University Rebukes Gay-Bashing Muslim Employee
Charles Johnson
Sun Jul 31, 2005 at 11:18 am PDT • Views: 253
Political correctness collides head-on with hard-line Islam at a New Jersey university. Pandemonium ensues. (Hat tip: cimom.)
A state university in New Jersey has reprimanded a student-employee for describing homosexuality as a “perversion” in a private e-mail that he sent a female professor, after she sent him an unsolicited announcement about a university event that promoted lesbian relationships.
But Jihad Daniel, 63, who works for William Paterson University repairing computer hardware and takes graduate-level courses part time, said he was only expressing his Muslim religious beliefs when he responded to professor Arlene Holpp Scala, head of the university’s women’s studies department.
Mr. Daniel wants a letter of reprimand from the university’s president removed from his permanent employee file. The letter says he violated state discrimination and harassment regulations for using the term “perversion.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit group based in Philadelphia that is assisting Mr. Daniel in his fight with the university, calls the action taken against him “absurd” and an infringement of his free-speech rights. “William Paterson University is knowingly disregarding the U.S. Constitution. No one here was ‘harassed’ or ‘threatened,’ as defined by the law. The university simply strongly disliked a student’s point of view,” said Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy.
Mr. Daniel received an e-mail from Miss Scala on March 7 advertising an upcoming viewing and discussion of the film “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House.” The e-mail referred to the film as a “lesbian relationship story.”
Mr. Daniel replied to the professor the next day asking that he not be sent “any mail about ‘Connie and Sally’… and ‘Adam and Steve.’?”
“These are perversions,” Mr. Daniel wrote. “The absence of God in higher education brings on confusion. That is why in these classes the creator of the heavens and the universe is never mentioned.”
Frank says: