Opinion - Letters to the Editor

Dangerous legitimacy

Sir, — One may agree with Hasan Suroor's observation that extreme views have a right to be heard in the "mature and self - confident" societies of the 21st century ("Hear The Lunatic Fringe Too" July 13). But the idea that the media should freely accommodate the voice of terrorists is ridiculous. There is a difference, even if subtle, between an extreme view and a terrorist's "view". It might not, therefore, be a good idea to invite Osama bin Laden to a talk-show or a current affairs programme.

Allowing a terrorist to go public (through "ingenious" tapes, secretly recorded messages, etc.) amounts to providing legitimacy to his "cause" (remember the Veerappan case), often with disastrous consequences. The correspondent is annoyed with the CNN because it chose to "oblige" the U.S. President by "suppressing" the Osama tape. He forgets that apart from being "inflammatory", these tapes could have contained certain hidden messages or coded instructions — "wake-up calls" — for the "sleeper-cells" of his Al-Qaeda outfit. In fact, this was the reason behind the U.S. Government's decision to ask the media organisations to censor the tape, and not because the government found the contents "unpalatable".

Arunava Gupta,

Guwahati

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