5/4/06, Letter to the Editor, printed in The Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

(Printed in The Hartford Courant, May 4, 2006, in response to news article, “Weisel Talks of Sudan Indifference”)

“Crises Aren’t About Religion”

I applaud the efforts of Elie Wiesel in championing the rights of victims of mass violence around the world, most recently in Sudan (May 1, “Wiesel Talks of Sudan Indifference”). However, I take exception to his comment that, “All the crises in the world today have Islam as a component.” First, it is unfair to make a minority of extremists claiming to belong to a religion, whether of Islam or another, as representative of the moderate majority. Second, Islam as taught by its holy book the Quran and its founder the Prophet Muhammad never sanctioned humanitarian abuse. Third, most of the crises in the world today are either unrelated to religion or are the result of its misuse for political gain. For example, just over 10 years ago, more than 7,000 men and boys were killed within 5 days in the town of Srebrenica, Bosnia. The perpetrators were Christians, many of whom legitimized the massacre as a crusade to cleanse Europe of their Muslim neighbors. It would be wrong to ascribe the brutal mass murder to Christianity or all Christians, just as it is wrong to implicate the misdeeds of a few renegade Muslims to Islam and its majority.

Sincerely,

Dr. Sohail Husain