Islam has a serious public-relations problem
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Re: "Clarifying a few points on Islam", Letters, October 3.
Khun Ahmad, many of the things you say are true, but if we have no answers, it is because Islam has never given us any.
1. We would love to understand Islam better, but it is difficult because there is no communication.
2. It is true that Israel is causing a lot of damage in the Middle East now, but we must ask: where did it all start?
3. It is true that the radical elements of Islam are a small percentage of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, but that makes us wonder why Islam has never attempted to cleanse itself of these radical elements.
Of 1.5 billion Muslims, not one gave any information regarding the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. The result is that it took 10 years to find him.
In the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Muslim crowds were photographed all over the world cheering and celebrating. That seems very strange in a world where you declare that Muslims are appalled by their radical elements’ actions.
I suspect that the above actions were caused by Muslims’ silent support, or at best, indifference to the actions of their brethren, but of course I can not prove this.
Let me attempt to make this clear to you. We want to live peacefully with Islam, but Islam refuses all but absolutely necessary communication with us.
We want to understand, but it is not Christians, Jews or Buddhists blowing up buildings and decapitating people for no other reason than they do not share their faith. Worse than that, we simply cannot understand why non-radical Muslims do nothing about it.
Give us some answers and we will try to understand.
Lastly, it is only Muslims that take offence at any criticism of their religion – and they do not attempt to settle the matter in court. I would remind you of the Salman Rushdie episode.
John Arnone
