‘Education in Jihad’ Stirs Some Thinking

Re “Getting an Education in Jihad,” Dec. 29: I am pleased that there are handsome, 35-year-old teachers with many things to live for in Lebanon. Here is a person who can make a positive impact on the world. This article should be about that impact. Instead it is about a bigot.

Americans are not perfect. What American soldiers did at Abu Ghraib was not pretty or particularly defensible, but is it worse than what took place when Saddam Hussein was in power? Was it OK for Hussein to kill and torture at Abu Ghraib?

I don’t think this teacher, who “spoke reverently of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi,” cares about the government that Islamic people would install once they kicked out the Americans. He is just waiting for the next dictator who will oppress him and censor his news so he can be assured that his leaders can commit atrocities without his knowledge. I hope that if the Hussein of his country abducts, tortures and then kills him out of public view, he can find comfort that he won’t have to worry that a woman will hold him on a leash for all the world to see.

Gerald Smith

Calabasas

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Your article was at minimum in poor taste and at maximum unpatriotic, perhaps in between. Were you trying to incite further Islamic jihad? We have enough jihad against our troops and our citizens in the U.S.

This article is truthful, but the truth must be balanced. Why did you not show a picture of the Twin Towers descending? Photos of the beheading of innocent civilians in Iraq would have helped balance the truth. Your article was unfair to the patriotic Muslim population in Los Angeles.

E.J. McKernan

Dana Point

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The Times wasted a lot of ink. We learned all we needed to know when the teacher professed to be prompted by photos from Abu Ghraib to wage jihad, yet said nothing about videos of his cohorts sawing off the heads of civilians.

Mary McLemore

Autaugaville, Ala.

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The crystal-clear motivations that moved the “mild-mannered” Lebanese schoolteacher into jihadic action in Iraq; i.e., the U.S. occupation and its attendant humiliating TV news images, are and should be seen as overwhelming when juxtaposed with our president’s explanation for the insurgency: “they hate our freedom,” a flaccid, vague and offensively stupid obfuscation of our thirst for oil.

Doug Weaver

Ojai