Below is a sampling of local response to Tony Auth's Nov. 28 cartoon. The Inquirer has received more than 300 letters from around the country and abroad criticizing it.
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Tony Auth's Nov. 28 cartoon depicting Islam as an intolerant religion is deeply offensive and contributes to the climate of hostility against innocent American Muslims.
I highly doubt that the Inquirer would publish Mr. Auth's cartoon if he had drawn a picture of a priest saying "Catholicism is tolerant - tolerant of priests who rape and molest children," or a rabbi saying "Judaism is tolerant - tolerant of soldiers attacking teenage boys armed only with rocks, tolerant of settlements dispossessing Palestinian land, tolerant of assassination of political leaders...."
The Inquirer has a responsibility to behave in a manner that supports interfaith respect so as to promote peace among Muslims, Christians and Jews, regardless of the shameful behaviors perpetrated by a minority in each religion. In printing Mr. Auth's cartoon, the newspaper fell woefully short of that obligation.
Zafar Hasan
Philadelphia
Self-reflection needed
There are hardly words to convey how appalled I was by Tony Auth's virulently anti-Islamic cartoon published on Nov. 28. I cannot imagine that the editors of your paper would ever consider printing a cartoon that condemned the entirety of Christianity or Judaism in a similar manner.
Perhaps before preaching tolerance to others, Auth and the editorial staff should engage in serious self-reflection.
Thea Abu El-Haj
Philadelphia
Islam is not evil
I am highly disappointed and angered to see the cartoon published on Nov. 28 that reads as follows: "Islam is a tolerant religion... We tolerate fanatics, suicide bombers, terrorist charities... and women... barely."
This is a blatant attack on a religion. It has been pointed out time again that groups of people who are evildoers do not make the religion to which they belong evil. As a Muslim, I feel humiliated and disgusted.
Syed Shahabuddin
Newtown
Historical amnesia
Tony Auth's cartoon on Nov. 28 espouses the resolutely racist ideation of Islam pervasive in the popular imagination of U.S. society. The mediocre, reductive, and chauvinistic association of Islam with terrorism and sexist oppression commits a deliberate and narcissistic error so common among imperialists - that of historical and cultural amnesia.
Christianity has been awfully "tolerant" too, engaging in inquisitions, holocausts, African slavery, genocide of nearly the entire indigenous population of the Western hemisphere - all within the last five centuries.
Christians have developed (and used) weapons capable of destroying entire cities at once while declaring themselves the only people responsible enough to possess them.
Those who terrorize Palestinians in their own land enjoy a legitimacy given to their actions by the same element that celebrates the above-mentioned "accomplishments" of Euro-Christianity.
Ari David Perlstein
Philadelphia
Stop hate, don't inspire it
I totally agree with Steven Rosenzweig's letter "Cartoon unfair to Muslims" (Dec. 3).
In Hitler's Germany, anti-Semitism was part and parcel of the times, and the media there and in many other places were filling people's minds with horrible racist stuff. Bad went to worse as people too easily accepted the unacceptable and did not understand the ugly ramifications of racism.
We should know better now.
Thank you for at least printing Mr. Rosenzweig's letter, but I can't help but think the type of people most swayed by cartoons need to be reached in the same medium. Auth should work on stopping racist hate, not inspiring it.
Anne Selden Annab
Mechanicsburg
Just a pretense
Congratulations! Tony Auth's cartoon about Islam was right on the ball. I think it is about time that the world recognizes the evil taught through the pretense that Islam is a loving religion.
Joseph P. Wade
Coatesville
Islam