STUART Waiton’s piece on illiberalism (“Outrage at Boris is a troubling sign of the new illiberalism”, The Herald, August 15) is confused. Denmark’s decision to ban the burka does not undermine the principle of religious freedom, which has limits. Having the right to worship the God of your choice in your own way is one thing; wearing a mask to conceal your identity, behind which you may be a terrorist bent on killing innocent people is another. The principle of clear identification of persons is more important than the right to conceal your identity, for the first protects everyone while the second makes their protection uncertain and, by its very existence, threatens other lives, as we have seen repeatedly in the past.
Defending the right of free speech is a basic freedom in this society. Boris Johnson hates the burka because he hates the disguise and he compares it to the bandits of old. The idea that not offending people should come before freedom of speech reminds me of life in Lewis 40 years ago. A man came to our door and complained that our hanging washing out to dry on a Sunday was offensive to him. We needed the clothes for Monday. Every other day it had been raining. Were we supposed to go without clean clothes to work on Monday because he kept the Sabbath and was intolerant of our difference?
Being tolerant does not mean “not offending anyone”. Every woman in a burka sends a signal to every man that almost all of her is not to be seen by him. That is intolerable to almost every man in this country for it sends him the signal that, were it not for the burka, she would be in danger from him. Any woman who comes here should have stayed home or adjusted to the fact that we all know what women look like and they do not need to cover themselves up. The burka is an intolerant act towards the men of this country. It is offensive to the local men in our population.
When a person emigrates to this country, she should not expect to transport every custom of theirs. Some we do not allow: like under-age, arranged marriage or child genital mutilation, even if the religion approves. The burka is in the same category: it should have been left off at our border and never seen again. You can still go to the mosque and worship as you wish but the clothes you wear should fit your new circumstances: you should not be identifiable either as a bandit or a terrorist. That is unwise.
William Scott,
23 Argyle Place, Rothesay.
Literally minutes after the latest incident at Westminster on Tuesday morning, the first "expert’’ was on live TV mentioning Boris Johnson and his remarks on the burka as a possible trigger ("Suspect held over Westminster terror attack 'not known' to security services", The Herald, August 15).
So his implication is that the perpetrator, whoever he is, was a perfectly normal, peaceful chap going about his business and was suddenly jolted into this murderous action by the remarks of a generally discredited politician, who happened to utilise the rule of free speech and thought in this country and say what he thought.
Is this really the stage we have reached?
Alexander McKay.
8/7 New Cut Rigg,
ANGELA Haggerty is right to criticise the attempt in modern Scotland to dismiss spiritual and faith beliefs (“The sneering dismissiveness of spirituality harms us all”, The Herald, August 15). Some of the evidence of Scotland’s undoubted religious decline is at the very least debatable and possibly exaggerated.
Even if there was nothing else for me to find agley in the Humanists’ survey of Scottish attitudes towards religious belief (“We no longer go to church but many Scots still have a belief in angels and devils”, The Herald, August 14), I would be sceptical about the supposed finding that 53 per cent never pray.
There are surely relatively few people who in situations of extreme stress, illness or family crisis do not in the end pray? I think the survey has got this wrong somewhere.
Equally, the survey reports a substantial majority who seemingly do not believe in an afterlife. Yet I have noted on numerous occasions that news stories where people who have just been laid to rest with Humanist rituals are then posthumously quoted as having previously stated that, for instance, “Mummy will be looking down on her kids and loving them always”. I think there is quite a lot of ambiguity and confusion in this survey and in the allegedly non-religious respondents to it.
Gus Logan,
2 York Road, North Berwick.
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