Defaming religion

Re: Why Do We Submit?, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, Jan. 7.

Somewhere along t he way, God and religion became four- letter words. Yet the morals and values in the Bible are the underpinnings of our Western culture. Many believe that, if not for religion, we would all live together happily. But the 20th century, the century of enlightenment and atheism, proved that wrong.

It isn’ t about religion, dogma or creed. It’s about the ethic that we follow, so that we can live together. The Bible brought into the world the revolutionary idea that to survive and thrive, we must learn to care for others as we care for our own, and that all life is sacred — we all have intrinsic value.

Sadly, while attacking religion, we are really attacking the foundational documents of our Western countries. France’s foundational belief in liberty, equality and fraternity can be traced to the ethic of rights and responsibilities from the Bible, which really is a book about how to become a compassionate human being in a compassionate world. Diane Weber Bederman, Caledon, Ont. Charb wrote: “Being afraid of Islam is moronic, absurd and plenty of other things.” It is the grimmest of ironies that the man who made that brash and confident assertion ended up being gunned down by holy warriors whose deeds were inspired by words extracted from Islam’s sacred texts.

Mindy G. Alter, Toronto.