UA needs to accommodate Jewish students during Passover

As a freshman living on campus, my main source of food for meals is the different unions and restaurants on campus that accept CatCards. Now we all know that there isn’t much variety on campus and people tend to get sick of the food very quickly.

With the Jewish holiday of Passover approaching this week, I am concerned with the university not offering food options to meet the eating restrictions of the holiday. One of the biggest and main eating restrictions is not eating bread or anything that rises with yeast. With a lot of food on campus being based around carbs and bread, I will find it very difficult to observe the holiday and not feel like I am going out of my way.

In place of bread, we eat something called matzo and it would be helpful if it were at least sold in some of the unions. It is hard to be away from home for the first time for the holiday and it would be helpful if the university recognized Jewish students’ needs.

Megan Stolberg

pre-business freshman

U.S. should ignore UN’s attempt to curb religious criticism

Taylor Kessinger’s piece should be widely read and appreciated (“”Religions don’t need UN protection,”” April 3, 2009). I admire his continued devotion to secular humanism and the pillars of logic, reasoning and intellectual honesty that support it.

May I put forward that, contrary to Kessinger’s claim, Christopher Hitchens is no longer a card-carrying liberal and atheist. Such a flimsy and loose definition would, I assume, make him wince. A ‘polemical antitheist’ edges nearer to the truth.

At one stage in his piece, Kessinger argues that Qu’ranic and Hadithic verses “”can be interpreted”” to advocate the “”oppression of women.”” Here, one must go further and cite instances of such oppression, including the throwing of acid in the face of girls on their way to school, the beating of wives, often with blunt instruments, and the genital mutilation of female babies, which properly ordained, includes the slicing off of the clitoris with a sharp stone, and the partial sewing up of the labia with yarn.

Of course, I can fully understand if Kessinger felt compelled to withhold much of his findings for fear of needlessly stirring reactionary and potentially dangerous opinion. Indeed, Islam in this country and much of the West poses as a piddling minority whose faith one might offend and is, therefore, worthy of as much legislative protection as it can get. Couple this with guilty connections often made between Islam and the developing world, and one can see why this United Nations resolution passed.

Globally, Islam is a gigantic power, controller of vast amounts of oil wealth and several large states and provinces, exporter of fear and tribalism, distributor of religious totalitarianism, and an exponent of death and murder. I fear that as I continue I risk the editor choosing to ignore my letter. Unfortunately, if the United States succumbs to the dismal pleas of the UN, and, in doing so, violates the First Amendment, the editor may not even have that choice.

Robert Iddiols

English sophomore