‘It’s a Small World’

The most chilling detail in the recent killing of Ilan Halimi is the allegation that friends and neighbors of the gang who kidnapped him would drop in to take part in the torture while passages of the Koran were chanted over the phone to the victim’s family [“It’s a Small World,” Mark Steyn, Opinion, February 27, 2006].

As Mr. Steyn noted in his column, every society has its “depraved monsters” who would seek the harm of others. What disturbs me in this case is not only the level of hatred that has driven residents of the banlieues to participate in the kidnap and murder of a Jew with alarming casualness, but also their sense of impunity.

If residents of these banlieues who ostensibly have no ties to crime can “drop in” to take part in torture, one can only conclude that in this cross-section of French society there is little to distinguish the innocent from the criminal element.

How will the French respond to the suggestion that people in their midst can easily step in and out of the role of kidnapper or murderer? An answer may be found in their “resistance” to classifying this vicious crime as racially motivated.

All this may remind us of the European Union’s suppression in 2003 of the report on anti-Semitism. When one refuses to identify a problem, there is no need to find a solution.

DAVID KORAL
New York

‘Duck Soup’

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent observation that God will also pass judgment on the decision to commit British forces to the removal from power of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein could stir controversy only among the profoundly anti-religious [“Duck Soup,” Daniel Johnson, Opinion, March 2, 2006].

The rest of us have more sense than to pretend we face life’s weighty decisions entirely bereft of the beliefs an upbringing in virtually any religion on earth bestows, and nearly all of them recognize a Supreme Being.

Such criticisms coming from anywhere in the mainstream reveal an ungracious lack of recognition of how core values imparted by Judeo-Christian teachings inform nearly all of what is most revered in Western ethics.

Decades of state-sponsored nihilism wrought something far less comforting in the former communist nations. How many among us would exchange religious belief, no matter how lightly held, for such an existence backed by nothing more than our own mortality?

Mr. Blair surely hasn’t been given his time at Britain’s helm by peers who expect him to forsake its history, traditions and, yes, its humble embrace of the ethereal.

RON GOODDEN
Atlanta, Ga.