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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Jim Yacovelli, Michael Sells

Aired August 25, 2002 - 11:43   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: A college reading assignment is sparking debate about First Amendment rights, academic freedoms and tolerance. The book, "Approaching the Koran: The Early Revelations," was given as summer reading to some 4,200 freshmen and transfer students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The assignment has led to legislative and now legal challenges.
The Family Policy Network is the lead plaintiff in one lawsuit against UNC. Jim Yacovelli is state director of that organization. He joins us. Also joining us, the author of the book, Michael Sells. His book is "Approaching the Koran." And he is also religion professor at Haverford College. Thank you very much for joining us.

All right, Michael, let me begin with you. What are you hoping the objective would be when students read your book? What do they need to learn from it?

MICHAEL SELLS, AUTHOR, "APPROACHING THE KORAN": Well, the book is showing how the Koran works in Islamic culture, which is something that most Americans have never really had a chance to learn. It's taught in Arabic. It's learned orally. And the chapters that are learned first are those that are in the back of the written Koran. So this focuses on those chapters, the ones Muslims believe were the first revealed to Mohammed. They learn it first in their lives. They memorize it. And they hear it more often than any others.

And that was an attempt, then, for the first time, really, to allow people who don't know Arabic to get a sense of the very different way that this kind of sacred text is used in Islamic culture.

WHITFIELD: Now, some have criticized you for only highlighting the positive applications of the Koran. How do you respond to that?

SELLS: Well...

WHITFIELD: That you selectively, you know, are highlighting certain areas of the Koran in those lessons?

SELLS: Sure. This is focused on those early passages, and it doesn't pretend it's doing anything else. That's why its subtitle is "The Early Revelations." And those who've accused me of censoring or bowdlerizing or trying to deceive by leaving out selected passages in most cases have not read the book. So when columnists like William Buckley make that charge, they remind me of these people in Egypt condemning books that they've never read. And when the University of North Carolina is being attacked by people in the legislature now, saying they are going to fiscally punish the university because they don't like that decision, it reminds me of what happened in Egypt when politicians started doing the same thing to universities. That has a terrible effect on education.

Education should not respond to the visceral anger of politicians and state legislatures. It should have more long-term goals, in effect. And UNC is one of the greatest universities in the world.

WHITFIELD: Well, Jim, let me bring you in. You're among those criticizing the author, the book and UNC.

JIM YACOVELLI, FAMILY POLICY NETWORK: Right.

WHITFIELD: Do you have a problem with the Koran being taught, or do you have a problem with this book and its teachings of the Koran?

YACOVELLI: Well, I guess our whole...

WHITFIELD: In taxpayer-funded institutions.

YACOVELLI: It's -- it's the whole thing. We have nothing against Dr. Sells or his book. He's absolutely correct in what he's doing in writing a book about the early revelations. What the university wanted to do and what Dr. Meiser (ph), chairman of the university, wanted to do was target Christian and Jewish students to be more familiar with Islam.

The way to do that is not through this book by finding early revelations. What students need to understand the historical aspect of the Arabian peninsula, the historical context of Mohammed, not a book that just has early positive revelations.

In the court decision that I attended in Greensboro, the -- one of the professors was very adamant with not offending Muslims. That's not our problem, at this point. We're getting ready to blow up a bunch of Muslims. We're getting to go after Iraq, and we're discussing whether to kill them. After we've been killed and attacked by 19 terrorists, 343 dead firemen in New York, the last thing we need to worry about is offending Muslims!

We need to worry about offending Americans and teaching American culture. And the university needs to teach this book from a positive, balanced standpoint. It's not an attack against Doctor Sells. He's done a fine job of doing what he set out to do in his book. So I just want to make that very clear.

WHITFIELD: And Jim, isn't it true, though, that there are an awful lot of students who voluntarily came out and said they very much embraced the idea of learning more about the Koran through this book, that they felt it was important because they have a thirst for knowledge of the religion, especially since 9/11 and hearing so much negative publicity about the entire faith, as a whole?

