Muhammad Goes to College

We all knew that colleges were liberally biased, but we didn’t know they supported Islamist extremists? The recent pandemonium over the Muhammad cartoons has cost Denmark an embassy and a few human lives. So much for free speech. Oh wait, that doesn’t exist in radical Islam or American college campuses.

The Daily Illini, the campus newspaper of the University of Illinois, recently reprinted the controversial cartoon that depicts Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb. While most of the world says, “how fitting,” the University of Illinois is having hemorrhages over the politically in- er, correct cartoons. Sadly, the cartoons are a relatively accurate portrayal of the so-called “religion of peace” today.

Inasmuch as most American institutions of higher education are quite sensitive to factual representations of reality, the editors of the Daily Illini have been suspended for reprinting the controversial cartoons. Chancellor Richard Herman maintains that “a discussion about the controversial Danish cartoons could have taken place without republishing them.” In other words, students needn’t see the controversial cartoons and make up their own minds; rather, liberal professors will tell them the correct opinion to hold.

While the university takes every step imaginable to protect Muslims from any sort of mockery, former chancellor Michael Aiken saw nothing offensive about displaying “art” depicting red glass vaginas hanging from Roman Catholic cathedrals in Europe, two of which had red holy water cruets with crosses on them. In a response to a letter from William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, Aiken regretted that Catholics found the art offensive, saying that it gave students the opportunity to “contemplate and reflect on topics as diverse as the body, the Church, and architectural and religious symbolism.” In other words, tough luck, Mr. Donohue.

I wonder, since Aiken didn’t seem to mind grotesque images of the Catholic Church, whether or not the university’s next exhibit could display a portrait of the prophet Muhammad with female body parts? Not only would it be interesting, but feminist would love it as it would subvert the dominant paradigm that says Muhammad is a man.

Fat chance.