Back to the basics?

Dear Editor:
Delegate Larry Kump recently submitted a letter concerning the maligning of the Muslim faith. I agree that no faith should be maligned. We live in a Christian based nation which allows free practice of any faith. Muslim-based countries do not allow such freedom.

Kump wrote that some revolutionary extremists pervert and subvert that faith. The Islamic fundamentalists are not subverting or perverting Islam. They are merely going back to the basics of Islam. If anything, they are calling all Muslims to truly follow the Quran and Mohammed’s teachings. Verses in the Quran are used to justify beheadings, suicide bombings, slaughter and terrorism throughout the centuries since Mohammed.

The following quote from Has Christianity Failed You? by Ravi Zacharias pretty much sums up America’s attitude towards radical Islam: “Radical Islam is gradually pushing down the walls of secularism in the West because secularism has no foundation...We may think our enlightened culture or our technology will withstand their onslaught, but they will not.”

Zacharias quoted one Middle Eastern leader as saying terrorist acts were unnecessary. He wrote that the leader’s attitude was: “Give us another 30 years or so, and the West will be ours. We will take it without an army.”

He wrote: “In any situation when Christianity is evicted, I have absolutely no doubt that a radical form of totalitarian religious belief will take over. I have sat with leaders in other parts of the world who have voiced their perplexity that we in the West don’t see this reality staring us in the face.”

Susan Bly
Great Cacapon