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’.
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Reverend PJ
January 18, 2013 at 12:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Again I ask myself why I stay in the US.
fifthdentist
January 18, 2013 at 1:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Because obviously Americans should remain ignorant about roughly one-sixth of the world’s population, some of whose leaders control our access to that pure sweet, sweet crude to which our country is addicted like a meth-head is to his pipe.
Even worse, those “books” may contain facts, such as not each and every of the one billion Muslims on the planet want to strap on a suicide vest and walk into a roomful of good, innocent Christianist children in a Sunday school class and blow them to smithereens in the name of their so-called god, or “Allah.”
fifthdentist
January 18, 2013 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also, learning about Muslims and their history might lead some Americans to question whether some of those Muslims who so hate us have some reason other than our “freedumbs.”
jnorris
January 18, 2013 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
New Bern is in Craven County NC, home of the community college. There’s a restaurant owner in new Bern who objects to gays eating in his place, but he only tells them after they eat and pay the bill.
…
And yes there are way more Christian books in the library than Islam books.
danielkim
January 18, 2013 at 1:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t understand his objection. If we are to effectively combat the threat of Islamic Hegemony, it is necessary to fully understand their culture. Otherwise, effective weapons of psychological warfare cannot be created.
Naturally, a public institution must conceal the real agenda by presenting the collection of books in the benign terms of “diversity” and “understanding” to throw off suspicion by any sleeper agents.
Modusoperandi
January 18, 2013 at 1:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Reverend PJ “Again I ask myself why I stay in the US.”
Because that’s where are your stuff is.
d.c.wilson
January 18, 2013 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, I’m not leaving. They’re the ones who keep threatening to secede whenever they don’t get their way. Let them move out.
shouldbeworking
January 18, 2013 at 1:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can’t wait for his rant about books about France and Russia too. His head would explode if he knew there were science books in the library! Ignorance is bliss.
Larry
January 18, 2013 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
danielkim sez
There you go again, dk, thinking logically. Instead, you need to put on dunce’s cap and start considering this from the teabagger’s perspective. Logic and reality have no place there.
eric
January 18, 2013 at 1:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not only anti-intellectual in the liberal arts sense, but innumerate too. Money is fungible; a grant to buy books on Islam ALSO potentially increases Christian book purchases.
iangould
January 18, 2013 at 2:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Apart rm the target, this whole incident could have taken place 80 or 90 years ago – except that the target would have been books on Jewish culture.
(If anything, my problem with the grant is that there’s no such thing as a single “Muslim culture.”)
kantalope
January 18, 2013 at 2:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For the funny? The library is the Godwin Memorial Library!
Do your own searches on christianity and islam…the first hit for bible might just make Rep Jones’s head esplode
http://louise.nccommunitycolleges.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=eCbkQxzwlO/CRAVEN/205990116/60/1180/X
footface
January 18, 2013 at 2:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ah, yes. The college of the craven community.
davidhart
January 18, 2013 at 2:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, I searched their database, and will share for those who don’t have the time. The first hit for ‘Christianity’ is by a paleontologist, which is quite amusing in the circumstances, but the first hit for ‘Islam’ is a book called ‘Abortion’. I honestly didn’t see that coming.
Karen Locke
January 18, 2013 at 4:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The notion that knowledge is power is lost on the very people who need to understand it the most.
Captain Mike
January 18, 2013 at 5:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Karen Locke: NEVER LET THEM LEARN THAT! They have a nasty tendency to use whatever power they can get to beat and bully.
atheist
January 18, 2013 at 6:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oddly, Rep. Walter Jones has been a prominent voice calling for the US to engage Iran diplomatically. For instance, last February he and Muslim Representative Keith Ellison jointly circulated a congressional letter calling on President Obama to redouble US efforts toward a diplomatic agreement. Perhaps Mr. Jones feels oddly conflicted about this pro-peace stance? People can be hard to understand.
Hugo
January 18, 2013 at 6:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I just went to the Craven Community College Library electronic catalog. (Results are not judged by relevancy, merely by quantity).
Searching by keyword, the results are:
Christianity: 126
Jesus: 81
Bible: 133
TOTAL: 340
Judaism: 46
Moses: 45
Torah: 5
TOTAL: 96
Islam: 76
Mohammad: 27
Koran/Qur’an: 9 and 6, respectively.
TOTAL: 128
Now, since he said himself he wants to have a Judeo-Christian book for every book on Islam, then I propose the school be granted extra money to buy 306 books and 2 DVDs. Clearly 25 books and 1 DVD are not going to cut it for him.
Don’t know how to link, but here it is.
http://louise.nccommunitycolleges.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=V1oFMLHNq5/CRAVEN/316690297/123
Childermass
January 18, 2013 at 9:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
25 books and a DVD is like nothing. I would expect a library of a small city to match that.
vmanis1
January 19, 2013 at 9:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
`Judeo-Christian’ means `Christian’, unless you believe that Jesus simultaneously was and was not the Messiah.