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Divergent views over ‘cult of death’

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Re “It’s real, it’s scary, it’s a cult of death,” Opinion, Sept. 18

Sam Harris articulated some painful truths that many are loath to acknowledge. There are millions of people in the world who honestly believe that God will reward them with paradise for acts of cold-blooded murder undertaken in the name of religion. And there are millions of others who, in the pursuit of inclusiveness and political correctness, refuse to accept that the problem is rooted in the religion itself.

GERARD LAFOND

San Pedro

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Harris’ definition of “liberal” is bonkers. Liberals do not advocate the decriminalization of drugs; libertarians do, and on most issues, libertarians tend to be on the right of the political spectrum, not the left. Liberals are not fomenting conspiracy theories about 9/11; the same right-wing, anti-government radicals who arm themselves in anticipation of a massive federal crackdown on their “liberties” are the ones blogging about planted explosives in the twin towers.

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Harris uses suspect data and gross generalizations to flay at a nonexistent fly. I’m embarrassed that The Times published this thinly disguised polemic against Muslims.

SANDRA SUTPHEN

Yorba Linda

The writer is a professor of political science emerita at Cal State Fullerton.

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The current conservative (neo or otherwise) long-term strategy for winning the war on terror is to spread liberal democracy and free-market economies throughout the Muslim world under the theory that “democracies don’t attack each other.”

Harris doesn’t offer a winning strategy of his own other than to demonize liberal straw men out of the current political debate. He doesn’t attack conservatives in this piece, but surely he must find their idea of modernizing the Middle East’s political and economic systems an equally odious form of mollycoddling to any liberal attempt to understand the political and economic conditions that might have turned factions of these societies to violence in the first place.

Both liberals and conservatives have to take responsibility for what has been done in the past, as well as work together toward a future solution we will never reach if people like Harris are allowed to spread their destructively divisive poison.

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MATT LOGAN

Santa Monica

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