Editor,

I wonder what would happen if the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims began treating “Christian” Americans the same way a group of very desperate Muslims are currently being treated in response to seeking asylum in the United States (which might very well save their lives). Would it help the world’s major religions to work together promoting tolerance, acceptance and respect? Probably not. Anyone with any sense of reality and world view knows that Muslims are not the problem — terrorists are.

But the anti-terrorist rhetoric voiced in some circles in the U.S. is really nothing more than a very thinly disguised anti-Muslim rhetoric driven by misinformation and stoked in some cases by hate filled media outlets. Even among the current crop of performers running for the most powerful position in the free world there is a call for registries for Muslims. Registries, really in the United States? Remind anyone of the Jews in Europe in 1939 or the Japanese Americans in America in 1941?

I wonder what the 200 million Muslims in Indonesia or the 150 million Muslims in Pakistan think listening to this very blatant anti-Muslim rhetoric. Sign me up? More likely their first reaction would be outrage, their second reaction “if they are going to have registries for Muslims we need to have registries for Christians. Any guesses what other responses might be?

Some Americans believe what they hear unconditionally, especially when it reinforces their own insecurities about people who don’t look like them, who don’t act like them and don’t pray like them. These insecurities, coupled with their belief that hate filled media outlets actually provide a fair and balanced view of the world, can lead us only into a more dangerous place than currently exists.

DAVE PEARSON

Clinton