To begin, twice was made the half-truth assertion that our president called for Google to remove the movie trailer from Youtube. The whole truth is that while his administration did ask Youtube to review the video, to see if it violated any of their terms of use, it did not simply ask that it be removed. Their reason for not asking that brings me to my second point.

Corinthian Sanders, as quoted, seemed to struggle with understanding why Youtube would not remove the video. This confusion conveys the absence of a fundamental understanding of our right to free speech- a right so important to our nation that it was granted during the very first Congress of the United States in the very first amendment to our constitution. The same freedom of speech that stopped our government from removing that video is the freedom of speech that ensures Muslims will be allowed to share their views in a predominantly Christian country without the fear of censorship.

Continuing, Mr. Sanders seemed to blame Google for the deaths that occurred in the Middle East. He said that, “[T]hose people didn’t have to get hurt or die. Google could have taken the video down,” as if leaving the video up absolves the murderers for what President Obama refers to as an “act of terrorism.”

The Commentary section was equally ludicrous. Guest writer Stone Abdullah implied that 9-11 was not committed by Islamic radicals, made patently false statements about publicity for Muslim-respecting Americans, made an arguably racist quip, and closed with the most morbid sentence I’ve ever read in The Flash.

To address his claim that “[T]he majority of Americans have little to no respect for Muslims, and those that do are marginalized or not publicized,” I simply wish to list numerous Muslims who have garnered plenty of respect and publicity from our culture. Examples being: Shaquille O’Neal, Muhammad Ali, Akon, Ice Cube, Lupe Fiasco, Congressman Andre Carson, and Malcom X, to name a few.

Finally, to the young men in the People Speak section who opined that the murder of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, among others, was “warranted”, simply because a video made in the US offended people; you sicken me. If everyone thought the way you do, then people all across America should be rioting and murdering because of shows like South Park and Family Guy, who routinely offend various classes of people.

Thankfully, there were people like Anas Alfarra and Rim Marghli, who voiced reasonable positions on the issue at hand. People like them give me hope that all is not lost in this country.