Little room for manoeuvre

Sir, – Adnan Shahzad expresses his sadness at the large amount of press attention received by Muslims committing terrorist acts (letters, August 2).

The simple reason for this is that, for at least the past two decades, almost every terrorist act has been committed by Muslims.

Mr Shahzad claims that “terrorists are willing to die for the attention they crave”.

However, in making this claim he is surely ignoring the fact that it is impossible to appreciate attention after you are dead.

So that cannot be the driving force behind their actions.

Rather, the perpetrators declare their reason as they commit the act with the cry “Allahu akbar”.

This is very often mistranslated in English as “God is great” but I believe it actually means “Allah is greater”, that is “greater than your God or whatever you believe in”.

The Ahmadiyya community which Mr Shahzad belongs to is considered heretical by many in mainstream Islam.

Their efforts to reform the religion and follow a more peaceful version are admirable.

However, the source writings of Koran, Hadith and Sunna leave little room for manoeuvre.

In fact the encouragement of enmity towards “infidels” is there in black and white and, in orthodox Islam, cannot be overridden. Angela Rennie. 88 Muirfield Crescent, Dundee.

I fear that if banks continue to ignore the existence of cash users, many people will be forced to deposit their money into another bank, the sort shaped like a pig with a slot in the back