Jordan River Forum

"They (Islamic terrorists) should be treated as were the Nazis. No tolerance, no dialogue, no mercy. That is how evil is vanquished." So says Adam Sedia in his column, "The Ugly Side of Islam." Perhaps since its publication, Sedia has had a chance to reread his column (since he apparently didn't do it beforehand) and realize his tremendous logical error -- or perhaps he is simply comfortable being a hypocrite. Every single religious sect in the entire history of humankind self-righteously convinced of their own infallibility has uttered these words against their enemies. Every single ideological movement has justified using blind violence by screeching, "We are fighting evil!" In fact, I hope that someone has informed Sedia that his words are exactly the words of the extremists he writes about so belligerently and unintelligently. "They" call us evil, wreak violence against us, and Sedia calls them evil and proposes we do the exact same thing, only better, so we can win. In effect, Sedia has shown himself to be an extremist, with the same mindset as those he so clearly hates. We don't need any more extremists than we already have and we don't need any more hatred. Am I being reductive or is it clear to everyone that Sedia's entire message is that his hatred is entirely justified and everyone else is idiotic if they don't agree with him? Sedia says that "tolerance, understanding, and dialogue are rattled off dogmatically as solutions to terror," but he clearly doesn't understand that he is "rattling off" just as dogmatically, with the added bonus that his dogmatism contains a clear call to extreme violence. I'm sorry to say this Adam, but we've all heard your message before and it doesn't sound as rousing as it did centuries ago during the Crusades. Thankfully, there are many people that are a little bit wiser today who have learned from history. You should try to do the same. Thade Jude Correa
Student The ugly side of Theo Van Gogh Unfortunately your guest editorial columnist, Adam Sedia, is not well informed about the assassination of Theo Van Gogh. He thinks Van Gogh expressed his opinion about Islam and was murdered by a Muslim extremist. Let me tell you about Mr. Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was an ardent enemy of all religions, especially Judaism and Islam. Before he turned toward Muslims, he verbally attacked Jews as "they are preoccupied with Auschwitz." When criticized by a Jewish historian, Evelien Gans, he shamelessly wrote "I suspect that Ms. Gans gets wet dreams about being fu..ed by Dr. Mengele." Is this freedom of speech or freedom of insult? Then Van Gogh turned toward Islam. He called Muslims "geitenneukers," which means "goat fu..ers." Similar to his inflammatory insults, his movie "Submission," which is the literal translation of "Islam," contains violent scenes and rapes being committed in the name of Islam and insults such as Quranic verses being on naked bodies. I don't need to point out that he shouldn't have been killed. I value the life of every being in the world. But I am not sad for Van Gogh. I am sad because he abused the freedom of speech to insult Jews and Muslims. I am sad that the Western media never brought up the ugly side of Theo Van Gogh and depicted the incident as intolerant barbarian Muslims slaying an intellectual -- should I say a "nasty mouth." That he was the grandson of Van Gogh was also used to imply that Islam was attacking Western values. I wanted to write this reply to inform the readers about the ugly side of Theo Van Gogh. He was murdered not because Muslims in general are intolerant of criticism. Freedom of speech should not be abused to have freedom to insult "others" as far as religious beliefs are concerned, especially in a place like Holland where Muslims are seen as inferior by many. I believe most Muslims can tolerate freedom of speech, but they cannot tolerate being called "goat fu..ers" and similar insults by Westerners to their religions and thus to themselves. Ceyhun Sunsay, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology