briefs

(U-WIRE) PHILADELPHIA – On the day of the Pennsylvania primary, choosing a candidate will… (U-WIRE) PHILADELPHIA – On the day of the Pennsylvania primary, choosing a candidate will be the hardest part. But in some other states, registering to vote can be an even bigger challenge.

As the youth vote becomes increasingly pivotal this election year, young voters are facing additional requirements before they are allowed to cast a ballot at their respective voting precincts.

“Students often face requirements not extended to the rest of the country,” Sujatha Jahagirdar, the program director of Student Public Interest Research Groups’ New Voters Project, said.

Students in Pennsylvania, however, have been fortunate because voters casting a ballot in a certain precinct for the first time must show identification, but there are not specific requirements for students.

But Jahagirdar cited several instances in South Carolina, Virginia, Maine, Arizona and New Mexico in which students could not register to vote on their college campuses. In Virginia, for example, out-of-state students are required to vote in the state where they are “dependent on tax returns,” “dependent on parents,” or where a “scholarship requires legal residence.”

“Those regulations send the message that students aren’t welcome,” Jahagirdar said.

When voting at a precinct for the first time in Pennsylvania, either photo or non-photo identification is accepted. Like any law, voter identification requirements change from state to state. – Colin Kavanaugh, Daily Pennsylvanian (U. Penn)

(U-WIRE) DURHAM, N.C. – Students in the Muslim Cultures Focus at Duke University group will make history this Valentine’s Day.

In the first exchange program of its kind, nine Focus students – six freshmen and three sophomores – plan to depart for Saudi Arabia Thursday. The students will travel around the country for a week prior to attending the Jeddah Economic Forum for an additional week as part of their Focus learning experience.

The conference, created in 1999, serves as a think tank for economic policy in the Middle East. Its featured speakers will include Prince Charles of Great Britain, former chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, and Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Eleven students from several Saudi Arabian colleges arrived on Duke’s campus Thursday as part of the exchange program. The students have spent the last week visiting local businesses and research institutions and enjoying elements of Duke’s culture. The Saudi students will then return to their country with the Duke students after traveling to Washington, D.C. – Zak Kazzaz, The Chronicle (Duke)

(U-WIRE) PRINCETON, N.J. – Wikipedia.org, the popular online encyclopedia run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, has sparked heated reactions from Muslims who object to the site’s inclusion of images of the prophet Muhammad in an article bearing his name.

“There have been complaints from Muslims saying ‘it offends me personally’ or ‘it offends my religion,'” Wikipedia spokesman Dan Rosenthal said.

An online petition, which surfaced in early December 2007 and has since gathered more than 134,000 signatures, is requesting that Wikipedia remove images of the Prophet, citing the teaching in Islam that forbids images of the Prophet and all living creatures. Signatories to the petition claim that the presence of the images in the article is insensitive and offensive.

Traditional Islamic law does in fact forbid humans from creating images and depictions of living creatures in religious contexts because God is the one and only creator, said Princeton art and archaeology professor Thomas Leisten, who specializes in Islamic art history. For an artist to create an image of a living thing is equivalent to assuming the status of God, he explained.

“Islam is not a monolithic entity,” Leisten said. “There are many Islamic cultures, some in which images are frowned upon, or forbidden, and some in which images have their place.”

Depictions of Muhammad appeared for the first time in the early 14th century in illustrated manuscripts compiled by the Mongols as collections of history, Leisten said. For several centuries around this time period, the majority of Muslims did not object to displaying a depiction of Muhammad, he explained. – Sarah Pease-Kerr, The Daily Princetonian (Princeton)