An Irishman's Diary

The dog that didn't bark in the night, and the debate that hasn't yet occurred

The dog that didn't bark in the night, and the debate that hasn't yet occurred. Conor McCarthy's letter on this page today touches upon so many reasons why there is not reasoned debate on the issue of immigration, and why so many people are scared of entering the lists on this issue. For we should be able to discuss religious minorities - in this case Islam - without having a more-tolerant-than thou competition, so admirably represented by his letter, which, furthermore, confuses race and religion.

Muslims have no particular race, and like Christianity have many sects. Blacks - Polynesian, African, Australian Aboriginal - have neither particular religion nor race. Jews are a sui generis anomaly. To conflate one with one another might play well to the multicultural gallery, but throws no additional light on an issue which is coming to centre stage in Ireland.

Inalienable right

Now, was the complaint by the Islamic Cultural centre to the Advertising Standards Authority about the half-naked woman holding the Coke bottle made merely as an expression of opinion? Or was it made it order to cause the advertisement to be taken down, because it was "very offensive to the Muslim community"? I strongly suspect the latter - and in either case, the Islamic Cultural Centre has a basic and inalienable right to make such representations, just as I have a right to criticise them, and Conor McCarthy has a right to criticise me.

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But he is not right to regard me as a liberal, illiberal or otherwise. I am a libertarian, which is a different thing from the liberals whose illiberalism he and I despise. As a libertarian, I defend the right of the Islamic Cultural Centre to say I am a fool - indeed, on occasion I might strongly agree with them. But I also defend the right to talk honestly about this society as it is, largely secular, and as it has historically has been, Christian - and as one, moreover, that does indeed compel no one to stay.

If Muslims want Muslims standards upheld in our advertisements, then they are in the wrong country. I said that, and I'll stick by it. Conor McCarthy's suggestion that I wouldn't be allowed make such remarks about Jewish or black communities is irrelevant. For there are no "black" standards, any more than there are "white" standards, because these are matters of skin colour, not ethics; and Irish Jews have, very sensibly, declined to complain about the failure of a once Christian, now largely secular state to maintain Jewish standards in public affairs.

Dietary regulations

And why should it? I didn't complain when a restaurant in Israel refused to serve me milk with my tea while I was eating a beef sandwich. If I want to be free of Jewish dietary regulations, Israel is the wrong place to be, and if I want to be on a beach with naked women, so is Iran.

I certainly am not saying that Muslims shouldn't come here; nor am I saying that they shouldn't express themselves freely and even try to get us to follow their ways. But they are their ways, not ours, and I reserve the right to point this out honestly, and not in the sickly euphemisms of all-inclusivism and bogus multiculturalism. I do not esteem Chinese music or African law above ours; I do not value Pakistani traditions and culture above ours; and I certainly do not think this country has a one-way cultural and social debt to accommodate immigrants on their terms.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't receive immigrants; we need them for selfish reasons - economically, of course, but also we need fresh blood, fresh eyes and fresh cultures to invigorate our own, to help us reinvent the way we see the outside world, and to prick the bubble of insufferable smugness which has accompanied our economic boom. We need more voices, more diversity, more criticism, more people of different backgrounds saying unexpected things from hitherto unperceived positions.

But this doesn't mean that there were won't be people who hanker for the old days, and the ancient racial celebrations of the Gael. These people have a right to be heard, just as the incoming Chinese, Africans, Pakistanis and Romanians have. To repress them, to silence them, to marginalise them, is to cause such people to go underground, and to seek illegal expression for what their hearts genuinely tell them.

1916 Rising

For we must tolerate that which we might feel intolerant or intolerable. Though I loathe the 1916 Rising, and the project upon which its leaders were embarked, I would never say it is wrong for people commemorate it: that event is simply too close to too many people's hearts, and to their sense of national self. I merely reserve the right to critical dissent.

In a society whose politics have traditionally been based on the past, there will still be people who will yearn for the Dublin they knew and which is gone, as entire streets become Afro-Asian, as they inevitably will. In Britain, those who lamented the change in racial composition of the streets where they were raised were simply denounced as racist, patronised and then ignored.

That mustn't happen here. As our cities become multiracial, and probably far more exciting, we mustn't allow the illiberal liberals in their middle-class suburbs to muzzle the free expression of unhappy natives. Listened to and respected, those who otherwise could have turned to violence might learn tolerance; and tolerance of what we do not like is the only tolerance worth speaking of.