M.D. Harmon’s Sept. 25 column, “Christians become victims of Middle East genocide,” is tragically off, in its focus on irrelevant facts.

Persecuting anybody for their faith should not take place anywhere. Even the persecution of one Christian, one Muslim, one Jew, one Buddhist or one person of any faith is abhorrent. And trying to measure the extent of persecution, pitting one faith against another, serves no purpose at all.

In America, Muslims are often scapegoated. Statistics that suggest Christians may be persecuted in more countries mean nothing. We need to ensure that Muslims in our country are treated with the dignity and respect that they – like all people – deserve. We need to address anti-Semitism and all the other prejudice that we can see around us, and that exist around the world.

Anti-Semitism is no more acceptable because Christians and Muslims are persecuted as well. Christian persecution does not make anti-Muslim violence OK.

Can we stop counting, and start preaching the message, which I believe is common to all religions, that we should be treating all people as we would have ourselves be treated?

And to M.D. Harmon: Please let your messages be informed by compassion, by a vision of a better world, by a desire to point toward positive actions that increase civility and help bring about peace.


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