The Deacon's Bench
The Catholic University students are not pleased with the complaint filed by a lawyer, alleging discrimination, and made it clear in the student newspaper that they don’t support him:
University Muslim students have announced their opposition to the recent lawsuit against the University proposed by George Washington University professor John F. Banzhaf, who claims that the University is discriminating against Muslim students by not offering them a separate place to pray on campus.
The University has not received any official statement from the Office of Human Rights in regard to the lawsuit.
“Neither me nor any Muslim student I know has ever filed a complaint against CUA for any reason,” said sophomore biomedical engineering major Alawiyah Al Hashem. “I haven’t seen any actions taken by the university or any of its students that would justify doing so.”
Al Hashem is an international Muslim student from Saudi Arabia who plans to return to Saudi Arabia upon graduation.
The news of the lawsuit has attracted the attention of the national media since Banzhaf first announced his intentions to sue the University for religious discrimination on October 20th.
It has sparked an onslaught of public criticism of the University’s Muslim students based on the premise that the lawsuit was a result of student complaints, despite the fact that Banzhaf never received any complaints from the University’s Muslim students.
Catholic University Muslim students have been accused of a multitude of offenses including asking the University to remove Catholic religious objects and issuing formal complaints to the University for not allowing a private room for Muslim prayer and for not allowing a chapter of the Muslim Student Association to form on campus.
The quantity of national criticism of the University’s Muslim students prompted University President John H. Garvey to issue a formal statement to the entire University community on Friday, October 28th.
“I regret very much that our Muslim students have been used as pawns in a manufactured controversy,” he said. “I want to reassure all of you that our Muslim students are welcome at our University. Our Catholic teaching instructs us to embrace our fellow human beings of all faith traditions. They enrich us with their presence and help to promote inter-religious and inter-cultural understanding.”
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