Kosher wine and antidiscrimination law

[Mark Graber]

This seems wrong.  I would, for example, trust Professor Duncan more than a first year pro-choice law student to recommend to an influential defense of Roe v. Wade (similarly, when asked to recommend a pro-life, as opposed to anti-ROE, attack on abortion from a legal standpoint, I recommend John Noonan).  A person with expertise on Islam might well know more about what works appeal to believers than a believer (who might well have idiocyncratic tastes).

Mark A. Graber
mgraber at gvpt.umd.edu

>>> conlawprof at YAHOO.COM 12/18/00 18:54 PM >>>
Paul Finkelman mistakes a religious bookstore for an
academic bookstore. The fact that a non-believer has a
BA in Islamic studies does not qualify him or her one
bit to recommend which books are most likely to
enhance the spiritual life of an Islamic believer.

I would never ask an atheist to recommend a a Bible or
a book on Christian prayer, and it would make no
difference to me that the atheist had a PhD in
theology. To understand the *spiritual value* of a
book, one must be a believer.

I would not be offended one bit if I were denied
employment by an Islamic bookstore because I am a
Christian. It is perfectly reasonable to take my lack
of belief into account, just as it would be reasonable
for a Civil Rights bookstore to refuse to hire David
Duke as a clerk because of his KKK philosophy. Who
would trust David Duke's recommendations for books on
civil rights (regardless of how much he knows about
the literature)?

--Rick Duncan