North Carolina Terrorists Win

The strange, evil foreign muezzin sending waves of sharia out across defenseless Durham. No wait, it's only a Duke student, Ibrahim Saber, rehearsing the three-minutes-a-week performance inviting his friends to perform their religious obligations, which is now not going to take place because some heavily armed Christians seem to object. Photo via WRAL radio.

That is, the plan for the Muslim Students Association at Duke University to use the chapel bell tower as a minaret to broadcast one Friday call to prayer each week—prayers have been held in the chapel basement for years, and nobody's complained about that—has been scrapped.

Not apparently because of the efforts of Reverend Franklin Graham and his brothers in bigotry to get university donors to make financial threats to the university:

Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, wrote on Facebook: “As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering and beheading Christians, Jews and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism. I call on the donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed.”

But because of physical threats:

A Duke administrator had earlier touted the move as a way to promote religious inclusiveness at the school. But the university received hundreds of calls and emails, “many of which were quite vitriolic,” [vice president for public affairs Michael] Schoenfeld said. “The level of vitriol in the responses was unlike any other controversy we have seen here in quite some time.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2015/01/15/5449154/franklin-graham-slams-duke-over.html#.VLkHZ2TF_go#storylink=cpy

It was a pretty sweet idea, if you happen to believe that there's room for people of more than one religion on a great university campus:

For many, the inclusion of the Adhan was a welcome way to unify the student body and celebrate their differing faiths as the director of Duke’s Islamic Studies Center claimed in an email to The Huffington Post. He wrote, “Almost everyone that has written in has celebrated it as a sign of Duke University’s commitment to creating a welcoming and pluralistic community.”

But some people off campus didn't feel that way, and expressed their feelings in a somewhat intimidating fashion. That's what terrorism is. You frighten people into doing what you want:

Schoenfeld said Thursday night that a “serious and credible” security threat was one of the reasons for the decision. University officials declined to elaborate.

Omid Safi, director of Duke’s Islamic Studies Center, said Thursday evening that the call to prayer was scaled back because of “a number of credible threats against Muslim students, faculty and staff.” The school, he said “is treating this as a criminal matter” and that the threats are “external.”

I don't even think about blaming the university administration for giving in. They're not being cowardly on their own account but careful on the accounts of the students under their protection, and those kids are the most important.

HOW COME I DON'T HEAR ANY OUTRAGE FROM THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY ON THIS? WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE, HUH? WHERE ARE THE TWEETS DENOUNCING CHRISTIAN EXTREMISTS? WHERE'S THE MILLION-CHRISTIAN MARCH?