Letters to the Editor
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‘Benedict’s Challenge’
Your editorial “Benedict’s Challenge” on September 26, 2006 stressing the need for reciprocity of tolerance between Muslims and non-Muslims it reminded me of something I read in Peter Theroux’s “Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia,” published in 1990. Theroux was among the few Western journalists in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s who read Arabic newspapers and literature. He describes the reaction of the Riyadh press in 1984 to the granting of a building permit for a mosque in Rome, near the Vatican: “jeering articles applauded this tanazul, relinquishing or surrender, on the part of Rome and the Vatican “Tolerance was “beside the point,” Theroux adds. Instead, there was gloating (his word choice) that Europe and the Christians had been shown to be demoralized and weak.
The author (one of the literary family that includes authors Paul and Alexander) does his best to draw an equivalence between attitudes such as these and Western attitudes toward Muslims and the Middle East. He does offer examples of Western ignorance, but these are informal prejudices, mostly on the part of people new to Middle East. Acceptance and respect was (and is) the Western response to Islam at informal, religious and official levels.
The arrests in Saudi Arabia of some 40 Christians, including children, for worshiping in private shows an appalling lack of respect toward the world’s non-Muslims.
Pope Benedict XVI, like Mr. Netanyahu before him, is right to make the challenge of reciprocity. It is wrongheaded to assume that we already have that.
JOSEPH McCLOSKEY
Brooklyn
‘What About the Stoops?’
Your September 29 article, “Neither Snow, Rain, nor Gloom, but What About the Stoop?” about Postal Service delivery creates the impression that door delivery is being phased out in New York City. This is not the case. Letter carriers will continue to deliver mail to all existing delivery stops. We ask customers to not move their mailboxes from their existing locations.
When a new building development is established, the Postal Service no longer offers door-todoor delivery. Door-to-door delivery costs the Postal Service almost twice as much as curbline or cluster boxes.
Every year the Postal Service adds almost 2 million delivery stops. We deliver 212 billion pieces of mail to over 144 million homes, businesses and Post Office Boxes in every state, city, and town in the country.
Each area is unique in its development, regardless of it geographical location. The method of delivery in newly established areas is determined jointly by the Postal Service and the developer.
The Postal Service is committed to providing quality service to all customers. Anyone who has an issue should contact their local postal manager, preferably on the day of the occurrence.
Again, I would like to emphasize, there are no plans to change door delivery to customers now receiving it.
JOSEPH CHIOSSONE
Postmaster, Brooklyn
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