Saudi Arabia exports intolerant ideology, Iran its cinema

There may, as you suggest in your editorial (3 January), be little to choose between Iran and Saudi Arabia in certain important respects. But it is irresponsible and dangerous to imply a general sameness between the two countries. Saudi Arabia has exported around the world an intolerant and violent ideology that inspires Islamic State and all similar groups. By contrast, the cultural export for which Iran is most well-known in the west is its thriving and poetic cinema. Iran has a long way to go at home and abroad, but let’s keep things in perspective. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the west and the west keeps closing its eyes and ears, selling it lethal arms and denying the central role this country plays in jihadi violence in the name of Islam.
Niloofar Haeri
Baltimore, Maryland, USA

• There is no reason for MPs to wait for the formation of a committee to scrutinise arms exports (Report, 4 January). The foreign secretary told the BBC on 11 November that we would stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia if the Saudis were found to have breached international law. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said that they did just that by carrying out airstrikes on hospitals in Yemen in October and again in December. Any MP who is interested can put down a question to the foreign secretary.

• In his thoughtful commentary, Brian Whitaker (5 January) correctly highlights how Wahhabi Islam espoused by the Saudi kingdom since its inception in 1932 has had unimaginable repercussions. He omitted that Britain partly sired this savagery by plumping for the Sauds, instead of the Hashemites, whose legitimate legacy was diverted to Transjordan. Whitaker’s chronology, however, is incorrect on the rise of Pakistani extremism, for it was Tehran that fomented sectarian agitation, especially in Karachi, forcing the hand of an insecure Zia-ul-Haq to encourage Sunni militancy to deflect attention from his discredited authority. The Saudi Shia are no worse off than Iranian Sunnis: Tehran, since the 1979 revolution, remains the largest metropolis in west Asia and the only Islamic capital without a Sunni mosque.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan pointed out the plight of Iranian Sunnis who could not offer Eid prayers (31 August 2011). The Saudis will have to ride this out in the coming weeks, because the 40th day of bereavement is a high point of remembrance in Shia theology and martyrology. Tehran will assuredly note that the executed cleric’s date falls on 11 February, the anniversary of the Islamic revolution, and will determinedly exploit it to the hilt.