Madam, - Kevin Myers, and several of your correspondents, would like immigrants to this country from other countries and cultures to adopt "Irish" or, at least, "Western" modes of dress and behaviour. I presume they would also expect visitors from Ireland to those countries - including Islamic ones - to reciprocate, and adopt the local habits?
In the early 1970s I spent two months travelling through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of an overland journey to India. It was a fantastic education, and a life-changing experience for me in many ways. One thing in particular that struck me at the time, and has stuck in my mind ever since, was the loutish antics and inappropriate behaviour of a large proportion (though emphatically not all) of the many Western, hippie-type travellers who were passing through the region at the time. This behaviour included much open and enthusiastic drug-taking (of opiates as well as the relatively benign hashish), frequent exposure of far too much flesh by both men and women, and a general looseness of morals and a propensity to mix-and-match sexual partners.
If such behaviour had occurred in Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, or Dublin, say, it would probably have drawn adverse comment. Needless to say it most definitely did not go down well among the much more conservative inhabitants of the host countries. Many I spoke to, including middle-class and widely educated people, were greatly unimpressed by these activities, and several voiced deep concern at the influence that this example of "Western culture" would have on their own young people, and on their traditional ways of life.
I have often wondered to what extent the current upsurge of conservative, traditionalist Islamic fundamentalism, as seen in the revolution in Iran, the rise of the Taliban and, more recently, al-Qaeda, had its origins in a backlash against these excesses and the lack of Western respect for local customs? - Yours, etc,
DARIUS BARTLETT, Department of Geography, University College Cork.