George Weigel (CR, Dec. 2) cites the horrific murder of 50 Christians in Iraq and calls readers to awake to the evils of radical Islam. The Catholic Church is taken to task for being too soft on “radical” Islam, just as it was on Communism. He refers to the persecution of Christian Palestinians by Muslim Palestinians.
Violence against Christians, Jews and Muslims is abhorrent and nothing excuses such a heinous act. Weigel, however, needs to be reminded that Christians and Muslims lived together in relative harmony in Iraq for almost 1,500 years and that the chaos that followed our invasion in 2003 unleashed the targeting of Christians. Weigel supported that invasion.
As to the Palestinian Muslims in the Holy Land, my wife and I spent two weeks in October, living among and working with Palestinian Christians and Muslims. We picked olives with them, we enjoyed their hospitality in their homes; we walked the streets night and day without fear of harm. One of our tour guides, Atta, was a Muslim who guided us on our tour of Christian sites. He was a graduate of the Bethlehem Bible College. In all of our conversations, the Christians never talked about persecution by Muslims, but of the oppression, humiliation and hardship inflicted by the Israelis. Weigel and readers should know that.