Unbelievable. This country is going to hell in a handbasket.

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this year, the university in Chapel Hill is asking all 3,500 incoming freshmen to read a book about Islam and finds itself besieged in federal court and across the airwaves by Christian evangelists and other conservatives.

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But a national TV talk show host, Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly, compared the assignment to teaching "Mein Kampf" in 1941 and questioned the purpose of making freshmen study "our enemy's religion."

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To the university's critics, it's about maintaining America's moral backbone in the war on terrorism.

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But some evangelical Christian leaders -- including the Rev. Franklin Graham, who gave the invocation at Bush's inauguration -- have denounced Islam since Sept. 11 as an "evil" religion. Despite the furor those remarks have caused, Graham repeated in radio and television appearances this week that the Koran preaches violence and that terrorism is supported by "mainstream" Muslims around the world.

Welcome to Amerikkka!

A Timely Subject -- and a Sore One (washingtonpost.com) [Islamic studies at UNC]