Madam, - It is appropriate that Vincent Browne's latest column appeared on July 4th, the anniversary of the first recounting of the Alice in Wonderland story by Lewis Carroll. If he really believes that the attempted jihadist slaughter in Scotland is merely a matter of "minor fire damage to a terminal at Glasgow airport", he surely forfeits all claim to be regarded as a serious commentator on public events.
Other spectacular inversions of reality follow. Israel - the state invaded on the first day of its existence by six Arab armies and which has consistently sought peace with its neighbours - is vilified as a state "founded and maintained by the brutal denial of the rights of Palestinians". Apparently, "we - the West" should stop "unconditionally" supporting it, although in fact that support is regrettably limited to verbal support for its right to exist and rarely, as we saw last summer, extends to support for the measures Israel finds necessary to defend that existence. And Britain, whose troops risk their lives to prevent the members of one Muslim sect from slaughtering those of another, is causing "havoc. . .to the lives of millions in the Middle East"!
In true Alice style, contradictions abound in Mr Browne's column. Why is support for the despotisms in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan wrong if it was also wrong to overthrow the despotism in Iraq? In the case of Pakistan, would it be better for the government there to succumb to the insurrection currently waged by Islamists who have attacked girls' schools, music shops and even barbers' shops? Regarding Iran, who is threatening whom? Is he not aware of the repeated threat by the Iranian leaders to annihilate Israel?
Mr Browne's proposals for allaying the jihadists' hatred of the West show that he has embraced the full-blown Islamist agenda. Not only should "we - the West" abandon Israel and "stop threatening Iran and Syria" (ie allow them to get on with putting their terrorist proxies in place around Israel while preparing a nuclear Holocaust). We should also - in an obvious reference to "Rushdie rage" - "stop the celebration of works that are seen to disparage Islam". It's pretty shocking that leftist self-abasement has gone so far, but it seems Mr Browne is prepared to give up the Western values of freedom of conscience and artistic self-expression to appease Islamist totalitarianism.
Radical Islamists do not need the grievances listed by Mr Browne as reasons to attack us, as Buddhists in Thailand, Hindus in Kashmir, Christians in the Philippines, animists in southern Sudan and fellow-Muslims in Algeria and Iraq experience daily.
The first modern Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, began terrorist activities back in the 1950s under the influence of Sayyid Qutb, who had returned from a stay in the US convinced that the West was one gigantic brothel. It is enough that the rest of the world is the zone of infidels who must be fought and whose lives are of less value than those of the believers.
Unfortunately, until there is a realistic appraisal of this scourge, and an end to the type of obfuscation put about by Mr Browne, there will be no real defence against the onslaught. - Yours, etc,
DERMOT MELEADY, Dublin 3.
Madam, - How nice of Vincent Browne to explicate the various "reasons" the "Muslims" are angry at "the West". It is not "mindless" anger, we are told; they are simply "incensed" at what "we - the West - are doing" to Muslim countries - Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine. Even our perfidious refusal to allow Turkish entry into the EU is a "cause". That is why, you see, "terrorist" actions - which are often only an excuse for "manipulated hysteria" - are being launched against cities like London.
How bizarre and dispiriting to read this in Ireland's national newspaper. Firstly, it is not "Muslims", but a narrow sect of puritanical Islamists, who are engaged in terrorism against the West, and they broadcast their "grievances" long before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, during the 1990s, when Islamic fundamentalism first declared its "jihad against the Jews and Crusaders", the main military actions of the West were undertaken against mass killers of Muslims - Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein - and the main diplomatic energies of America were directed toward securing peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
And today, when large numbers of Muslims are being slaughtered by Sunni fanatics in Iraq and Janjaweed militia in Darfur, what is the jihadist response? Predictably, it is to side with the killers. Indeed, the main cause of Muslim "anger" in recent years has not been genocide or civil war, but cartoons and novelists that offend their religion.
Confusingly, Mr Browne also cites, as reasons for Muslim "anger", Western support of "despotic regimes" in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but hostility to "Islamic states" in Iran and Syria. Which does he prefer - that we oppose dictatorships, or support them? And which does he think "Muslims" would prefer? Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, moreover, were the principal backers of the Taliban government in Afghanistan: should we have adopted this policy, in an effort to assuage Islamic grievance? Islamists, however, are not opposed to middle-eastern governments for their despotism, but for their impiety; that is, they think them corrupt and secular and not despotic enough.
Mr Browne's policy prescriptions, however, are even stranger. While those behind the latest attacks are, he admits, "quite unlike the IRA of 15 years ago", later he advocates a similar approach to "their demands for justice", saying that "it worked with the IRA, why not with the Islamic terrorists?"
He then proposes a massive reorientation of Western foreign and domestic policy - including putting a stop to "celebration of works that disparage Islam" - that is to be carried out not at the behest of its citizens, but of a tiny band of fanatics, who seek to incinerate those same citizens outside nightclubs.
Vincent Browne is wholly wrong. The ideology that motivated the attacks averted in London and Glasgow at the weekend targets civilians as civilians, and does so in the name of extreme religious abstractions. It is not an ideology that needs to be empathised with, or encouraged: it needs to be confronted, and defeated. - Yours, etc,
SEAN COLEMAN, Lindisfarne Lawn, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.