What have you been reading this summer? Odds are it wasn’t what 3,500 incoming freshmen at the University of North Carolina were assigned to read: The Muslim holy book, the Qur’an — or portions of it, anyway. The assignment has brought plenty of arguments, but too many of them miss the most important issues.

To sum it up briefly: Students were told to read Approaching the Qur’an — which translates and comments on 35 passages of the text — then to write a one-page paper and participate in a discussion group. Some Christians objected, feeling this flirted with state-sponsored proselytizing. Their objections mounted when they were told that they could opt out on religious grounds if they wrote an explanation of their objections — an option that struck them as worse than the assignment, because it forced them to identify themselves (in the face of possible reprisal from Islamic quarters) and defend their religious beliefs to the school. A few of them have gone on to sue the university.

The controversy has crossed some of the usual lines, both religious and political. The American Civil Liberties Union shares the concern over proselytizing and plans to monitor the class discussions. Meanwhile, some Christians think the assignment is a good idea. Fred Eckels, a faculty adviser for Campus Crusade for Christ, told the Christian Science Monitor that “as a person who supports prayer in schools, it makes no sense to object to the use of other religious texts in the classroom, as long as the discussions are appropriate.”

So this is one time we can't just line up with our usual allies. We’re going to have to think this one through for ourselves. (As we always should, but—let’s be honest — sometimes don't.)

On the one hand, it's reasonable to study Islam, especially now, and it's doubtful the UNC assignment amounted to an attempt to convert anyone to that religion. Though I think the Christian students have reasons to object to the course (more about that in a moment), their reaction strikes me as an overreaction. Whatever might be said against the university, it hardly seems like religious profiling, much less grounds for a lawsuit. Moreover, there's something strikingly unbecoming about Christians seeking to avoid being identified for their faith. The early Christians proclaimed theirs boldly, in the face of far greater likelihood of persecution and even death. If I were a Christian UNC student asked to explain my objections to Islam, I'd take that not as an unfair imposition but as a welcome opportunity.

On the other hand, there's a problem if the reading assignment was an attempt to do something more than educate students about Islam. I suspect it was meant to persuade them that Islam is essentially benign — that it's really (in President Bush's famous words) "a religion of peace." UNC faculty and administrators have suggested as much. By pointing to verses from the Qur'an (or Koran, as some of us spell it) which paint the idea of jihad as a strictly spiritual struggle, the Monitor reports, they hope "to counter [the idea that] the hate-filled rhetoric put forth by Osama bin Laden and other radicals" represents actual Islam.

Now it's true that there's a lot more to Islam than you'll glean from the likes of bin Laden. But it's also true that there's a lot more to it than strictly individual, spiritual struggle. What UNC may be trying to tell students about Islam is "hey, there's no reason we can't all just get along." And if that's their message, they're not promoting understanding of Islam so much as they're whitewashing it.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the story of the Middle East is a simple tale of noble Americans and Israelis fighting evil Muslims who insanely hate us simply because we're virtuous — because they just can't stand freedom and democracy and all that good stuff. I don’t think the Israeli and American governments are blameless by any means. But I also don't buy the notion that Islam, aside from a handful of militants, seeks nothing more than peaceful coexistence. There's just too much evidence to the contrary.

As sometime Boundless contributor Dr. Mark Hartwig has written (in an article you can find here), Islam has a long history of violence. This dates back to its founder Muhammad in the 7th century; he talked peace at the beginning, but once he gathered enough military power he started launching raids and eventually conquered Mecca. Muslim clerics went on to expand the conditions that justified force, until aggression against any non-Muslims — justified by the need to create a single Islamic state — became the norm. So it remained until the last 300 years or so, when militarily superior Western powers rendered expansionist jihad increasingly impractical. Today's militance is no historical aberration, but a resurgence of the pattern that's characterized most of Islam's existence.

This isn't to say no one would adopt Islam voluntarily; its set of moral rules often hold great appeal to people living in decadent or morally anarchic cultures, including our own inner cities. Nor is it to overlook violent aggression by professed Christians; obviously, there's been plenty of that through the centuries.

Yet we should avoid the religious relativism that seeks to place all faiths on the same level, whether that level is low (“they’re all false”) or high (“they’re all basically saying the same good things”). There is a difference between Christianity and Islam. Christian history contains violence, but the faith isn’t founded in violence; it spread peacefully for its first several centuries and on the whole it hasn’t employed coercion to anything like the extent Islam has. Islam has always spread primarily by the sword, and its regimes are pretty universally intolerant. (This includes American allies like Saudi Arabia, where Christian evangelism is forbidden and harsh punishment for even minor offenses is routine.)

I won’t attempt to analyze all the complexities of Islam, which would take far more space than I have here (if you’d like to learn more, see the resources at the end of this article). My point here is to warn against a reflex that’s common in today’s multicultural, pluralistic America: the lazy, “I’m-OK-you’re-OK” assumption that pretty much every major population group, and belief system, is essentially compatible with the others. Any serious conflicts are presumed to be the work of tiny bands of extremists; any group of significant size just wants to get along with everyone else, raise the economic standard of living and build a generally nice global society.

In fact, however, peoples differ; beliefs differ; faiths differ. Many want not just to exist alongside the others but to triumph over others. That’s not inherently wrong (Christians should want Christianity to spread far and wide). But the preferred approach is persuasion, and not everyone works through persuasion. A great many work through various levels of intimidation and force. They always have and, as long as we’re living in a fallen world, always will.

If the folk at places like UNC really are doing nothing more than fostering a better comprehension of Islam, more power to them. Hysteria never serves us well, especially when it leads to a “we’ve got to stop them at all costs!” mentality that justifies any and all military actions and expansions of domestic government power. Nor does picturing Muslims as fanatical hordes rather than as human beings with a range of perspectives and motives.

But if UNC’s faculty are just pledging allegiance to the flag of global harmony, and the equality and benevolence of all cultures for which it stands, they’re not doing justice to their students. They’re just perpetuating fantasy — and college should equip people to deal with the real world.

To read more about Islam and the ways Christians can witness to Muslims, click here and here.