So, you choose to attend a college called Trinity, and then are incensed when the diploma mentions Jesus Christ? 

I'm sure there are some that would find this to be some sort of bizarre coincidence, a further example of how for greater understanding and peacefulness, an institution needs to modify it's practices so that nobody is offended.  I'm sure to many this only makes sense.  What's the big deal?

I'm not one of those people.

"A diploma is a very personal item" says the president of the group and happens to be Muslim.

No, a diploma is not a very personal item.  That's the point of a diploma.  A diploma is an institutional item.  It's supposed to be an objective demonstration of your ability to complete a process.  It's an institution's reputation in print that you have adequately demonstrated a mastery of a curriculum.  The institution is putting it's reputation on the line that you will represent them well.  In fact, you don't want a personalized diploma.  What you want is a diploma that links you solidly with all the other people who have attended and enriched that institution, and gone on to do good things in their community.  Your credibility is not a separate issue, but part and parcel of the university's credibility.  Your own degree and experience is supposed to benefit from and be representative of the experience and degrees of everyone else.

The diploma is personal only insofar as it's your name on the diploma.  You satisfied the requirements to receive it, you did the work.  The diploma is personal in that it represents your choice of an institution.  It says something about your decision-making.  It might demonstrate the choice you made in educational institutions, or it might reflect your choice to even complete a degree despite financial or other constraints. 

But it's not a personal item beyond that. 

What's equally disturbing in this situation is that the university itself now has to examine itself to determine whether or not it's a Christian educational institution, or an educational institution that just happens to have been started by Christians.  While this story makes it sound more like the former, a quick perusal of their website makes a much stronger argument for the latter. 

The only place I could find mention of faith issues was here, in the Student Life area of the website.  The page appears to be the chaplaincy page, which the article mentions as evidence that the school really is Christian and by implication, that the demand of this small group of students is unreasonable.  Unfortunately, the wording on the page doesn't lead one to assume this.

"The mission of the chaplaincy..." - not the university as a whole, but just the chaplaincy. 

"...is to lead those who follow Christ..." - not everyone, not all nations (as Matthew 28:16-20 would remind Christians), but just those who already feel comfortable describing themselves as Christian.  Evangelization is not the emphasis here, but rather providing limited service to the portion of the student body who probably assumed the school is Christian.

"...to support those of every faith, and to serve all who call Trinity home." - Christians are to accommodate everyone else.  No wonder the Muslim leader of Trinity Diversity Connection feels so comfortable in issuing demands.  At the very least, the chaplaincy of Trinity sort of sets the expectation that those demands are reasonable and ought to be tolerated and supported.  

I find it interesting that the chaplaincy doesn't identify Christian growth or leadership development or discipleship or evangelization as goals.  Rather, the goal the chaplaincy holds out for Christians is to accommodate everyone else.  Don't get me wrong - I'm all for respect (which is not the same as tolerance, as I've talked about before).  But if this is the best goal that the chaplaincy of a school called "Trinity" can put together, clearly the emphasis is not on Christianity - and the rest of the page bears this out rather brutally. 

This would appear to be a school that is eager to be seen as endorsing and affirming of all and any belief, despite it's Christian heritage and nomenclature.  It appears to be a school that has decided in the last 40+ years that the cultural call to diversity and to avoidance of Christianity is something to be embraced.  The reasons for this are many, but I'd wager that a fair amount has to do with attracting a diverse student body - something that appears to be working.  Unfortunately, without a framework within which diversity can be properly expressed and maintained, diversity breaks down into anarchy and petty struggles for individualization at the expense of everyone else.

On a smaller scale, this is the problem our nation is facing.  As much of our leadership - intellectually, politically, and tragically spiritually - elects to pretend that our nation was never predicated upon or steeped in Christianity, the fact remains that it was and is.  And the fact that it was and is is the only reason that we enjoy such a diversity today.  Our Christian heritage was applied not to destroy religious freedom - as in the case of most of the Western European nations our elite so desperately aspire to emulate -
but rather to ensure it.  To protect and foster it. 

Show me another nation in the world - secular or religious - that protects and encourages religious expression and freedom.  The foolishness of our leadership - and the leadership of schools like Trinity, apparently - is the assumption that any and all of Christian influence is on a par with the Inquisition, or with witch burnings.  Ironically, in the rush to pain Christianity as a massively unenlightened and medieval faith, we must ignore the most powerful and recent example of Christianity's possibilities - our own cultural history. 

For everyone who is ashamed of the Christian heritage they either espouse or live in the midst of, just a gentle reminder.  Odds are incredibly overwhelming that, were it not for that Christian heritage or culture, you'd be being brutally persecuted or exploited.  You'd be told what to think, and disobedience would be a legal issue, rather than one of integrity.  Christians ought to wise up - and so should everyone else who has come to our nation in search of a better life, and found one - that Christianity is not the obstacle to religious freedom and protection in this country.  It is rather it's only guarantor. 

Ms. Qureshi is a good demonstration of that.

On a final note, I think it's hilarious - and brilliant - how the university turns the tolerance card back on these dissenters, claiming that tolerance demands that we accept religious connotations and preferences (which is what Ms. Qureshi and others are essentially demanding for their own beliefs), rather than eliminate them or avoid them.  This beautifully demonstrates the fundamental unsustainability of those who would use tolerance as a club to destroy and repress others.  The club works equally well on those who resort to it, as well as those they would seek to use it against.