Sir, Matthew Parris (Comment, August 27) illustrates the confused and intolerant approach of many “liberals” to multiculturalism. He says that the use of the full hijab — or veil — is unacceptable. But, it is clear that to him multiculturalism, “better described as liberalism”, is the secular god before whom all are to bow down.

Parris talks about “the translation of religion or culture into the way daily life is lived among others who do not share the faith”, apparently not understanding that to people of faith there is no gap between religion and life.

Of course, there is a legitimate debate to be had on the place of women in Islam as in other religious traditions. But Parris doesn’t, for instance, comment on the Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women and its impact on societies across the globe.

More crucially, is it really acceptable in “any 21st-century Western country” for a liberal male to say what he thinks the veil means to Muslim women? The question needs to be asked of Muslim women themselves. If Parris were to ask it of them, he would find that many actually see it as a sign of their liberation from a prevailing and dangerous Western, secular norm — namely, a view of women purely as sexual objects.

In this sense, Western secular liberalism also has questions to answer.

CHRIS CHIVERS
(Canon Chancellor with responsibility for interfaith relations)
Blackburn Cathedral

From Miss Khadijah Elshayyal

Sir, I suspect that Matthew Parris is right in saying that our dominant culture is liberalism, and that it is in itself a set of norms. But isn’t it time that our liberalism woke up to the fact that Britain today has undergone significant change?

I would conjecture that for every Matthew Parris there are probably ten of my fellow Britons who are open minded enough to realise that the face veil cannot be equated with forced marriages, female circumcision, or unequal education for girls.

In the same way, I know that any right-minded British Muslim is not about to equate a more minimalist dress sense with domestic violence against women, eating disorders in teenage girls or drug and alcohol addiction.

KHADIJAH ELSHAYYAL
Bloomsbury, London

From Mr Colin Spencer

Sir, After being out of the UK for some years I was shocked by my first sighting of the full burka on the streets of a provincial English city a couple of years ago. It was as if I had suddenly been confronted with a Star of David sewn on some passerby’s arm.

Nothing any purveyor of multiculturalism and political correctness in the UK says will persuade me to find a place for either of them in my scale of values.

COLIN SPENCER
Church Down, Gloucester

From Professor Joseph Moran

Sir, “Most of us are not Roman Catholics but few object to a Catholic wanting to eat fish on a Friday,” says Matthew Parris. This is a caricature of Catholic practice. Church law now prescribes abstinence from meat (without any obligation to eat fish instead) on only two days a year, namely Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, at the beginning and end of Lent. Those two days are also days of fasting.

The Church has always recommended fasting and abstinence as one form of penance, self-denial and self-control. Nowadays it is left to the individual to do penance in the way he or she chooses, but the two days of obligation are retained as a sign and reminder of the need for penance.

JOSEPH MORAN
Newton Mearns, Glasgow

From Mr Michael Baker

Sir, It seems to me that the real offence conveyed by the wearing of the full veil by Muslim women lies in the implication that no man can look on any woman without being consumed by unholy lust.

R. M. G. BAKER
Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

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