Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to stay for two nights at the Trident-Oberon Hotel, one of the best hotels on the seafront in Mumbai, India. Each time I entered the hotel, my small bag with my books and papers was put through an airport scanner and I was sniffed by a friendly, well-fed, and well-groomed dog. I was frisked, and all the women, including veiled Muslim ones from the Gulf, were taken into an alcove to be checked by a charming and smartly uniformed female security guard. All cars were checked underneath with a mirror set at the end of a long pole.

It was reassuring to see such very thorough precautions being taken against the ever-present and world-wide threat of Muslim terrorism. In November 2008, shortly before my previous visit to the city, two of the main hotels on the seafront, notably the famous Taj Hotel, had been destroyed by Islamic terrorists with great loss of life. When I had then visited an old synagogue in the city, my bag had been X-rayed and my person searched. The precautions were very necessary, for the 2008 terrorists had made a point of attacking the Chabad House (a Jewish outreach center), known as the “Nariman House,” in Colaba in South Mumbai, in an attempt to kill all the Jews there. The rabbi and his pregnant wife had been shot in front of their two-year-old son Moshe, who, covered in blood, had been rescued