Opinion: In Tuesday’s Letters to the editor
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Tuesday’s Letters to the editor marks the first of what’s likely to be several days of reader reaction to last week’s terror incidents in Mumbai, India.
Readers take University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum to task for her Op-Ed contextualizing the attacks. Writes A. Subramanyam, of Los Angeles:
The problem with Martha Nussbaum’s article is that it seems to distract attention from the horrendous events in Mumbai. It also fails to emphasize the differences between Hindu and Muslim terrorism. Stories of Hindu mobs massacring Christians and Muslims may well be true, but Hindu militants are not nearly organized or prevalent enough to threaten most of the civilized world. I don’t see any evidence of a Hindu jihad that spreads an ideology of hate, under which it is OK to spray machine-gun fire into a railway station or a restaurant, or fly planes full of innocents into buildings full of innocents. Isolated incidents of Hindu extremism do not add up to a global problem. The threats posed to the world from Muslim terrorism are an order of magnitude greater. Any reasonable debate on terrorism must recognize this problem.
John Taylor of La Habra doesn’t see the need to differentiate among faiths:
All the faces of terrorism in India have just one face -— the face of the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone ignores: religious violence. As long as every religion claims there is an absolute truth, the gorilla will continue its rampage. Religious violence will end when religions no longer control moral standards while demanding the murder of heretics. There really is only one kind of terrorism, and it continues to rape and murder in the name of God.
Letters responding to this news story and this Op-Ed about veterans’ benefits, to Black Friday killings at Wal-Mart and Toys ‘R’ Us, and a post-Thanksgiving smorgasbord, too.
*Nov. 29 photo of violence in Mumbai by Harish Tyagi/EPA.