YACOVELLI: Right.

WHITFIELD: Do you feel it is not the responsibility of an institution to try to perhaps suppress any ignorance and further the educational balance?

YACOVELLI: Well, how can it be ignorance if the book only -- if it only teaches one book? Now, they have a comparative religion department where they have 60 elective courses on religion that a student can take freely. We objected originally because it was required. All students -- and still, if you go to the Web site, it still has the word "required" for the reading assignment. We objected to that on First Amendment rights. We also objected for the fact that students were required to write a paper if they disagreed.

We got the university to back down from both of those requirements, and I think we helped stimulate conversation and forced students to actually read the Koran, especially Suras 4, 5 and 9, which have most of the hate and vitriol towards Christians.

WHITFIELD: Well, Michael, how do you...

YACOVELLI: And Jews.

WHITFIELD: ... respond to that, that you yourself are saying that you did selectively apply some of the lessons of the Koran in your book? Why not be all-inclusive?

SELLS: Well, can you imagine trying to read the entire Bible in one summer reading? I mean, these criticisms really aren't taking into consideration the complexity of the Koran. And I agree that it would be great to know Arabian history, spend four or five semesters studying the tribal names, the battles, et cetera, that are necessary to understand even the basics of those more historical parts of the Koran that are in complexity like the Book of Kings or the Book of Joshua in the Bible.

And I was also surprised to hear this angry talk about Muslims. We're not going to kill people in Iraq because they're Muslim. In fact, some of the people in Saddam Hussein's regime are Christian. It's not a religious war we're involved in, and the rhetoric I just heard was very surprising. And I think this controversy has been very good for the nation because it's shown that there's a lot of debate in this country about whether Islam is the enemy or terrorists are the enemy.

And the Chinese art of war says "Never go into battle unless you know who you are and who the enemy is." And we have to sort this out, and this kind of conversation had been suppressed for too long. Now it's getting out into public, and we need more of these debates so that we can have a consensus in this country and not having one group tell our soldiers, "The guy fighting by you on your side, who's a Muslim, is your enemy," with another group saying, "No, he's your ally." That's a terrible message to give to our soldiers.

WHITFIELD: But Jim, do you -- do I understand you properly that you are saying that while there is no place to be teaching -- of these teachings of the Koran, is there no place for teachings of Judaism, of Buddhism, of Bahai, of any faith on a university or a state-funded, taxpayer-funded institution?

YACOVELLI: No, it just needs to be done correctly. And that's all we've ever asked for. I mean, we're in agreement with a lot of what Dr. Sells has to say. We want to open the dialogue up and expose all sides to religious dialogue.

One thing about Islam is that we're very confused about it. Don't forget, most Americans were totally ignorant of Islam until the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran and took hostages. And so from then, we started to realize that there was a part of Islam, most of the Arabian lifestyle and orientalism, that we need to understand. It just seems now it's been mounting.

And for the University of North Carolina to choose a book not to offend Muslims we felt was egregious. And then to make it required of all students was -- could you imagine -- I've always said this -- if they had a book by Billy Graham on the New Testament and all students were required to read it and it came with A CD of prayers, you'd have ACLU lawyers parachuting in from all over the country to sue! They'd have no problem going up against this.

So we wanted a sense of balance and fairness. We don't believe that Islam is the enemy. We believe that there's radicals within the Islamic faith that need to be understood because their idea of Western society is to destroy it! And the sooner we...

WHITFIELD: All right, Jim Yacovelli, I'm going to have to have that be the last word because we're now out of time.

YACOVELLI: OK.

WHITFIELD: Thank you very much...

YACOVELLI: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: ... of the Family Policy Network, and Michael Sells, author of "Approaching the Koran."

SELLS: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Thank you. Thank you for joining us.

YACOVELLI: Yeah, thanks very much.

WHITFIELD: Appreciate it.

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