Kudos to Acton H. Gorton for publishing the Mohammed cartoons. My hometown newspaper could learn a lesson.

On Feb. 4, 2006, The Boston Globe responded to the controversy with an editorial entitled “Forms of intolerance”. Invoking the values of the Enlightenment, they inanely compared the Danish newspaper’s soliciting and publishing of the cartoons to “a schoolboy prank.” They also attempted analogies to Ku Klux Klan and Nazi caricatures while never acknowledging the vile anti-American and anti-Semitic trash that appears daily in the Muslim and Arab media.

The West is not perfect, but we do work to eliminate hatred and bigotry from our societies, and no one is more self-critical than Americans. Muslims are quite direct in pointing out our failures, but they rarely look inward.

Most Muslims do not deal honestly with their prophet and their history. From the time of Mohammed, through war and violence, Muslims occupied their neighbors’ lands and colonized territory from Spain to Africa to Southeast Asia.

Non-Muslims who survived the onslaughts were enslaved or lived as second-class dhimmis. Yet Islamic scholars who advocate assigning the violence inherent in Islam to a historic period face charges of apostasy and death threats.

When Muslims decide to address their past and condemn the hatred spewed in their media, schools and mosques, perhaps European newspapers will be more circumspect about depictions of Mohammed.

Many Muslims do not agree with the supposed prohibition on representations of their prophet, and certainly non-Muslims have no obligation to adhere to any such Islamic teachings.

I often wonder why we avoid using the word crusade, yet don’t expect the same regarding the word jihad. Shouldn’t tolerance and respect be mutual?

C.T. Mastroianni

Milford, MA