Mohamed Atta: Hatred and Self-Hatred

Re “A Perfect Soldier,” by Terry McDermott, Jan. 27: Mohamed el Amir Atta seems less the product of a repressive Egyptian government (though it surely exists) than the inevitable result of the collision between the modern world’s reality and that of a hermetic upbringing in a household ruled by an unyielding and fearful father. McDermott devastatingly emphasizes how history’s course is often changed by the actions of a few perverted losers unwilling or unable to fathom the world that surrounds them.

Bob Harris

Hollywood

*

While it may be necessary to examine the personal history of a Mohamed Atta, referring to him as a “soldier” (and a “perfect” one, at that) demeans a necessary and noble profession. Whatever his motivations and convictions may have been, Atta was, ultimately, nothing more than a depraved criminal.

Evan Puziss

Mar Vista

*

Your article on Atta was quite chilling, but his lifestyle and beliefs point out a problem every religion on Earth has to deal with. A small percentage of people in each religion strive only to focus on Allah, Yahweh or God and despise everything else he has created, from nature to music to humor to sensuality.

Atta’s anger at even having feelings of hunger forcing him to eat and his avoiding any kind of food that might give him pleasure as it simply goes into his mouth show the very contempt he and people like him have toward any uplifting emotions or feelings. It has little to do with the actual religion so much as their own disgust at themselves and the world around them. Anything pleasurable distracts them from their own self-hatred and hatred toward everything else.

The Taliban’s overt hatred of women, shown by making them wear full-length veils and beating them when they walk in the streets, reveals the underlying weakness of their beliefs.

Their God is a self-hating God. A weak and vulnerable one who cannot protect them from their own feelings of arousal of any kind, whether it is the smell of flowers in a garden, a wonderful dinner, or the perfume or cologne of a member of the opposite sex, which for a second causes them bliss.

That God of hatred died in the aftermath of Sept. 11; they just don’t know it yet.

Chris Chabot

Redondo Beach