Reflecting on Michele Green's recent articles on Islam including 'Once cleric's martyrdom is another's sinful suicide' (South China Morning Post, September 10), it is interesting that when Muslims engage in war that kills civilians, they are asked how this fits with their religion, but when religious Jews and Christians engage in war that kills civilians, no one asks them how it fits with their religion.
US President George W. Bush is a devout Christian, yet no one asks him how he negotiates his Christian values with the known certainty that bombing Afghanistan would lead to 'collateral damage'. Israel is a religious state but no one asks them how bulldozing a house with people still inside sits with the values of Judaism. This double standard is a product of a racist colonial mentality that sees all brown-skinned people, especially Arabs and Muslims, as 'possessed' by religion and therefore incapable of rational thought like white (Christian and Jewish) colonisers.
We should focus more on the political reasons behind Arab violence, as David Hirst did ('Tide of Arab anger rising against US,' Post September 10), instead of perpetuating this orientalist obsession with Islam.
SARAH KAIKSOW
Central
