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<Sukhbir's sadness is returned with such kindness and compassion by Kathy.> Sukhbir - I don't know what your intent was in sending your message, but if you intended to convey sadness, I would just like to let you know that you failed to convey that to me. What I experienced in reading your letter was your anger at America and Americans. Even the most reasonable of us may find that difficult to digest at this particular moment. If you are afraid for the fate of Islamic people in the U.S., I unfortunately can not assure you that no one will be harmed anywhere. But I can tell you that most of the people I hear from are trying to do everything they can to keep that from happenning. Our top leaders have addressed this repeatedly. Islamic leaders have been invited, and have participated, in all of the memorial services I have seen. There is a campaign spreading in my area at least, for people to go out of their way to patronize businesses with middle eastern and islamic roots. A local synagogue has just held joint services with a local mosque. I don't remember who it was that brought up the slaughter of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi's assasination, as a cautionary predictive note, but it is somewhat worth noting that nothing like that is happening here. Nothing even in the same universe as that kind of behavior is happening here. We are poor benighted members of this imperfect species, who, just as all others are capable, especially when aroused to act as a group, of doing horrible things to other human beings. But a truer picture of us would be given if, besides drawing our attention to a few 'goons' among our 300 million citizens, you also acknowledged teh existence of many acts of kindness and generosity. Lee Perlman