On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the traditional 40-day Christian fast leading up to Easter, Harvard Yard was not bedecked with symbols of the coming holy season but instead resounded with the chant of the Islamic call to prayer. It is a peculiar feature of tolerance at Harvard to extend every courtesy to religions other than Christianity, while the beginning of the majority religion's holiest season passes without comment or understanding. The responsibility for this may, in part, be placed with those Christians who would rather go unnoticed than request for themselves the same servile flattery that other religious groups demand. If Harvard's Christians did such a thing, what might it look like?

The nearest equivalent of a Christian "publicity campaign" at Harvard is the Veritas Forum, a low-profile series of events with only the vaguest attachment to specifically Christian principles. This year's panels were a dissipated collection of social justice tropes about poverty and American international power, so disjointed from Christianity proper that Alan Dershowitz felt right at home participating. One gets the sense that the best argument Christians give on their own behalf today is that they are just as secular and open-minded as everyone else. But why bother with a forum devoted to explaining Christian perspectives if one fails to explain Christian principles?

Just as campus Muslims are outraged when non-Muslims violate their religious taboo not to depict Muhammad, enterprising participants in Christian Awareness Week could demand that Harvard dining halls accommodate Lenten dietary restrictions for Fridays: no meat must be served. The Crimson would cease referring simply to "Jesus Christ" and address Him as "Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ the King," just at the newspaper refers to "the Prophet Mohammed" sometimes with the appended parenthetical clause "Peace Be Upon Him." Ashes would be distributed at the beginning of classes on Ash Wednesday, and there would be triumphal processions through Harvard Yard on Easter, and of course on other great feasts as well. Perhaps a "Christian Awareness Week" would include a panel presentation about the oppression of Christians in Islamic states. Few people know, for example, that the 20th century offered the greatest number of Christian martyrs of any since the time of Christ. Almost none dare to question the myth of Islamic tolerance of Christians, whose lives under sharia are far more difficult than Muslims' lives under liberal Western laws.

But none of this would happen at Harvard, because Christianity, and especially Catholicism, is seen as the last bastion of patriarchy, Eurocentrism, and even authoritarian tendencies that liberals fear are lurking in the background. What Harvard balks at when it comes from Christians, they eagerly accord to the participants of Islamic Awareness Week. Nothing but sheer ignorance could account for why such a flagrant display of propaganda and proselytism is not merely tolerated but brought into the heart of Harvard Yard. For Islamic Awareness Week is much more sinister than the happy face its organizers have pinned on it.

Two events, including "Islam 101," were run by the Council on American'Islamic Relations (CAIR), a seemingly innocuous organization. In fact, it was founded by former officials of the Islamic Association for Palestine, Hamas' front group. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, CAIR attempted to convince Americans to donate to an emergency relief fund operated by the Holy Land Foundation, and then to the Global Relief Foundation—two terrorist front groups whose assets were later frozen. In the words of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), "we know CAIR has ties to terrorism." Yet this group runs Islamic Awareness Week's basic information session on Islam?

Or consider the posters the Harvard Islamic Society has put up across campus. "Jesus: messiah. Mary: virgin mother. (on them be peace)." Or another: "Prophet Muhammad's first wife proposed to him. (she was older, too)." It is misleading enough for these posters to imply that Muslims accept Christ as the Messiah, since the Koran explicitly denies that Christ died on the Cross. What is worse, the Koran says: "Declare war upon those to whom the Scriptures were revealed but believe neither in God nor the Last Day...The Jews claim that Ezra is a son of God, and the Christians say, 'The Messiah is a son of God.' Those are their claims that do indeed resemble the sayings of the infidels of old. May God do battle with them!" (9:29-30). Is the full implication of Muhammad's first wife being older—that there were subsequent (and concurrent) wives, including a seven-year-old girl—really comprehended? When will this make it onto their posters?

One suspects that the film Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet—scheduled to be shown this evening at the Kennedy School—will also be a whitewash. Will it depict the violence employed by Muhammad to consolidate his power in Medina, including Muhammad's near destruction of the Jewish tribes in his area, and the violation of his own truce as he conquered Mecca?

Christianity cannot even be allowed to show its face in public at Harvard: Christmas trees are mitigated and banned from Harvard dining halls; there is no commemoration of the highest Christian holy days; and Harvard's own Memorial Church has become a playground for secular humanism. It is one of the worst ironies of Harvard today that accusations of human rights abuse and patriarchy are leveled against Christianity for its medieval wrongdoings—see Arianne Plasencia's letter on page 11—even while a faith whose own problems of this sort belong to the modern realm has carte blanche to proselytize and to lie.

 —The Editors