Dear Sir:

I just finished reading your article "Baseball and Swamps". I would like to commend you on a very well written article that presents the difficult times that America is experiencing at this time. The introduction is very appropriate then the move to relate the fears of American Muslims and the analogy between war actions against innocent civilians and those who attacked Muslims in the wake of the attack described by President Bush as the "worst of humankind", and the analogy of terrorist breeding and mosquitoes swamp. What I like most is your closing statement "If it's a war we need then it's the toughest war of all. The one within ourselves, to discover where we might have gone wrong."

Taha

Sirs:

Thank You for the clarification, I really did not know the background of Aida. I agree with you 100% if what you are saying is historically correct. Keep up the good work.

Mohamed

Hi there,

I read with amazement the article "Shaaban against Israel" by Amira Howeidy. As a leftist I've always believed in two things: 1. Man is good by his nature. 2. Peace between Israel and the Arabs is possible. The latter was an inevitable consequence of the first But after reading this article I have to say I start to understand my friends in the Israeli right who say there will never be peace with the Arabs. Furthermore, the general explanations they give, which rely mostly on their understanding of Arab nature, sound more and more true.

Noam

Dear Sir:

What a wonderful article about the Egyptian music industry. What about publishing it elsewhere as well?

Mohamed El-Sayed

Sirs:

The U.S. has always fought to liberate and protect Muslims. Cases in point include the liberation of Kuwait and the fighting of the Bosnian Serbs to liberate Bosnian Muslims. The war of the U.S. is not against the Afghan people nor is it targeting the Islamic religion. This war is against terrorists (Al-Qaeda) who masquerade as holy men while beating women and making their money off of drugs. Al-Qaeda are deceiving Muslims all over the world. Just because one says he is a Muslim does not mean that he is one.

The behavior of the followers of Al-Qaeda resembles nothing close to Islam. They profane and hijack the religion of Islam and seek to have their twisted version of this great religion serve their own purposes rather than the other way around. The objective of terrorists is to violate and kill innocent people. The objective of the U.S. is to eliminate these terrorists so that the innocent, peace loving people of Afghanistan can practice their religion freely without the fear of being abused by the Taliban. Muslim clerics who don't have the guts to speak out against Bin Laden's false version of Islam should be ashamed of themselves. The U.S. is on the side of peace and the freedom to practice Islam. Groups like Al-Qaeda threaten the pure expression of Islam because they arrogantly dismantle its teachings to justify their own brand of brutality and fear to keep themselves in power. I pray that the Afghan and Arabic peoples will see through their lies and demand that they be eliminated as well as stop profaning the religion of Islam to justify the murder of innocent people. Whenever Muslims have been invaded, the U.S. has been there to help them fight off their aggressors even when their aggressors have been other Muslims like the case of Iraq. We will continue to be there. We will stay in Afghanistan until the good people of Afghanistan can be liberated from the oppressive hypocritical regime of the Taliban. The U.S. was founded on the free expression of religion. The U.S. is the true friend of Islam in this case, not Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda.

JD