To the Editor of the Parsons Advocate:
I was appalled to see that you chose to publish the letter to the editor last week from Dr. Donna Andes regarding Islam. It is the purest ignorance to condemn an entire religion on the basis of a couple of out-of-context quotes from its major text. I’m sure Christians would be outraged by a letter that painted Christianity as a religion of war because there exist Old Testament verses that advocate stoning and the burning of villages.
Islam must necessarily be understood in context, as a complex faith that has grown from its medieval Arabian origins into a diverse community that spans many dozens of countries and languages. Worldwide, more than one in five people is Muslim. Muslims are our neighbors, and we must treat them as such. It is a grave insult to our Muslim neighbors to spread hateful talk about Islam as a religion of violence.
The principal reason I was dismayed to see Dr. Andes’s letter published is that it purports to “educate” people about Islam. It is one thing to state a personal opinion about an issue like taking in refugees, and quite another to claim the authority to pass one’s hateful agenda off as “education.”
If Dr. Andes would take a Muslim refugee into her home, as I did while I lived in Greece, perhaps she would actually learn something about Islam, and find out there’s nothing insidious about it after all.
Gabriel Rogers
Kerens, WV
