Madam, - Your Editorial "Religious Symbols" (December 19) says the new French law against the wearing of Islamic headscarves shows a failure to integrate Muslim communities? Yet both Jewish skull-caps and Christian crosses are banned as well.
The secular state, then, is consistent. It is against any assertive expression by believers of their religious faith through the wearing of symbols.
But what of the much-vaunted values of tolerance, pluralism and cultural diversity? - Yours, etc.,
J.A. BARNWELL,
St Patrick's Road,
Dublin 9.
