Madam, - Like Elaine Desmond (September 6th), I attended and greatly enjoyed the recent Festival of World Cultures in Dun Laoghaire.
Unlike her, I cannot believe that multiculturalism is a viable "philosophy of life", something her tone suggests should be somehow self-evident, denied only by bigots and reactionaries.
As Gandhi reportedly said about Christianity, multiculturalism sounds like a good idea - but, though Christianity sometimes does work, multiculturalism doesn't.
We know this from, for example, our own 400-year experiment up North, from the Middle East, Kashmir, and of course inner-city Britain, France and Germany - even the famously tolerant Netherlands. Canada, for long held up as a model by the PC and by multiculturalists, has suffered two Islamic attacks in recent months.
In the wake of 7/7 we learned of social studies, done over many years, which supplies convincing evidence that integration, not multiculturalism, provides immigrants with the best access to opportunity and best ensures stability and a safer environment for all society.
In the same edition as Ms Desmond's letter, a Muslim lawyer, forced out of her practice in Germany by violence, denies that "multicultural tolerance is the correct approach to integration issues". Recently this bankrupt "philosophy of life" has given us alleged Anglo-Saxon enemies of the British state - neat vindication of your erstwhile columnist Kevin Myers's prediction that multiculturalism was likely to produce suicide bombers called Seán.
For me, the Festival of World Cultures was indeed "an interesting diversion," and one that broadened my horizons and subtly, no doubt, my mind. Are the people of, say, London, Birmingham or High Wycombe, whatever culture they individually belong to, having their horizons and minds broadened or narrowed by living in a multicultural society? - Yours, etc,
M. CARRAGHER,
Rockford Park,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.