I commend your Sept. 7 editorial “Terror’s toll on Islam,” calling for “more Islamic voices . . . to condemn terrorism.” Having spent Labor Day weekend in Chicago at the Islamic Society of North America convention of 30,000 American Muslims, I wish you had acknowledged and appreciated the way leaders of ISNA and Islamic scholars unanimously and powerfully condemned terrorism as absolutely forbidden by Islam. Given common American Christian stereotypes about Islam, I also wish you had pointed out how often we read the phrase “Islamic terrorism,” yet when Timothy McVeigh attacked Oklahoma City, his action was not labeled “Christian terrorism.”
While Islam–like Judaism and Christianity–teaches that no amount of oppression can justify the horrendous terrorist attack on children in Beslan, you should have at least made reference to the appalling daily violence committed by Russian soldiers against Chechen civilians.
