The merits of tolerance

Allow me to explain the founding of the facebook.com group Campus Jihad for Allah. It began in K-Ville last year, where the evangelical Christian group CRU was handing out mugs decorated with its logo. I soon discovered CRU stands for Campus CRUsade for Christ. Though I am a Christian, I thought it odd that any religious group on campus should adopt the word "crusade" as part of its name while facing little or no criticism. Sure the alliteration is nice, but we all know that the word "crusade" refers to the centuries-long Christian military campaign to seize the Holy Land from its occupants. The Crusades were wars fueled by ignorance and hate that resulted in the senseless deaths of thousands of Muslims and Jews. In the context of Christianity, the word "crusade" carries this violent connotation, and as a Christian, I feel that the Crusades leave a stain on my religion. In contrast, the word "jihad" is more important to most Muslims as a peaceful spiritual struggle, which could reasonably be included in the name of a Muslim student organization.

While sipping hot chocolate out of this mug in K-Ville, I decided to create a facebook.com group to indicate the double standard. The facebook.com page for Campus Jihad for Allah (JIH) is a parody of the most popular of six Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) groups on facebook. The logo is merely the above-mentioned mug with "CRU" crossed out and replaced with my group's name. As for the student who has a link in his profile to the Al Qaeda training manual, that link is hosted by the Department of Justice; our government, concerned as it is with its War on Terrorism, has no problem showing the world this manual, and so fail to understand why you some students are offended that an undergraduate provides a link to it. The group most certainly is not, as critics say, a joke about the murder of Americans and Israelis; rather, it is a warning of the dangers of abandoning religious tolerance.

Alec Gibson

Trinity '07