This is a response to the letter “Muslims are like all other people,” from Jonathan D. Jones, in the June 24 Daily Inter Lake. Jones is reported to be a 1992 grad of Flathead High School residing in San Antonio, and also a retired master sergeant who served twice in Iraq and who also served in Oman.

He wrote that he’s “extremely disappointed in the letter “Real Muslims won’t really assimilate,” which appeared a while back in the Daily Inter Lake, and which I wrote. He calls the letter bigoted, and claims a lack of judgment by the Daily Inter Lake for publishing it. He also wrote that it — either my letter or the alleged lack of judgment by the newspaper — “offends him on a personal level.”

He wrote that he’s a Muslim. And among other things, he wrote toward the end that “there are those who are just mentally unequipped to understand life beyond concrete concepts, and those are the ones that generally spout the hateful rhetoric such as that professed by Mr. Knutson.”

So is it a concrete concept that Mr. Jones made a veiled suggestion that I’m somehow mentally unequipped? In other words, is that real or imagined? All I know is that I’ve achieved my purpose in writing my op-eds, and an insinuation such as this one is beyond my wildest dreams. If you’re reading this one, Mr. Jones, thank you profusely for the compliment.

My purpose in my op-ed, and others on the subject of Islam, is to perhaps get a response from some Muslims who feel slighted. Bingo, and it’s not the first time. I don’t suggest that Mr. Jones rises, or falls, to the level of being placed on the underground terror watch, but he certainly piqued my interest. I find it interesting that with all his fine-sounding insults, he never once called for an end to Islamic murder of innocent people.

In case Mr. Jones missed it, Islamic terrorists are Muslims, and they’re the real Muslims, straight from the Muhammad mold, which is the thrust of my op-ed that Mr. Jones takes offense to.

I always wonder if it’s better to simply leave letters like his to speak for themselves, because people who see through his remarks don’t need to have me or anyone point it out, but I respond anyway, because I notice that if Mr. Jones is a retired master sergeant, he would have enlisted during the Clinton years. It’s doubtful that, coming from the Flathead area, he was a Muslim when he enlisted, but one never knows. Hillary would love him, but it’s a bit disturbing to me that an American veteran would be a Muslim. Do you remember the Ft. Hood incident?

If I’d sworn him in, I’d have required him to explicitly renounce sharia at the risk of court-martial, because Islam allows lying. It’s what Obama and Hillary do so well. Islamic jihad is more than crashing jets into buildings and suicide bombing and mass murder. It also comprises the silent and stealthy “peaceful” jihad.

In his letter, Mr. Jones reveals only that he seeks to promote Islam, but of course if he reads this, he will believe that I’m mentally unequipped to think beyond concrete concepts. As I said before, I take his response as a positive, a compliment, and perhaps evidence that the Muslim world is getting a bit nervous. I live with me 24/7, so I know that his assumption that I’m scared makes him largely unqualified to talk about what he doesn’t know.

Knutson is a resident of Dayton.