarded a small National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The money, enough for 25 books and a DVD, is intended to expand the library’s Muslim culture collection. Jones protested that the money was unfairly benefiting Muslims and harming Christians, as he explained in a local TV interview.
“I want to treat it fairly and I think too many times the Christian faith is not treated fairly,” Jones said. “If they want to have book about the Muslim’s faith, let’s have equal number of books about Judeo-Christian [faith].”
I’d be willing to bet that there are a hell of a lot more books about Christianity in that library than there are books about Islam. This is just Jones’ inherent anti-intellectualism combined with his desire to portray Christians as an unfairly persecuted minority (in North Carolina, for fuck’s sake!). In a poll taken locally, 62% of respondents said the school should refuse the grant. Because they don’t see no need for book learnin’.
