It is very disappointing to see your paper giving people like Liam Egan of MPACIE a platform for extremist views.
Anyone reading the Islamic extremist rhetoric that is regularly on display on the MPACIE website would have to question the sincerity of their chief spokesman’s talk of “harmony” and his desire for fellow Muslims to integrate fully into Irish society.
Many Muslims I am aware of reject his narrow fundamentalist view of the world and I have been told he is a tiny minority voice in the Muslim community. It is unfortunate that he is allowed to portray himself as a spokesman for Muslims in Ireland.
Paul Williams
After reading Liam Egan’s recent masterpiece (25 March) and Syed Naqib Shah’s response in your letters section (8 April), I was left a little confused.
Whilst Liam asserts ”the supremacy of Islam over all other religions” in his latest drivel, Shad bemoans that “the Sharia law system is frozen all over the world” and that “one cannot enjoy frozen fruit”. Shah, I deduce, is a Muslim in light of his statement above and his unfounded appreciation “that Sharia law is a universal concept and blessing”.
But how can Sharia be good for us infidels if the Muslim countries ignore its merciful, peaceable and infallible tenets?
There is no question that life under the Sharia-upholding Taliban in Afghanistan was a model to the rest of the Muslim world. That many of the Islamic practices and sentences meted out in Saudi Arabia draw ire from the rest of the world and some ‘moderate’ Muslim nations is a welcome ‘blessing’ to any society with claims to some semblance of sanity.
So until Liam Egan delicately thaws this “frozen fruit” and enlightens the rest of us why Sharia law is not entrenched in the Muslim world but “frozen” – in time, my guess is – then Ireland and the rest of the world will continue to miss out on what he so eloquently calls “the beauty of Sharia”.
