Yet again the mumbo-jumbo of "multiculturalism", a term that is unfailingly invoked in every pious homily about immigration, has been raising its grinning, idiotic head, writes Kevin Myers.
However, I note that Martin Ruhs, of the University of Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, and of the Policy Institute at TCD, does not seem to use it at all. Good man, Martin.
He raised the point in a recent paper in Dublin that sustainable immigration policies cannot be achieved without a comprehensive and structured debate - "something that has eluded many other countries with much longer histories of migrant workers than Ireland". As my careful and considered contribution to a comprehensive and structured debate, I politely suggest that the entire concept of multiculturalism should disappear up its own fundament, for two reasons. The first is that we know a little about multiculturalism in Ireland - viz the Ardoyne interface, viz the Orange march in Dublin that never was - and we're not very good at it.
Secondly, 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.
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 killings of women.
So, if you defend multiculturalism as parity of esteem for all cultures - and please, make yourself at home in Ireland of the Welcomes - well, you're in essence saying that you respect cultures which mutilate little girls and justify the murder of rape victims because they are unclean (haram, a common practice in Jordan and Pakistan).
India has given us a startling insight into the terrifying complexities of "multiculturalism" (protected in the longest and most incomprehensible constitution in the world, one which makes the now-dead European Constitution seem like the Gettysburg Address). A Muslim woman named Imrana was raped by her father-in-law in a village in Northern India. Because she is now alleged to be haram, the powerful Islamicist Darul-Uloom seminary has ordered her to leave her family home.
Under ordinary Indian law, she would be entitled to alimony from her husband; but the Darul-Uloom Islamicists insist that alimony is contrary to Islam. And in India, family law depends on your religion: if you are a Muslim woman, Indian law obliges you to abide by the interpretations of Islamic clerics. So although you are an Indian citizen, you are nonetheless deprived of the protections of Indian secular law - just another joyous item in that colourful mosaic known as multiculturalism.
So, do we want people moving to Ireland, and within the unprincipled licentiousness of multiculturalism, establishing different marital and family laws for themselves? Don't say it won't happen: it's happening already in Britain, where half-a-century after mass immigration began, there is a growing Islamic demand for Shariah law to have parity with British law. And demographic change can come with astonishing swiftness. In the Leicester of my childhood, there were five Catholic churches, eight times as many Church of England churches and non-conformist chapels, and no mosques. In Leicester of today, there are 160 mosques.
When I see a woman shrouded in full burka in the centre of Dublin, my heart does not race with pride at the multiculturalism we are importing, for this is aggressive and monocultural intolerance, in a studied and disdainful rejection of our ways. The burka proclaims its wearer's modesty, and is an insulting and explicit declaration of the immodesty of women who do not wear it.
So, let me put one libertarian foot in the multicultural door here. It should be made illegal to go masked in public in Ireland, in any context other than a carnival-parade or street theatre. If Islamicist women and their menfolk do not like such restrictions, then they can go and live in glorious places such as Saudi Arabia, where such horrors are the norm.
And the burka is truly a horror: for masks are one of the most disturbing artefacts any culture knows. Their purpose is invariably sinister. That is why even clowns, with their feature-concealing comedic make-up, cause us unease: there is something profoundly unsettling or even threatening about a concealed or artificial face. For our primary form of communication, antedating and anterior to speech, is by sight. Babies respond to faces, not voices; and voices tell lies more easily than do faces.
The concealment of the eyes, as in extreme burkas, is the ultimate statement of human distance. It is hardly a coincidence that the primary social tool of secret police everywhere, from the Ton Ton Macoutes of Haiti to the West Side Boys of Sierra Leone, is a pair of sunglasses.
No doubt some people will say the burka is part of their religion. Very well, go and practice your religion where its public display doesn't offend the norms of the indigenous people. Scandinavian nudists do not promenade on Saudi Arabia's extensive beaches, waiting forlornly for the tide finally to come in. The Saudis have taboos which they expect us to adhere to.
In Ireland too, we have very strong taboos, one of which concerns the concealment of the human face. So, if you want to walk our streets, respect our taboos. Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more. Or just stay away.