I participated a few weeks ago in the local marathon reading of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

I did not do so in support of the content of the book, which has deeply hurt millions of Moslems, but because I believe very strongly in freedom of speech.

The most frequent accusation I heard from local Moslems, both at the reading and at the open forum held later, was that freedom of speech is a sham -- that if the material in question had been anti-black or anti-Jewish rather than anti-Moslem it would have been identified as bigoted and suppressed.

I argued against this point of view, but I am beginning to think I was wrong.

You recently printed a Reader Forum, and a letter from President Jordan, both on the subject of "Holocaust Revisionism." I was glad to read condemnations of this reprehensible movement, but it bothers me to be getting all the information about what they say second-hand.

The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust sounds like a neo-Nazi hate group. But will suppressing it make its bigotry disappear?

And wouldn't suppression prove the Moslems' point -- that we only stand by freedom of speech when the speaker is saying what we want to hear?

It seems to me that the quickest way to expose bigots is to let them speak and listen carefully. No idea -- no matter how horrible -- is as dangerous to the common good as the suppression of that idea.

Everyone is protected by the First Amendment. And, as President Jordan says, a threat to some of us is a threat to all of us.