LIKE India Knight (Muslims are the new Jews, Comment, last week) I am foreign but naturalised. However, the fact the government has gone so far to placate sections of the foreign community that Britain has almost lost its identity makes me despair.

The debate about Jack Straw’s request and those surrounding the veiled teacher would not even be countenanced in countries where religions other than the official one are not permitted. In the name of being civilised, Britain does not mind trampling over Christianity (eg no necklaces with crosses). An old saying enjoins us, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Today, the maxim appears to be when in Rome, Romans must bend the knee to ensure the Carthaginians are made comfortable at the expense, and to the detriment, of Romans. How sad to see what chasing votes can lead to.

Johnson Ajayi
Southport

HIDING REPRESSION: Knight extrapolates the wider situation of women in Pakistan from her own privileged background. While within the ruling elite some women have a strong role, the vast majority suffer precisely the patriarchal dominance and repression she dismisses as fiction.

Pakistan owns up to almost 4,000 honour killings of women annually and independent agencies suggest the real figure may be 10 times that in a legal and social context that does not even recognise the concept of domestic violence.

Female literacy in Pakistan is still only 36% (male literacy is 62%). It is frankly shameful to obscure all this.

Professor Shaun Gregory
Department of Peace Studies
The University of Bradford

FREEDOM OF CHOICE: I doubt if the story on the veiled teacher’s suspension (which took place in February) would have made the news had it not been for Straw’s comment. Now we have the prime minister getting involved. It will not be long before a Muslim woman is killed by thugs. Many Muslims don’t agree with the need for women to wear a veil but it is a personal choice.

Mohammed Farooq
Birmingham
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EQUALITY COUNTS: Women here have fought for the right to look any man in the eye and have him respect us for who we are, regardless of how overcome with sexual attraction he may find himself. We have in the main succeeded. And rape and sexual abuse of women goes on just as much in countries where the veil predominates and where they find themselves caught in a culture that precludes them speaking out.

Lynne Anderson
Glasgow

MUSLIM THREAT: I don’t see a nun as threatening and the sari is most attractive, but a Muslim in head to toe covering leaves me feeling uneasy. Having lived in many parts of the world, the subcontinent and Middle East included, I am familiar with life for Muslim women: repressive dress codes enforced often by “religious police”; raped women treated as adulterers and so on. I do not want this imported here.

Sikhs, Hindus and Jews follow their own customs but I don’t know of a Jewish suicide bomber on a London bus or a Hindu who wants to change the law in England or Dravidians threatening to murder authors because they disagree with them.

John Bell
Nottingham

OFFENSIVE TO JEWS: Knight bizarrely suggests that orthodox Jews avoid walking on the shadows of non-Jews because they are regarded as unclean. There is no substance to this proposition whatsoever and even she concedes that she was told this by her estate agent who, it is fair to assume, if Jewish at all, is unlikely to be a rabbinic authority. A reference to the mode of dress adopted by orthodox Jewish women was both vacuous and offensive in denigrating what are supposed to be signs of modesty as “bad” and “drab”.

Jon Benjamin
Board of Deputies of British Jews

INTEGRATE NOW: I may be a naive 18-year-old student but, as I see it, a lot of the racism and conflict is a result of poor integration. I am not racist. My best friend comes from Yemen and is a Muslim. I think it is up to Muslims to make the effort to be accepted and wearing the veil is not going to help.

James Parton
Ludlow, Shropshire

BODY SHOCK: I ran a Middle Eastern art company for 25 years and lived in Lebanon, Dubai and Libya. I noted — like Knight — a range of opinions there on veiling. I am more shocked by body piercing and dress styles in Europe. The British government issues veils and cloaks for women for their trade missions to Saudi Arabia. Let Straw treat women as equals, veiled or not.

Dale Egee
London SW3