UPDATE: Duke University Cancels Decision for Weekly Adhan to be Called on Campus

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Congratulations Franklin Graham. Guess you’ve succeeded. In about 24 hours since I first started seeing the article that Duke University made the decision to allow Muslim students to give the adhan (call to prayer) on Fridays from the bell tower of its chapel, that decision has been rescinded. According to this ABC News article:

In a release Thursday, the university said Muslims will instead gather on the quadrangle before heading into a room in the chapel for their weekly prayer service.

“Duke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus for all of its students,” said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. “However, it was clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.” Under the canceled plan, members of the school’s Muslim Students Association would have recited the call lasting about three minutes from the bell tower. However, the plan drew the ire of evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham, who urged Duke alumni to withhold support because of violence against Christians that he attributed to Muslims. He wrote on Facebook that the decision is playing out as “Christianity is being excluded from the public square.” He wrote later in the day that the university made the right decision to cancel.

When I first heard the university was allowing the adhan to be heard before Friday prayers, I first asked if other religions were offered prayer space or allowed to vocalize any prayers of some sort. Were church bells rung in the chapel on Sunday? Did Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist prayers take place in the chapel? The answer was yes to all.

Well, I thought, then great! I’m happy that that the adhan will be heard (at a moderate volume) on campus. And that’s a hard compliment from me, because anyone who knows me I’m hugely anti-Duke. It’s a basketball thing. (I’m a University of Maryland Terrapin for life). So why did Duke cave to pressure from Graham and his cohorts? Were donors threatening to pull big money from the institution? I’m waiting to hear more on this story.

According to the article:

The chapel’s associate dean for religious life, Christy Lohr Sapp, said before the plans were canceled that the move showed the school’s commitment to religious pluralism. In a column written for the News and Observer in Raleigh, Lohr Sapp acknowledged the headlines generated by violence by extremists in ISIS, Boko Haram and al-Qaida, contrasting it to what’s happening on campus. “Yet, at Duke University, the Muslim community represents a strikingly different face of Islam than is seen on the nightly news: one that is peaceful and prayerful,” she wrote.

That was a beautiful things to say, Ms. Sapp. So why was the decision reversed? I’m disappointed in Duke. And now it’s not just because of basketball. It’s something real.

UPDATE:

In forty-eight hours, Duke University went from announcing that the Muslim call to prayer (the adhan) would be called out on Fridays at 1 p.m. from its famous bell tower of its chapel, to facing threats of harm and a furious social media campaign from Franklin Graham, who urged people to oppose the decision and withhold any donations to the university, to the university rescinding its decision, to today – Friday, when Jummah prayers (Friday prayers occur). Hundreds of students and supporters gathered in front of the chapel to show their support for the Muslim call to prayer and their disappointment at Duke’s decision.

As more information is coming forth, we are learning that there were several security threats made to the Duke campus after they announced their initial decision, but the university is not commenting on if that, or if the Graham-led protest led them to withdraw their decision. Duke vice president for public affairs and government relations Michael Schoenfeld released a statement, in which he said the university is committed to “fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus” for all students, but it had become clear that “what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.”

Omid Safi, director of the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University, released this statement on his Facebook page today:

I am disappointed, because I’d like to think we are better than this. And by We I mean not just Duke, but America, all of us. We should be better than this. We at Duke are a leading education of higher learning in the world, with students/faculty/staff from all over the world. We are all citizens of Duke and call this place home. I want to believe we are better than this, better than being intimated and pressured.

We live in a world where some of us celebrate the existence of diversity and know that we are richer when we engage each other through and across our diversity. Others of us live in an imagined world where the very existence of religious and ethnic diversity is seen as a threat.

I know that there are many different readings of Islam, some of them generous and compassionate, and some of them the practice of Taliban and Al-Qaeda. I know that there are also different readings of Christianity. I’ve been blessed to be steeped in the radical prophetic Christianity of a Dr. King, and have known the love and friendship of my many Christian friends at Duke. I so wished that this could be a day to honor and highlight the generosity of Christian friends—including the office of Religious Life at Duke—in opening up the chapel to Muslims for the call to prayer. Sadly, I also know that there are different readings of Christianity (just like any other faith) which is vile, petty, insecure, and ultimately…. Weak. This is how I read Franklin Graham’s statements on FB: weak, inaccurate, and wrong not just on Islam, but wrong on Christianity, and wrong on America.

