Anger

Ithaca College

As an H&S graduate (English and art history), I read Asma Barlas’s essay "Why Do They Hate Us?" with great dismay.

Though I remain keenly sensitive to the concerns of all peoples around the world (Muslims, Christians, Jews, nonsectarian, etc.), I reject Barlas’s dotted-line correlation of America’s own culpability for the attacks of September 11 due to decades of prejudice towards the Muslim world and self-interested foreign policy. This kind of published rhetoric is damaging to the nation’s once-unified efforts and is downright offensive to me.

I am not advocating that only war exemplifies our patriotic self-expression, but I will not sit idle as an alumnus and read how our nation’s unsavory actions seem to have led us into a self-fulfilling (and somehow deserved) prophecy of September 11.

Please remove my name from your publication’s mailing list. I am truly embarrassed to be an alumnus of an organization that condones this one-sided propaganda. You are entitled to your free speech and opinions, but you chose to voice them in an alumni publication. I feel alienated and ashamed at my undergad selection as a result.

Patrick Tully ’85
Liberty Hill, Texas