Dear Editor:
Re: Muslim nation? No, thank you, Letters to the editor, Burnaby NOW, Oct. 21.
I find Ziggy Eckhardt's writing to be consistently shrill and, frankly, tiresome. All he does is make demands for his own demographic, attack all others, and add a veneer of human rights to claim respectability. This describes his Oct. 21 letter, as well as all the others. Mr. Eckhardt is practicing what is variously known as Decaturism, communalism (the South Asian form), or chauvinistic nationalism. In plain English, this means that you stick with your own gang and have no qualms about exploiting, robbing, or killing "the other". Humans have been doing this sort of thing for 10,000 years, but it has to stop.
The human population has tripled just in the last century and is now at seven billion. Disparities in wealth distribution remain at ridiculous levels. We have damaged the ecosystem to the point that species are dying off at furious rates, and our own civilization is at risk. The kinds of problems that we have created will lead to conflict and war if we follow Mr. Eckhardt's policies, and with currently available weapons, that is a doomsday scenario. We need to work together on a global scale if we want to have a future.
I am not a Muslim, and I doubt that I will ever be. That does not stop me from recognizing that Muslims have a great deal to contribute, as do Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists, pagans, etc., etc. I think that Burnaby city council has taken a good position on this matter.
Victor Finberg, Burnaby
