An Irishman's Diary

The depressing thing about debate in Ireland is not so much that it seldom really occurs (and it seldom does), but that so many…

The depressing thing about debate in Ireland is not so much that it seldom really occurs (and it seldom does), but that so many people delight in using it to score points over petty issues: the equivalent of triumphantly detecting a split infinitive in the course of an undergraduate debate on the morality of nuclear warfare, writes Kevin Myers

Thus, when I was writing about the nonsensical heresy of "multiculturalism" I said: "I simply don't believe that all other cultures are as valuable or as enriching as the western European and North American democratic models. Not for nothing did Saul Bellow wonder where was the Zulu Tolstoy."

Whereupon, in leapt Michael Durkan of Westport, Co Mayo, gleefully pointing out that Tolstoy was not a product of the western European or North American societies. So is that it? Were the subjects of that column - "multiculturalism", my proposal to outlaw the public wearing of the burka, and the role of Islam in Irish life - advanced by a single micron with that contribution? No, of course they weren't. Instead, we are back to that depressingly familiar Irish Times letter-writing territory of sneering points-scoring, where a reader detects some minor inconsistency in a larger argument, and crowingly makes that trivium the central issue of their contribution.

Martin Loughnan from Skerries says he laughed out when he saw that a letter supporting my comments on multiculturalism came from an Irishman in Japan. Oh very good, Martin, very good: haw haw haw. But have you the least idea how few immigrants Japan actually allows?

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Neil Forsyth took the other Irish solution to the Irish problem, which is sanctimonious rock-climbing: "However, for [ Kevin Myers] to call multiculturalism 'idiotic' and fundamentalist Islamic cultures 'loathsome' is overstepping the mark. In the present climate, the expressions of such prejudiced views is not the least amusing, praiseworthy or helpful."

A pity he didn't refer to the full context of my remarks, which was: "Moreover, I regard fundamentalist Islamic cultures, and the many variants which have appeared throughout the Middle East, as utterly loathsome. In some parts of that benighted region, the pharaonic circumcision of girls is a 'cultural norm', as is the practice of honour-killing of women." All right (in the present climate), how else do you describe the forcible removal of a little girl's genitalia? "Overstepping the mark", perhaps? Or "prejudiced" even? And how do you characterise the stoning to death of alleged prostitutes in Iran? Perhaps, "not the least amusing, praiseworthy or helpful"?

Moreover, though he could not apparently find it in his heart to condemn or even dislike the legal practices of Islamic republics, Mr Forsyth still was able to accuse me of xenophobia. It's an odd old world in which someone who is against burying homosexuals up to their necks and bashing their brains out with rocks, or the honour-killing of a woman because she has been raped, or who thinks the sexual mutilation of little girls is a criminal abomination, should be termed a "xenophobe".

The Forsyth saga then bizarrely turns to the North, where "some progress has been made in recent years". He adds: "one of the reasons this has happened is that the leaders of both communities there decided to moderate their language and moderate their behaviour towards each other. Consequently, there has been a softening of attitudes over time, a better cross-cultural understanding and co-operation, and most importantly, the beginnings of a process towards mutual compromise and tolerance."

Which North is this? Not our North for sure, where sectarian divisions are now far worse than they were 10 years ago. So where? Northern Norway? Northern Luxembourg? Northern Utopia? He accuses me of "warning" burka-wearing women not to come here. I did no such thing; but the implication of a threat where there is none is always a good way of achieving the high moral ground, and that, rather than the resolution of real issues, is the primary purpose of most public debate in Ireland.

So I repeat. I regard the full, face-masking burka as an unacceptable public declaration of the oppression of women. And contrary to what Neil Forsyth suggests, it is not a traditional "head-dress" of Muslims, but until recently was confined to the Arabian peninsula and parts of Afghanistan. That it has recently spread to Bangladesh and Pakistan is merely proof of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism across the world; and only the weak-minded hospitality of the doomed tolerates the public display of aggressive sexual oppression.

Anyway, just because the burka might be traditional in certain places doesn't mean we should accept it here. We do not permit Swahili women to go bare-breasted in Dublin merely because they do so at home. Moreover, this is not a debate about some harmless sartorial vogue, but the spread of a fundamentalism which has so far caused tens of thousands of deaths across the world. Nor is this something strange and remote. A dozen British Muslims have so far become suicide bombers, killing scores of people, from London to Kashmir. We are all facing a complex war of civilisations, and part of that war is sartorial.

In all free societies, humans have a profound taboo about concealing the face, and I believe that taboo should now be reflected in law. We are increasingly dependent on Muslim immigrants, without whom our medical services would collapse overnight. By outlawing the burka, we are both protecting Muslim women and girls from the coercion of fundamentalists within their own immigrant communities, and are defending public cohesiveness according to European norms. We must not allow women to go masked in public. Full stop.