Protecting our culture - Do not be afraid to ask questions

DETAILS have been made public about proposals to build 30 primary schools across the country.

Undoubtedly, many of those schools should have been built long ago to keep pace with the needs of the communities they are to serve.

Nevertheless, they are very welcome and hopefully they will be built quickly and make it possible for our education system to become ever more efficient and inclusive, serving all of the people dependent on it.

Included in the detail of the announcement was the proposal to build five Muslim schools. Six Catholic schools are also proposed.

That Muslim schools should be planned is an inevitable and very welcome development. Anything that advances the wellbeing of any group which wishes to make a positive contribution to the development of our society must be encouraged, welcomed and protected.

However, that does not mean we should close our eyes to the need to be absolutely sure that the social, cultural and humanitarian values we have so long struggled to make part of our daily interactions and legislative culture are not undermined.

It has become difficult to even suggest that we need to consider these issues, indeed it has sometimes become difficult to defend our right to even discuss them.

We should not be deflected or embarrassed by insisting that the values we cherish, that were so long denied us, are paramount. Anything that undermines them, even in the slightest way, is not acceptable and must be rejected.

Foremost among those principles is religious freedom; a freedom that extends to all religions.

A society like ours, which has just emerged from dark decades poisoned by our own homegrown terrorism — and even today is struggling to shake the last vestiges of that cancer — should not be shy about insisting that potentially lethal extremism has no place in our society.

This is not to equate Islam with terrorism, it is just to acknowledge that some Muslins, just like some Christians, are involved in terrorism.

To pretend otherwise is just being irresponsible.

These doubts become even more pertinent when some of the activities at the Sunni Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland (ICCI) — which incorporates the Clonskeagh Mosque in Dublin — are considered.

The centre invited Egyptian Sheikh Wajdi Ghunaim to speak at a conference entitled Our Children, Hopes and Realities. Sheikh Wajdi Ghunaim has been banned from Canada because the authorities there believe he is a Hamas fundraiser.

The ICCI hosts the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a fundamentalist body that opposes any modernisation of Sharia law. It is presided over and visited by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who defends the murder of homosexuals and suicide bombings in Israel.

Values like these have no place in our educational system or society and we should not be reluctant to say so.

Neither should we be reluctant to acknowledge that the majority of Ireland’s Muslims have shown that they are peace-loving people who enhance our society while trying to make new lives for themselves. In this context it is important to point out that the proposed schools have no connection whatsoever with the ICCI.

There is nothing wrong with asking what will be taught in these schools, what ethos will be advanced and how the indigenous society and culture will be depicted. In reality it would be irresponsible not to.

It would be a pity if anyone felt victimised by having these issues raised or these questions asked. That is not the intention.

Sadly, in our divided and dangerous world, the only way we can protect all of our citizens, no matter what religion or none, is by knowing the answers to those questions.