Letters: In times of travel ban, get to know a Muslim

As an American Muslim attorney, I am aggrieved to see this revised executive order preventing migration from six Muslim-majority nations ("Travel Ban 2.0," Tuesday). I support security measures that target extremism, but stigmatizing an entire group based on religion, ethnicity, or nationality is wrong and illegal.

Unfortunately, this executive order negatively influences the ignorance of the 62 percent of Americans who do not know a Muslim. It will cause them to believe Islam is a radical faith. It is more important than ever that we leave our comfort zones and meet each other. Because our world is now a global village and we depend on each other, we must also respect each other's beliefs. This means we need to unite through education and dialogue.

This is an open invitation to "Meet a Muslim" and ask any question at our free, weekly coffee, cake, and True Islam meetups on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. at the Starbucks at 3421 Chestnut St. Together, we can erase extremism through education.

|Salaam Bhatti, spokesperson, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, New York

Here's a concrete example of why President Trump's travel ban is bad for business in Philadelphia.

I am an American neurologist and a council member of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. Each year, OHBM hosts a four-day international conference of about 3,000 neuroscientists from 45 countries. The conference venue alternates each year between North America and Europe or Asia. OHBM 2020 is slated to be in North America. Four captivating American cities, including Philadelphia, were in contention with Montreal and Cancun. The OHBM council met to pick the finalists just after President Trump's first travel ban was enacted. Given our international membership, the council was in unanimous agreement that the four American cities could not be considered.

Between the convention center rental and attendee spending, our annual conference brings upward of $2 million to the host city.

Putting the substantial moral and constitutional objections of Trump's travel ban aside, this ill-conceived executive order is already hurting American businesses. The OHBM hopes this letter will spur readers to raise this issue with their local representatives and the Trump administration.

|Michael Greicius, M.D., Department of Neurology, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., greicius@stanford.edu

To all those who oppose President Trump, please keep one thing in mind: no matter what you think of him, his priorities are, without a doubt, focused on the needs of the average American.

The economy, foreign relations, health care, jobs, climate change - those things pale in importance to what really matters to us, the ratings of The Apprentice and the reasons behind Arnold Schwarzenegger leaving the show.

Can you really think of anything else you'd want the president of the United States to be concentrating on?

|Jay M. Auritt, Warrington, jauritt@comcast.net

I stared at Friday's editorial cartoon, and I could not believe my eyes. There was a caricature of Uncle Sam in a doctor's office covered with tattoos of a Confederate flag, KKK, circles with a Star of David or "Muslims" and a line through them, and a heart with "Hate" and a smiley face on it. Worst of all, were three swastikas and the symbol of the most hated organization to come out of Nazi Germany, the Waffen-SS.

The doctor said: "I'm afraid this rash is more than skin deep."

Is there anything the Inquirer will not print? Is there any level to which it will not sink? I doubt it. Please don't give the stale argument about freedom of the press or freedom of speech. For the Inquirer to print the symbol of the United States with those tattoos is simply disgusting.

As Joseph Welch asked of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency?" I think we all know the answer to that.

|Charles Larkin, Exton, chuck.larkin@verizon.net

Inquirer Editorial Page Editor Harold Jackson recommends stopping the comparison of President Trump with Hitler ("What we can learn from history," Sunday). The evidence Jackson uses to discourage such comparisons is reasonable, but his framework for discovering the lessons of World War II is "about good leadership and bad."

The task of selecting the lessons of history and applying them to the United States today should not be trivialized as a search for good and bad leaders. We must look to history to tell us how a democracy identifies and combats the authoritarianism coming from within, a viral movement that seeks to destroy the very democracy that allows it to exist.

Is it any wonder, then, that thoughts turn to Hitler?

|Presley R. Brown, Langhorne, brow294@msn.com

Harold Jackson's column was comforting. President Trump isn't Hitler, and press secretary Sean Spicer isn't Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Really? Of course they aren't. Trump's chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, is Hitler and Goebbels rolled into one. Hitler wasn't even Hitler a month into his chancellorship.

|John Powers, Woodbury