Terrorism is not always religious

To the editor:

In her column "Stop sanitizing killers," Michelle Malkin assumes Muslims can only wage acts of terror for religious reasons, which is far from the truth.

The attack on the school in Beslan in Russia was not based on Islam. It was done by Chechen militants because Chechnya has no conventional army to defend itself from the Russian army. Because the Chechens happen to be Muslims, the picture is painted that their acts were done in the name of Allah alone. If that's the case, then let's look at some situations involving Christian peoples and terrorism.

During the Yugoslav wars, the Catholic Croat militias and Orthodox Serb militias waged campaigns of terror against each other, but especially against Bosnian Muslims. Should we confuse that war with religion and blame Christianity? For many decades, terrorism has been used by the Irish and Anglo-Saxons of Northern Ireland. Because the Irish happen to be Catholic and the Anglo-Saxons are Protestant, a picture has been painted that the problem in Northern Ireland is over religion. In reality the Irish militants want to reunite Northern Ireland with the republic of Ireland, and the Anglo-Saxon militants want to keep the North in the United Kingdom. Both sides are willing to use terror.

According to Malkin, we should overlook these facts and simply blame the terrorist's actions on their religion. That would mean that most of the terrorists in the 20th century were Christians.

TANI BOHNERT, Cape Girardeau