Sir, - Kevin Myers is at it again, showing off his credentials as that most typically Irish creature, the illiberal liberal (An Irishman's Diary, May 1st). Writing of the cries of offence regarding the recent Levi's billboard advertising campaign, he sees a sign of the times in the fact that the Islamic Cultural Centre has suggested that these ads are offensive to the Muslim community.
Mr Myers passes a deeply unfair slur on that centre, and indeed on Islam, by moving on very swiftly, by way of a reference to the Khomeini fatwa on Salman Rushdie, to the objection (expressed, Mr Myers says, in another fatwa) of a senior Saudi cleric to Pokemon. This has the effect of aligning the legitimately expressed opinion of a cultural institution with pronouncements both minatory and ridiculous. It also elides the substantial differences between an opinion and a prohibition. The Islamic Cultural Centre has prohibited nothing.
Such is the monolithic idea of "Islam" that Mr Myers is working with that he feels free to inform us that this prohibition has spread throughout much of the Muslim world. But if Mr Myers knew anything of the world he so easily calumnies he would realise that the "Muslim world" is about as homogeneous as the Christian world.
Mr Myers says, touchingly enough, that Ireland's is a "secular Christian society which, after all, compels no one to stay". He should try submitting his column, having written in the same manner about the Irish Jewish community or the Irish black community, and see how good he feels then, and if his editor will publish his copy. - Yours, etc.,
Conor McCarthy, De Vesci Court, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.