Sir, Your editorial of Sept 11 rightly emphasises that the terrorist attacks five years ago must be seen in a broader context if we are to understand Islamic fundamentalism as a historical phenomenon.

It states that those who have criticised the Bush Administration for invading Iraq, assuming the pretext of 9/11, are simplistic. Yet the bulk of criticism has concerned the fact that Saddam Hussein had no links with al-Qaeda, was not remotely connected with 9/11 or with the terrorist plots of the preceding decade.

Iraq was a strong Sunni state counterbalancing Shia Iran and preserving a balance of power. The vacuum created by invasion has been filled by terrorism and anarchy. Far from his critics having a narrow view of history, it was Bush and his neocon advisers whose limited perspectives precipitated the most disastrous foreign policy decision in modern times.

CHRISTOPHER R. P. BEAUCHAMP
Sidmouth, Devon

Sir, Nick Towle writes from Kabul of how the West continually fails to understand the umma (letter, Sept 12), and that harm done to one Muslim is viewed as an attack on the whole. The West might take this more seriously if it were not daily confronted by a world in which more Muslims are killed by Muslims than anyone else; in Iraq, where most victims of the insurgency are Sunni or Shia locals, and in Sudan, where for the past three years hundreds of thousands of black Muslims have been killed by Arab militia.

This does not justify Anglo-American policy, but it does imply that the supposed sensitivities of the umma are, at best, politically flexible.

JEREMY TYRER
London SW19

Sir, In his letter of Sept 12 Dr Ahmad Abou-Saleh denies the statement by David Selbourne (Comment, Sept 9) that “Islam is not a religion in the conventional sense”. This is to deny its origin and history and beginnings as a politico-religious ideology. Its creator shed blood to expand and conquer.

During the Battle of the Trench in AD627, Prophet Muhammad ordered the massacre of 700 Jews and Christians. In the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, one may still see the sword of the Prophet Muhammad and the swords of the first three caliphs.

No one is ever going to find the sword of Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha or Guru Nanak.

RANDHIR SINGH BAINS
Gants Hill, Essex

Sir, By conflating the events of 9/11 with the caliphate (editorial, Sept 11), you ignore the growing aspirations of millions in the Muslim world for the return of the caliphate through solely political work. You wrongly portray the caliphate as some kind of medieval militant aspiration.

Muslims envision the caliphate as a state with a representative government and an independent judiciary, where the ruling elite is subject to the rule of law, technology is embraced, minorities are treated as full citizens as they were in the past and where men and women embrace roles that give no superiority of one sex over the other.

Of course the caliphate is not built on the Western secular model, yet to dismiss it as some “centuries-old” medieval notion as Tony Blair recently did is an example of the disinformation expounded since 9/11.

IMRAN WAHEED
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain
London SW7

Sir, Islamists clearly hold their views with certainty — “blind faith”, some might say. And yet the American Declaration of Independence, stating “We hold these truths to be self evident” smacks of similar assuredness. Perhaps this is why political leaders say that we must defend freedom and democracy, without bothering to tell us why.

The reasons might be obvious to them. But it might move the debate on if they were articulated now and again. Presumably, before the Bill of Rights was drawn up, somebody assembled evidence that freedom is a really good thing.

BILL WHITING
Fordingbridge, Hants

Explore Letters

• Feedback