I was a religious student who had to 'look away'

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"Why do I have to look away?" asked Aram Wedatalla, the president of the Muslim Student Association at Hamline University, who was offended that adjunct instructor Erika López Prater showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad during an art history class at the private St. Paul college.

Wedatalla was so offended that she complained to Hamline administrators who did not offer Prater another teaching assignment.

Hamline's decision created an uproar, and rightly so ("Hamline stirs up academic row," Jan. 10). The university was wrong in caving to the demand of a student who sought to impose her personal religious beliefs on an entire art class.

In the 1970s and 1980s, I was that religious student who had to look away. More than look away, I routinely left class.

I left gym class while they taught dancing. I left health class during sex ed. I left the regular classroom during a segment that my parents deemed "humanistic" and not appropriate for someone of our faith. When other students watched movies, I went to the library.

My husband grew up Jehovah's Witness. He remained silent while the class recited the Pledge of Allegiance. He sat in the hall when other students sang Christmas songs. He kept to himself when other students sang "happy birthday."

Not once did he or his family insist that the school not recite the Pledge, or sing Christmas songs, or wish each other happy birthday.

To insist on these things would have been imposing our personal religious beliefs on everyone else. I was happy that the school respected our beliefs enough to allow us to sit out activities that clashed with them. America is a place where we are free to exercise our beliefs, not a place where we are free to impose them on others, as the Hamline student and administration chose to do.

Often, our religious beliefs do cause us not to fit in. If our religious beliefs are important to us, I figure that's a worthwhile price to pay.

I ask Hamline to immediately apologize to Prater, to offer her teaching opportunities, and to extend greater academic security to all of its adjunct staff. I ask Wedatalla to withdraw her complaint and consider apologizing not only to the professor but to all the students affected by her desire for religious-based censorship.