Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

Being a religious figure can make one just as blind to good coming from non-religious people as to evil committed by the members of their own group.

Absolutely right. It takes a very long time to let go of the stories we tell ourselves. That particular author has been fighting for Palestinean rights along with many other people.

As I said to the dog of jade, people will take what they want from a text and interpret it as they need to. You quoted this suggesting that the author was saying that religious people are more compassionate:

it seems to be human nature to do the opposite.

I don't see any arrogance in that observation. I agree that it is often in the nature of people to fear people who are different from them and target them for exclusion.

There is a lot of evidence too that compassion is part of human nature. And so we are programmed for both love and fear.

My sense is that the author examined his own need to act and saw the origins of his outrage in how he lives daily in the world. Others, based on their own experience and action or lack of action, can explain themselves any way they want to. The Pakistani newspaper solicited this article from this author as an attempt to build greater compassion between diverse groups. Given the comments from the Karachi readers, it seems to have succeeded.

Thank you again for your challenging comments.