03 June 2007

Answer to an Email

One of my friends, who prefers to remain anonymous, sent me an Email and questioned my last article which was about our university. I really appreciate her sending this Email since I know it was hard for her to do so. However I don’t think my answers to her questions convince her, because she really believes I am a self-centered egomaniac! Therefore I think she won’t even really think about them.

She wrote:
“I think the university is not just a place for studying and learning our courses. We call it Islamic university, so it should promote religious believes as well as other things. Maybe there is extravagance in some aspects, but we cannot controvert this fact.
What is the problem with these boards?
If you don’t like them, don’t look at them. It's your personal right. But the university is for all students, and not just for you, me and some other students.”


I completely agree with the idea that university is not just a place for learning some courses, but I think this is its main goal. How would you feel if you enter a mosque and see that all the walls and boards are covered with definitions of translation and its theories! Although gaining knowledge is strongly recommended in religion it would be an inappropriate situation since a mosque is a place for praying and if there are some scientific activities being done there, they should not be the main focus of the people.

The boards with politic themes are obviously government’s propagandas and I don’t see any reason to explain why they shouldn’t exist in the university. I also don’t want to discuss about the authorities’ right to promote their religious ideas in a public place, even if “they” call it Islamic University. Actually I don’t consider a university which has students wearing such a T-shirt an Islamic one. (I took this photo in the campus last week.)


Have you ever thought where the budgets for all these things come from? Every semester approximately 6000 Tomans of every student’s tuition is added to the budget of Culture Office. Supposing that there are almost 5000 students in the university, the whole budget for this office is 30,000,000 Tomans each semester! Have you ever thought that if some of the students are paying this money unwillingly (who obviously are) not only making these boards but even the ceremonies which are held by this office for praying would not be acceptable from Islamic point of view? The problem about these boards is that they are made with illegal money.

Losing freedom is bad enough; let’s not make it worse by forgetting it.

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