Letters: Islam is the light - and Isis is the darkness

The following letters appear in the 13th November edition of the Independent

Mourners gather at a makeshift memorial near the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on November 15, 2015 (AFP)

It’s tragic for all those who have lost their loved ones and all who share their grief. But it is also tragic for all Muslims because this heinous act was perpetrated by those who proclaimed themselves as Muslims and thus was in their name and in the name of everything they love and hold sacred.

We are taught that when one kills an innocent, it is as if one kills the whole of mankind. On Friday some who claimed to be Muslims rained death on the whole of mankind in our name. These are not jihadists – they are psychopaths. They have appropriated the vocabulary of Islam, but are as distant from the sense and substance of it as darkness is from light.

To non-Muslims, I say, difficult as it is, forgive us, bear with us. We too have lost something deeply precious and intimate.

Bashir Sacranie

Cape Town, South Africa

As a Muslim, I condemn these horrible acts of violence. The ideology of those who carried out these attacks is incompatible with Islam. It saddens me, however, that the world pays attention mainly when Western lives are lost. We should also remember those who lost their lives in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Strengthening security won’t save lives unless the root causes are dealt with. Supporting democracy, not dictatorship, in the Arab world would be a good start.

Mohammed Samaana

Belfast

To those responsible for the barbarism in Paris, I say shame on you for committing senseless murder of innocent people in the name of my faith.

In doing so you have done a great damage to the noble teachings of Prophet Mohamed who was sent as a mercy to mankind. You have brought shame to the entire faith. What you have done will put the lives of Muslims in great danger and will cause immense suffering and hardship for poor people around the world.

Abubakar N Kasim

Toronto. Canada

Muslim people are no more responsible for these attacks than you and I are responsible for the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that our government has made our military fight in recent years. Before the Iraq invasion of 2003, the intelligence services warned the then New Labour government that doing so would increase the chances of attacks in this country. They contemptuously went ahead anyway.

We all despise what these killers have done in Paris, but let’s not let our government off the hook. They too deserve our fury for putting us all at risk.

Clive Collins

London SW17

This is a wake-up call for religious people of all denominations everywhere. It is now time to rethink the religious education we give to our children across all denominations. Terrorists do not learn fundamentalism in terrorist training camps; they acquire the ability to have logical thinking warped at the hands of mild-mannered, “moderate” pastors, rabbis and imams, who instil in them as impressionable young people the ability to believe in absurdities with no need for tangible proof of any kind.

From there, with the mind weakened, it is a short road to fundamentalism.

There will be no peace in France with the evil of religious-based terrorism so evidently entrenched; there will be no peace on Earth while religions exist as anything more than literary entertainment.

Rich James

London E11

It can’t be denied: we are at war

Joseph de Lacey (letter, 14 November) views the killing of Mohammed Emwazi as illegal, because “we are not at war with his faction, Isis”.

If the events of Friday in Paris don’t prove otherwise, I don’t know what does.

A piece of dialogue from the film The Terminator, used to describe the eponymous cyborg, seems well suited to Isis: “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

Mr de Lacey’s suggestion that David Cameron should have tried “to persuade Parliament to enter Syria with armed forces to procure Mr Emwazi’s arrest and trial” is about as practical as sending commandos into Berlin in 1945 with a view to extracting Adolf Hitler to account for his crimes in our courts.

Jeremy Redman

London SE6

The massacre in Paris shows that a piecemeal approach to tackling Isis is not working. America and Europe must swallow their inflated egos, stop talking of removing Assad, and agree with Russia on a joint military action against Isis in Syria and Iraq and crush them.

Clark Cross

Linlithgow, West Lothian

The diplomatic conversations due to restart in Vienna give an opportunity to plan an international response to the massacre in Paris. There is one key issue to face – to eradicate the leadership of Isis and deprive them of the territory where they are based. A broad-based coalition of the willing, using overwhelming force, is the only hope.

Rev Andrew McLuskey

Stanwell, Surrey

Bombs will not bring about peace

Governments should send food and shelter to the people of Syria, not bombs. As a Syrian refugee said: “If Assad and the opposition had been left to fight their own war, one of them would have been defeated by now. Instead, interfering foreign governments have prolonged the war and caused the people to flee by bombing their families and homes.” Now these same governments are closing borders to these people, and their own people are being killed, going home to Russia and in Paris.

Judith Basto

Reigate, Surrey

Paris shows failure of conciliation

I live in Paris. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, originating from ex-French African colonies. Many of the young second or third generation have never been able to fully integrate into French society either through lack of government programmes and discrimination or because of the vast cultural difference and laws imposed by the Islamic faith.

This problem is being exacerbated by massive illegal immigration, mainly from Muslim countries.

It is a simple fact that Islam and the democratic liberal Western societies are incompatible. For hard-line Muslims, Islam is superior to the state, making it difficult for Muslims to accept our laws and culture.

Yet instead of protecting our laws, culture and traditions, Europe’s political leaders are allowing more mosques to be built, and allowing madrasas run by foreign imams, and the wearing of the burka.

The Paris attacks shows where this conciliatory attitude is leading, and these events demonstrate the need for Britain to introduce ID cards like every other country.

Peter Fieldman

Paris

We must look at what feeds terror

Words of condemnation are not enough. Western governments have succeeded in portraying Islam as anathema to modern civilisations, alienating and marginalising thousands of Muslims; and consequently failed to respond to Muslim demands appropriately, creating two-tier societies.

It is time to address the causes that nourish terror: poverty, unemployment, Islamophobia, racism, injustice, occupations and wars.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London NW2

Violence comes home to roost

When the US launched an illegal invasion of Iraq, the French government, foreseeing the disaster that would flow from the war, refused to participate.

The reintegration of France into Nato has had disastrous consequences. The French political establishment backed Islamist militias in proxy wars for regime change in Libya and Syria, encouraging its citizens to join these militias by widely presenting them in the media as “revolutionaries” fighting Gaddafi and Assad.

Now these forces are returning and the war has come home to France.

Alan Hinnrichs

Dundee

Isis arose from the ashes of the Twin Towers. It arose from the decision made by “civilised” countries to invade and occupy foreign countries. Merciless military responses following the horror in Paris will be equally futile and counterproductive.

Jan Tate

Hayling Island

How many more times will this happen?

9/11, 7/7 and now Friday 13th... If only one in a thousand of the migrants is a potential terrorist, how many similar anniversaries will be inscribed in the calendars of our children?

Hari Thorpe

Swanage, Dorset

The deterrent that fails to deter

May I remind those who believe in Trident as a deterrent that France has nuclear weapons. Trident as a deterrent is a great theory; but, as Isis has shown, it’s a meaningless theory. When you have people prepared to die for their cause, WMDs are not the answer.

Adrienne Fitzwilliam

Tunbridge Wells