Sir, – Fintan O'Toole's opinion piece on the Nice atrocity is a simpering, rambling diatribe that carefully avoids mentioning a hateful death cult but concludes with the hopeful "hard-won, ancient truth: that compassion is as boundless as fear" ("There is a way to beat terror seen in Nice", Opinion & Analysis, July 15th).
The underlying thesis here seems to be that this ragbag collection of deranged, psychotic religious fundamentalists will somehow be overcome by the sheer force of our collective “compassion”.
To call this wishful thinking is to put it mildly.
The compassionate qualities we think of as essential to our civil society are an obvious affront to these zealots, and far from being cowed into submission by our feeble armoury of hashtags, marches and chalk drawings on pavements, Islamic fundamentalists seem emboldened by our meekness.
He quotes Aristotle on the themes of terror and pity.
Here is another quote from Aristotle “Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.”
We should be enraged and we should act with righteous anger.
And we should direct that anger towards the jihadists and the poisonous ideology that sustains them. The time for compassion is over. – Yours, etc,
S O’NEILL,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – Why does the blind West express horror and disbelief at the mindset behind the terrorist attacks in Europe? Are we meant to look sheepishly away when our own foreign policies lead to hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths? Is supporting any side, militarily, in a distant conflict, the right of any nation in the EU and is this agreed among the other members? Are we entitled to our sorrow when we arm “oppositions” and then sit back to watch the news?
The question is not why people seek revenge, but rather why, and on whose behalf, does the population of the West believe it is the paragon of political democracy with a resulting mandate (from whom?) to impose types of governance and economics on other cultures. – Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM,
Firhouse,
Dublin 24.
A chara, – The Koran has over 40 calls to military jihad and the persecution and killing of non-Muslims. It is therefore vital that the Koran be read and interpreted not in a literal but in a historical and symbolic context. Here in France, university professors of Islam have identified this as the key to disarming the perpetrators of violence. They have called on Muslim teachers and leaders to break from the dangerous dogma of the Koran as the direct, unchanging, universal and literal word of Allah. It is a dogma that creates extremists and justifies their acts. – Is mise,
CIARÁN Mac GUILL,
Clichy, France.