Terrorism Violates Islamic Law

At last, a condemnation by an informed person on the contradiction between Islamic teaching and terrorism (“Terrorism Is at Odds With Islamic Tradition,” Commentary, Aug. 22). Khaled Abou El Fadl clearly said, “[Classical] Muslim jurists considered terrorist attacks against unsuspecting and defenseless victims as heinous and immoral crimes, and treated the perpetrators as the worst type of criminals.”

The current crop of Palestinian “martyrs” defame the legitimate aims of Palestinian nationhood. They are planting seeds that will bear bitter fruit for years to come. Their actions do not address perceptions of oppression; they lead to increasingly punitive reactions.

I would hope that El Fadl’s words might be printed in the PLO-controlled press. Perhaps they might lead to sane and serious steps to end the horror of attack and reprisal in the Middle East.

Sherri Lipman

Fullerton

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While I’m no Mideast policy expert, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going wrong there. While peace talks were going strong in the early ‘90s, Israel was dragging its feet over “security issues” and thus effectively prevented the Palestinian state from becoming a reality. The Palestinian people became frustrated, stopped listening to Yasser Arafat and began to express their outrage by throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Now it’s just a vicious cycle where individual Palestinians are blowing up bombs; Israel demands that Arafat control his people, which he can’t do any longer; Israel lobs a few rockets into Palestinian settlements, creating more frustrated Palestinians, and more suicide bombs go off.

There will be no end to the violence until Israel stops revenge attacks and gets serious about creating a Palestinian state. I wish my own government would threaten to cut off monetary assistance to Israel until Israel gets serious about ending the violence, creates a Palestinian state and begins to treat the people of Palestine like human beings.

Patrick Sullivan

Reseda

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Re “Another Kind of Intifada,” Aug. 22: Too bad your reporter didn’t also sit in an Israeli gathering place to sample the public mood. She would be in danger of a suicide bombing. Not so at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Women and children are not targets there. Ironically, the Israelis founded the institution to help educate the local people. Now some of these alumni “engineers” have been busy educating their compatriots in making anti-civilian bombs.

Marshall Wernick

Los Angeles