Open letter to Mansour El-Kikhia

Mansour El-Kikhia, who seems to be the designated Muslim at the San Antonio Express-News. He says he got a lot of hateful e-mails after his former column (I wish people would stop that).

I sent the following e-mail to him. Since he probably won't read it, I'm posting it here, because I hate to put all that work into it for no reason.

Mr. Mansour El-Kikhia --

You say,

In all my years, I have rarely seen Islamic publications condemning or belittling Jesus Christ, his mother or his apostles. Nor have I seen any belittling Judaism, Moses or David. Indeed, to go further, I have never seen a mainstream publication in Arab or Muslim states condemning Christianity or Judaism. Even the majority of fundamentalist publications do not touch either negatively. However, a few do, but these remain on the fringes and many can only publish their diatribe outside the Arab world.

Since your life seems to have been fairly short and sheltered, and since your experience seems rather limited, allow me to send a few links to information you may have missed:

• Egypt's government media publishes anti-Semitic literature.


• Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and anti-Semitism


• Saudi Arabia arrests Indian Christians for carrying Scriptures


• Even in Kuwait, with its relative freedom of religion, Christianity is far more circumscribed than is Islam in the United States.

I'll stop now. With Google and an atlas, you can find these things for yourself.

The point is that there is a debate raging within Islam today about whether it is truly a religion of peace or a cult of psychotic murderers. I can't be sure about the numbers, but I suspect that the majority of the murderers' victims are other Muslims. There have been other psychotic-murderer cults in the past that were not Muslim, and there will be again in the future that again will not be Muslim, but today's psychotic-murderer cult is Muslim. Because so many governments, of both predominantly Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries, have been so inclined to dismiss the danger or pretend it's something else or pretend it doesn't exist, it has gotten larger and worse and more virulent.

I don't need "apologies" from Muslims who haven't supported the murderous cult. On the other hand, it seems to me that otherwise peaceful Muslims are caught between two conflicting loyalties -- the "brotherhood" of Islam and "citizenship" in a world that honors law over blood. To restore my trust (speaking only for myself), I need to hear Muslims claiming loyalty to law over loyalty to "kin." I understand the danger of standing on that loyalty, so in the meantime, stop telling me "Islam is a religion of peace," when the Islamic community hasn't quite decided for itself whether that's true or not.

In the meantime, no, all Muslims don't look alike. But it's a waste of security resources to give the same level of scrutiny to frail elderly men, middle-aged women, blonde young mothers with three kids in tow, and red-haired toddlers as to swarthy, black-haired males, ages 15-40, carrying backpacks.

I wish you life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I hope you and those who share your views don't get us all killed or enslaved.