In his letter ("Condemnation of Islam not grounded in truth," Sept. 16) Mr. Hamdan Yousuf calls my letter ("Culture understanding cannot explain attacks," Sept. 15) "racially intolerant." Last I heard, Islam was a religion (i.e. a set of ideas), not a race. Yousuf then attempts to refute all of my claims about Islamic culture by pointing to the civilized Muslim world that existed during the European Dark Ages.

The essential detail that Mr. Yousuf conveniently omits from his analysis is that today's Islamic culture is very different from the one that existed in the 8th century. Today's mainstream Islam is everything that the Islam of the 8th century was not: intolerant, aggressive, and fanatical. Western culture, on the other hand, has evolved from the culture of the Dark Ages into a culture based on reason and individual rights.

Last, I would like to address Mr. Yousuf's allegation that I am "censuring a people based on the actions of a small sect." While most Muslims are not terrorists themselves, they give strong moral support to terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Jemaa Islamiyah and al Qaeda.