Usam Ahmed’s letter said he attended a “protect religious minorities persecuted by ISIS” and then decried the “un-islamic violence” against the Texas cartoon contest where two people were killed.

He then noted Koranic passages against blasphemy while noting Islam’s tolerance.

What should be made clear is that religions with many adherents becomes very complex, whether Islamic or Christian. The scripture of both involves many interpretations and both involve large numbers of people seeking hope in the face of fear and uncertainty.

Many now scrutinize carefully scriptural descriptions of “end times” for many reasons, and the Islamic State, ISIS, is one manifestation of that. It by definition must be a borderless state, and its acts must follow its interpretation of what it considers holy scripture, and people from around the world are flocking to it in order to fulfill prophecy.

Ahmed’s and an earlier letter by Nadia Mustafa who wrote “…that the Bothell residents are together in supporting our minorities and we are trying everything in our power to make everyone feel included and safe” make clear that they seek and have many good reasons to want to live here and not in the Middle East or in India.

But what may be at the root of what occurred in Texas is that the kind of diversity that can be a tower of Babel may not be easily digestible, and absorbing millions of people a year is clearly not sustainable. Hopefully sooner or later our politicians, who listen primarily to money and power more than to what will provide sustainability for future generations, will begin realizing absorbing many millions creates problems similar to the ones the millions are trying to escape from.

Richard Pelto, Kenmore