The Satanic Verses is a book that I would not assign in a course in Islamic or Middle East history.

The novel alienates Muslims. It disturbs religious people who are not Muslims. It combines clever puns, vivid scenes and memorable incidents with a mean attack on nearly every belief that Muslims hold dear.

I must take issue with International Student Council President Abbas Aminmansour, whom I otherwise like and respect, when he says that you have to be brought up in the Muslim community to understand why the book is offensive (The Daily Collegian, Jan. 26).

Anyone who has taken a course or read a book or an article about Islam can see that a novel that mocks Muslim beliefs and mores will be painful for Muslims to have to read.

In deciding whether to require the book in a Penn State course, its teacher must choose between two clashing principles that liberal professors cherish.

Academic freedom is a vital issue to those of us who are devoting our lives to learning and teaching. We condemn any call to curtail teachers' rights to choose the books or articles they assign, to say what they want to their students inside (or outside) the classroom or to prescribe the experiments they will conduct or to assign the projects on which they will write.

We know that hobbling our freedom to teach saps at the base of the academic community and poisons the process by which knowledge is gathered, disseminated and preserved.

If the conclusion to your interview with Aminmansour, threatening "a stronger reaction" from the University's Muslim community, implies forceful intimidation of a faculty member, I take issue with him there, too. But freedom is not the only issue.

As members of an academic community, we also acknowledge that our University is part of a larger society, serving men and women of many backgrounds, ages, countries and faiths. What we do and say affects our students, our colleagues, our society, our nation and our world.

We have tacitly agreed not to say or to do anything that would foster racism or sexism, hatred of other countries or cultures, or oppression of groups up to now excluded from power. We believe that equal, if it is to be a reality and not just a slogan, can only be achieved once all students, teachers and staff know that they truly belong to the Penn State community.

We do not mean to exclude Afro-Americans, women, gays and lesbians, Catholics or Jews. Should Muslims, now almost a thousand of our students, be different?

Certain works of art have turned into symbols. Most Jews object to teaching The Merchant of Venice and many Afro-Americans complain about Huckleberry Finn, because these literary works symbolize, to them, that their thoughts and feelings matter less than those of Gentiles, or whites.

Many women would not want Deep Throat shown in a film course. When Muslims see The Satanic Verses as a course assignment, they feel they are not full members of the Penn State community.

Muslims have lived in this country for more than a century, but only lately have they entered the mainstreams of American life. For more than a millennium, Muslims and Christians have fought and argued against each other for their beliefs. The heritage of that confrontation is feelings of mutual distrust and cultural alienation.

Salman Rushdie is undoubtedly a good author. If we are defining a canon of post-modern English writers, he surely belongs within that group.

But has he not written other novels, Midnight's Children perhaps, that might be used to introduce him to students in a graduate seminar?

Do not stop selling The Satanic Verses in the bookstores, or acquiring it for our libraries. If students ask to read it as part of their work for a relevant course, let them.

But let freedom to teach be balanced by our need for community.