In response to Meredith Walker’s Sept. 26 letter to the editor, “Islam: a not so peaceful religion.”
Rather than spend my time arguing with ignorance, I will let three statements reveal the truth.
Statement #1:
There are more than 70 million Muslims in Egypt, only 5,000 of which participated in the demonstration around the American Embassy in Cairo. That is almost 0.007 percent, a negligible value that in no way represents Islam — it is simply a minority.
They are as insignificant as the Ku Klux Klan, The Army of God, whose members were attacking abortion clinics and doctors across the U.S., and Hutaree, a Christian militant group in Michigan. Christianity is not characterized by its minority groups and Islam should not be either.
Statement #2 by Karen Armstrong in “Muhammad, A Prophet for Our Time”:
“We can no longer afford to indulge this type of bigotry, because it is a gift to extremists who can use such statements to ‘prove’ that the Western world is indeed engaged on a new crusade against the Islamic world. Muhammad was not a man of violence. We must approach his life in a balanced way, in order to appreciate his considerable achievements. To cultivate an inaccurate prejudice damages the tolerance, liberality, and compassion that are supposed to characterize Western culture”
(Muhammad, 6).
Statement #3 by a 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges in “American Fascists — The Christian Right and The War on America”:
“The attack by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as ‘nominal Christians,’ and those they brand with the curse of ‘secular humanist’ are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms, and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice”
(American Fascists, 207).
Zana Alattar
Undergraduate
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Read our Editorial Board's letter here. Read a collection of responses to Meredith Walker's Sept. 26 letter here.
