Muslim grad tried to kill students in N. Carolina

Woodmonkey · 03-04-2006, 17:07

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Muslim grad tried to kill students in N. Carolina

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FBI involved in probe of Carolina student accused of driving SUV through crowd, injuring six

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The FBI has joined the investigation of a recent college graduate who faces attempted murder charges for allegedly injuring bystanders after driving a sport utility vehicle through a popular campus gathering spot.

No one was seriously hurt in the incident at the University of North Carolina on Friday.

The FBI joined the case because 22-year-old Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a native of Iran, “allegedly made statements that he acted to avenge the American treatment of Muslims,” said agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington. “The ongoing investigation will work to confirm this.”

Taheri-azar, who graduated in December after studying psychology and philosophy, was in the custody of campus police. They intended to charge him with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, said police Capt. George Hare.

Taheri-azar called police to surrender and then awaited officers on a street two miles from campus, authorities said.

Local investigators declined to discuss a motive.

The incident happened just before noon near the center of campus in an area known as The Pit, a sunken, brick-paved area surrounded by two libraries, a dining hall and the student union.

“I see everyone kind of part because there's a car coming through, and the next thing I know, I'm on his windshield,” sophomore Jeff Hoffman, his arm in a bandage, told The Daily Tar Heel, the campus newspaper.

The Pit is a center of campus activities, with students perched along walkways and steps. Friday's noontime crowd included candidates for Black Student Movement elections.

“He slowly came in, and I thought he was going to stop or something,” sophomore Scott Wilson, a candidate, told the newspaper. “But then he sped right through.”

Five students and a visiting scholar were treated for minor injuries and released from UNC Hospitals, the university said in a statement. Three other people declined treatment at the scene, police said.

A bomb squad searched Taheri-azar's apartment in nearby Carrboro and declared the building safe. Taheri-azar encouraged authorities to check the apartment after he was arrested.

“He said it almost in a baiting type of way,” Carrboro police spokesman Capt. Joel Booker said.

Investigators declined to say what they found in the apartment and continued searching it Friday night for other evidence, Booker said.

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Snowden · 03-04-2006, 17:27

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Originally Posted by Woodmonkey

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Yet I remember the University of North Carolina was one of the first universities - if not the first - to insist their incoming freshman students read a book about Islam to familiarize them with it and have "good" thoughts about it.

I don't have a URL for this - it's something I remember, although the title of the book eludes me. If my son remembers when he comes to pick up his son tonight (and I remember to ask him!) I will add that in an edit to this post.

This in particular caught my eye:

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Taheri-azar, who graduated in December after studying psychology and philosophy, was in the custody of campus police.

Interesting subjects for him to be studying.

Woodmonkey · 03-04-2006, 18:00

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Originally Posted by Snowden

Yet I remember the University of North Carolina was one of the first universities - if not the first - to insist their incoming freshman students read a book about Islam to familiarize them with it and have "good" thoughts about it.

I don't have a URL for this - it's something I remember, although the title of the book eludes me. If my son remembers when he comes to pick up his son tonight (and I remember to ask him!) I will add that in an edit to this post.

I think that's the school. It was made mandatory for them. I think that enough of a stink was raised that they dropped that requirement. It was Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations.

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University's Quran Reading Stirs Controversy

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NEW YORK — What could be a better way to start a college career than by reading from a Good Book?

Plenty, if the book in question is the Quran and your country has been attacked by Muslim terrorists, according to one pro-family group.

Virginia-based Family Policy Network is taking aim at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for requiring all incoming freshmen this fall to read a book about the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

"Today I am ashamed to admit that I am a graduate of UNC," FPN chairman and 1981 Chapel Hill graduate Terry Moffitt said in a statement earlier this year. "The entire university system in North Carolina should be ashamed of itself for forcing a religion on students that many will find not only offensive, but totally opposed to their own religious views."

The book flap started when the university announced the 3,500 freshmen in the Class of 2006 will be reading Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations. The book translates and discusses the earliest 35 suras, the first words Muslims believe God revealed to the prophet Mohammed. The students will read the book during orientation week in mid-August and discuss it for "a couple of hours" in groups of 20 to 25 led by faculty members, according to UNC Chancellor James Moeser.

