A wise man once said, “There are two sides to every coin.” This aphorism reminds us that to find the truth, both sides of issues need to be heard.
The Monitor has given much space to the idea that Islam is a peaceful religion, and I know that there are many peaceful, law-abiding Muslims in the United States. The ideas was given credence at the ruins of the World Trade Center by George W. Bush after the two towers came down.
But there is another side. Muhammad himself raised the sword. His message in the Quran was at least in part to convert or kill Jews and Christians wherever they were found. He called for jihad.
Almost within his lifetime, Muslim armies marched across Europe to within 150 miles of the Atlantic Ocean. Only at Tours in western France were they defeated in 732 A.D. It was a decisive and very consequential victory. If the Franks had not won, all of Europe might have spoken Arabic as they have done all across North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco.
We need also to recall that the first attack on the World Trade Center was a bombing attack in 1993. Its instigator, planner Omar Abdel-Rahman, called a terrorist, was in fact a professor of Islamic law at a top Muslim university in Cairo. Shall we claim that he was an amateur distorter?
HARVEY LORD
Bow