How else to account for a person who thinks Christianity is being excluded from the Duke campus? Have these folks ever set foot on the Duke Campus? Did they miss the Chapel that graces Duke’s campus? Or the cross that is on the Duke emblem? Or that the very design of the West campus that is shaped after the cross? Franklin Graham says: ““we as Christians are being marginalized.” Spare me. Spare me your delusional paranoia. Spare me the paranoia of a wealthy white male Christian who talks about being marginalized in America. You want to be marginalized? Try being an undocumented single Hispanic mother working multiple jobs. Try being an African America dad worrying about his teenage son when he goes out to buy Skittles and Sprite. Try being a Muslim locked up in Guantanamo for 13 years without recourse to legal rights. You might be lots of things Mr. Graham. I’ve got a few choice words to describe some of them. But being marginalized ain’t one of them.

I do trust my friends at Duke who convey to me the real safety concerns, the threats made against Duke faculty, staff, and students. It makes me sick to my stomach that there are those in the world who find it appropriate to make recourse to violence—even threats of violence—to justify their means.

This is a conversation about public accommodation, and the acknowledging of diversity. As I see it there are three basic options before us:
*adamant secularism, insisting that there be no religious symbols in the public space. [Might fly in Europe, not so in America.]
* “My way” religiosity: There should be religion in the public space, but it should be my religion and only my religion.
*Pluralism: There should be a symphony of religious symbols and practices in the public arena.

That’s why this is ultimately not a conversation about Islam for me, but one about America. What kind of society do we want to be? As for me and my house, I choose the side of pluralism. I don’t think that any of us become less of a person just because someone else has the same rights that we do. The Chapel still tolls the bells, once a day and twice on Sunday. Is Graham so insecure that for Muslims to get a call to prayer once a week threatens him?

[Out of curiosity, I do wonder whether Graham and the folks calling Duke objected in 2011 when the Duke Chapel played church bells…. To the tune of a Chaunaukah song. Did that offend their Christian sensitivities, or is it just Islam? ]

Here is the more basic issue: the existence of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, atheists, agnostics, and the many Christians who are repulsed by Franklin Graham’s bigotry is all a fact. We exist. We are here, including at Duke. So as I see it the options are simple: to be visible and a meaningful participant in the public arena, or to be relegated to a basement level existence.

The Duke I want to be a part of, the Duke I want to help build, is a Duke that will not have anyone in the back of the bus.

Let me end this with an open hand invitation, towards people of all faith and no faith who want to see a Duke (and an America) that has room for all of us. I want to thank all of you who have been reaching out over the last few days, and to encouraging you: reach out to another, let’s share the love, and stand together.

The Franklin Grahams of the world, and those who would seek to intimidate and threaten the Duke community have had their say. Let us respond not in kind, but by doubling down on our commitment to education, rigorous debate, humanistic encounter, and an unwavering pluralism. This is how you overcome darkness: light; how you transform bigotry: by building a beloved community.

They have had they say. How we respond as a community is up to us. Let us repel evil with something lovelier, as the qur’an says, and offer a response that will make us proud of the community we have and we want to be a part of.

If you read comments on the many articles being written about this (and I don’t advise reading comments), one of the biggest criticisms is that no minaret would have Christian prayers or church bells tolling in any of the Islamic countries, so why should Duke do such a thing here – to which I answer, the United States is a democratic country. There is the freedom of choice, freedom of religion here. Freedom to come together, to celebrate our diversity to give space to all faiths. That’s the difference. For me, if Duke had decided this wasn’t a good thing to do from the very beginning, that would’ve been it. But to decide that the adhan would be called from the Bell Tower, then to withdraw that decision in 24 hours, well it’s just sad. I understand there is a lot more to this story and a lot that the university has to consider. But at the very least, it’s disappointing.