Kudos to Leonard Pitts for his Sept. 19 column, Teaching Muslim world about freedom. Many Americans look with amazement at the incredibly violent responses by Muslims overseas to cartoons, movies and insulting remarks that we routinely view as people acting out their First Amendment rights.

When black churches were being burned in the South, African Americans didn’t react with violence because we knew that our churches reside within our hearts and souls. Church is wherever we gather, even if it’s under a tree. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, these atrocities merely strengthened our resolve.

Hopefully members of the American Muslim community can teach this lesson to their brethren overseas so that they won’t be manipulated like puppets on strings, held by fools in America.

Larry Capp, Miami