"This was a book chosen in the wake of Sept. 11," Moeser said. "A fifth of the world’s population subscribes to the Islamic religion and yet it’s not a well-understood religion. This is a great opportunity to have a conversation on the teachings of one of the world’s great religions."

The school selects a different book for the freshmen every year to introduce them to college-level intellectual discourse. Last year, incoming freshmen were required to read Confederates in the Attic, about the neo-Confederate movement.

But Moffitt argued this year's selection amounts to state support for one religion over another.

"I think the University of North Carolina would allow any religion to be studied except for Christianity," Moffitt said in a telephone interview. "Why not make Islamic students read from the Bible?"

Moffitt wants students to have an option to study other religions, and says the school should drop its "pro-Islam stance." Moffitt said the group has also sent a letter asking the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina to help overturn the requirement.

Moffitt, who has not read Approaching the Qur’an, said he fears the students will get an incomplete picture of Islam, a politically correct view formed from only part of the entire holy book.

"It’s not going to show the good and the bad, it’s going to paint Islam just as a peaceful, loving religion," he said.

That's not the case, according to the book’s author, Michael Sells, a professor of comparative religion at Haverford College.

"The book is not called Islam. I think that (Moffitt is) misinterpreting what the book is," Sells said. "The purpose of a book is to give a sense of why a billion people belong to the tradition. It makes no judgment about Islam or the Quran as a whole. … My premise is there’s more to Islam than controversy and wars."

Moeser said reading passages of the Quran doesn’t mean students will be taught the Islamic view of life is the correct one.

"We’ll read this just as we read the Communist Manifesto to study Marx or The Little Red Book to study the Cultural Revolution," he said. "This is an attempt to understand a religion, not to promulgate its beliefs."

Seth Jaffe, staff attorney for the ACLU of North Carolina, said there is no prohibition against a state university requiring a class about religion, as long as it doesn't promote one over the other. "We are keeping an eye on it, but so far it does not seem to be problematic," he said.

Sells said he wasn’t surprised by the controversy. "I can’t think of any book in creation that, if you required 3,000 first-year students to read, someone wouldn’t object to," he said.

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BrianK · 03-05-2006, 03:41

Could it be that he learned enough to doubt that there would be 71 virgins waiting for him? I guess that demonstartes the value of higher education. He was angry but not stupid enough to blow himself and others to smithereens as a suicide bomber.

For that I am thankful.

Snowden · 03-05-2006, 09:25

That's it, Katie - and thanks for finding it. This stands out:

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The book flap started when the university announced the 3,500 freshmen in the Class of 2006 will be reading Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations. The book translates and discusses the earliest 35 suras, the first words Muslims believe God revealed to the prophet Mohammed.

This is one reason there should have been an outcry, I believe. The early suras are rather peaceful, but what is so seldom understood about Islam is that the early suras are overruled by those that follow.

This isn't the Bible; the Qur'an isn't something that was written down and kept unchanged for centuries - it was memorized, much forgotten or lost by the death of the person who had memorized it. Add to that the fact that many who survived Mohammad, after collecting the 'sayings' of "the Prophet," added to those passages, and that even the law, that infamous Shari'a, was added after Mohammad's death, and you see where it is quite different in every way from the Scriptures of the Jews, which we Christians call the Old Testament, and the books of the New Testament.

Simply, it is unique in every way, and to read or study only the first 35 suras gives a very different outlook on Islam than if one were to study all of it in the proper order and with the correct understanding.

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He was angry but not stupid enough to blow himself and others to smithereens as a suicide bomber.

For that I am thankful.

Me too, Brian! I wonder if we'll ever have an understanding of this! This young man is a puzzle!

m60-gunner · 03-05-2006, 12:03

This is just the beginning. At this point in our history we need to be very careful on who comes in to the US, and what certain people are doing. Racial Profiling may sound like raciasm, but we had better be careful. Of course I'm almost beleiveing that mondays headline will be, ACLU defends driver because of religious freedom. I apologize that I am not Polictically Correct. I call a spade a spade. To me it's better to be inconvinenced and have your feelings hurt then have a incident like this or worse.
I hope I am wrong but I got a bad feeling that this is just the beginning.

03-05-2006, 12:08	#7 (permalink)
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