Dear Editor
I read your “A real eye opener” with a mixture of first humor, he can’t be serious about saying the President Obama is a Muslim who was setting us up for Islamic rule? I thought this must be your attempt to be funny. And then horror as you went on to suggest that we should take seriously the words of Dr. Peter Hammond who provides as evidence that Muslims and the Islamic religion means to take over the world a list of inaccuracies and outright falsehoods. For example, he claims that massacres occur when Muslins reach a certain number in the population, one of the countries he cites where this happened was Bosnia. It was the Christian Serbs who round up and massacred the Muslins. Furthermore, he claims that majority Muslim countries are supposedly filled with “blood lust and killings” by the government but conveniently he doesn’t even mention the most populous Muslin country in the world, Indonesia, a moderate peaceful democracy. And on and on, I could go in detailing the falsehoods and inaccuracies of this diatribe.
There is a history of this kind of vilification of entire religions and their practitioners, the Nazis said similar things about the Jews and further back the Ancient Romans said them about the Christians.
The first Amendment gives you the right to print these ideas. But with rights come responsibilities on the part of the speaker and the listener to get the facts right.
Islam in one of the three great Abrahamic religions, all of which have brought the world amazing contributions. Unfortunately, they have all brought some fanatical zealots as well who claim to act in their name. We must respond to dangerous zealots of all religions but not paint entire religions as evil. This is wrong and dangerous.
Dr. Joan McGregor
Carefree
