Madam, - Surely the most grotesque aspect of the failed bombings in London and Glasgow is the involvement of medical doctors and the betrayal of the very core of a profession that exists to heal the sick and the injured.
These men have let down their decent Muslim colleagues everywhere. - Yours, etc,
PADRAIG O'CONNOR, Lower Dodder Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
Madam, - There has been much surprise that doctors could have been involved in the attack on Glasgow Airport. However, there is a long tradition of doctors being involved in radical and violent politics, especially in Muslim countries.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current deputy leader of al-Qaeda and the former head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, came from a family of doctors and qualified as a surgeon in his native Cairo.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Marxist group which made aircraft hijacking famous in the 1960s and 1970s, was founded by George Habash, a Palestinian Christian who trained and practised as a paediatrician. His deputy and the mastermind of these hijackings, Wadi Haddad, studied medicine alongside Habash at the American University of Beirut.
The former leader and co-founder of Hamas before his assassination by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip, Abdelaziz Rantisi, also qualified as a paediatrician, as did one of the group's other founders and present leaders, Mahmoud al-Zahar. Frantz Fanon, the theoretician of post-colonial liberation and the author of The Wretched of the Earth, the bible of many post-colonial revolutionaries, trained as a psychiatrist and practised in a Algerian hospital before joining the Algerian FLN in its fight against the French.
This phenomenon is not confined to the Arab world. Perhaps some of those currently wondering how doctors could become involved in violence should cast their minds back to their own student days and to the most famous doctor turned revolutionary, whose picture adorned many a student bedsitter and trendy T-shirt: Dr Ernesto "Ché" Guevara. - Yours, etc,
DAVID DOYLE, Gilford Park, Dublin 4.
Madam, - I am shocked by recent letters supporting Vincent Browne's ridiculous arguments. Brian Daly (July 7th) claims that the attempted attacks were "minor incidents carried out by a small group of amateurs", while ignoring the fact that, had there not been observant paramedics on the scene as a result of an unrelated incident, the plot in London might have achieved its aim of causing considerable death and destruction.
I hope the irony of having his letter published on the anniversary of the 2005 London Underground and bus bombings is not lost on Mr Daly. - Yours, etc,
DAVID BEATTY, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.
Madam,- What a relief it was to read a columnist, and an Irish one to boot, who appears to have lived in and observed the same planet as oneself over the past half-century ("Reasons Muslims are angry", Opinion & Analysis, July 4th). Vincent Browne must consider himself a protected species; it took guts to write what he did. Writing so has put an end to many a young journalist's career, but I trust that he is well enough established to risk getting away with it. - Yours, etc,
E. ATALLAH, Home Farm Road, Dublin 9.