Sir, – I hope that the remarks of the Tory press office (March 23) about myself are not indicative of the upcoming Scottish election campaign.
Dismissing those who criticise you as bonkers and ludicrous is not exactly helpful to intelligent debate.
My comment that there was an alarming tinge of racism in the behaviour of some MSPs cannot be so easily dismissed.
Ruth Davidson is not racist in the sense of discriminating according to skin colour.
But there is a form of cultural imperialism which assumes that our cultural values are the obvious universal values of all humanity.
It is a kind of Western liberal colonialism which assumes that we are the progressives and others who do not share our views are somehow backward.
In my view, Ms Davidson, as the leader of a major party in Scotland, shamed our country by behaving in the way she did at the Scottish Parliament.
One has to ask why she snubbed the head of an African democracy yet did not protest when the head of a communist autocracy was given the red-carpet treatment by her own party?
Ghana is the ninth-largest economy in Africa, with significant ties to Scotland.
We should be cultivating those ties and not being rude and hectoring towards President Mahama.
I should also point out that it was the local Ghanaian LGBT community which was critical of the unthinking actions of Ms Davidson and other MSPs.
Members of this community were the ones who spoke of this gesture politics as doing more harm than good and who warned that they did not need a white saviour coming to rescue them.
Is it wrong for the people of Scotland to expect its political leaders to behave with more dignity and maturity?
And that includes not calling those who dare to question them bonkers.
David A. Robertson. St Peter’s Free Church, 4 St Peter Street, Dundee.
Tory problem for Ms Sturgeon
Sir, – Nicola Sturgeon will be watching the current Tory turmoil in Westminster with concern.
As we all know, the nationalist leader takes pleasure in conflating the Conservatives with Westminster.
She believes a Tory Government conveniently assists her relentless them-and-us narrative regarding the UK.
So the news, following Iain Duncan Smith’s departure, that UK ministers will not target other benefits to pay for axing cuts to disability payments is not welcome news to the SNP.
As far as Ms Sturgeon is concerned, what purpose do the Tories have for her, if she cannot daily use them to paint the Westminster Government, and therefore the rest of the UK, in a negative light?
Martin Redfern. 4 Royal Circus, Edinburgh.
Handing victory to terrorists
Sir, – European liberals generally find it very difficult to take people’s religious beliefs seriously.
When a jihadist states clearly that his actions are in obedience to the teaching of the Koran and in emulation of Mohammed, this is immediately dismissed as religious veneer on what are really social and economic reasons.
In their determination to recreate the terrorists’ mindset in their own image, analysts ignore massive evidence of the power of religious belief to motivate drastic and self-sacrificial action.
Once one is convinced that Mohammed was a messenger from God, and that the Koran is, therefore, a message directly from God, obedience to its teaching and his example is obligatory.
Many Muslims would disagree, but my reading of the foundational texts of Islam is that they clearly mandate some values and actions utterly at odds with my values as a Christian.
Moderate Muslim leaders often fail in their noble efforts to prevent radicalisation among their followers because the influence of what is believed to be Allah’s message is stronger than the temperate pronouncements of apparently weak and compromising clerics.
Currently, challenging the truth claims of Islam is regarded as futile, but it is not. People do change their religious (and atheistic) convictions as a result of rational argument.
Christianity is routinely challenged intellectually in the media. Islam is not, out of fear and a misguided notion of tolerance.
If Islam is protected from critical appraisal, the terrorists have won a victory.
Richard Lucas. 11 Broomyknowe, Colinton, Edinburgh.
Do I detect SNP backtrack?
Sir, – On February 19 2014 the Scottish Parliament decided that every child in Scotland should have a named person a state official tasked with looking after their wellbeing.
It was well recorded that this state guardian would be put in place regardless of whether or not children or parents wanted to have one and regardless of whether there was any need for state intervention.
The SNP’s proposal for the named person scheme attracted widespread opposition from parents and prominent organisations.
In fact, the Christian Institute, Tymes Trust and the Family Education Trust have a landmark case being heard in the UK Supreme Court.
Now Nicola Sturgeon has come out all these months later and insisted that parents would not be obliged to participate and said: “It’s an entitlement, not an obligation”.
Does she at last realise how unpopular this named person scheme is, that the UK Supreme Court is likely to rule against her and with an election in May is she getting desperate?
Clark Cross. 138 Springfield Road, Linlithgow.
West to blame for atrocities
Sir, – Despite the horrifying Brussels attacks, it is essential that people do not allow themselves to be stampeded into new wars and police state measures by the propaganda of the media and a degraded political establishment.
The wave of ISIS attacks in Europe, from the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 bombings in Paris to this week’s Brussels attacks, are inextricably bound up with decades of wars and interventions that have destroyed large parts of the Middle East and destabilised the rest.
ISIS is the product of three imperialist wars: first, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the war for regime-change in Libya, and the proxy war stoked up by the US and the European powers in Syria, where they have backed Islamist militias including ISIS in an effort to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
These wars have created a monster in Europe, a network of Islamist fighters.
A significant factor in accelerating the pace of attacks in Europe is the fact that broad sections of the European ruling class welcome the pretext provided by such crimes to fan anti-Muslim hatred so as to divide the working class, while expanding their police state measures.
As they seek to justify a policy of denying the right of asylum to millions of refugees fleeing Middle East wars to impose ever more brutal austerity measures on the working class, the ruling elites view such terror attacks as a political godsend.
Alan Hinnrichs. Gillespie Terrace, Dundee.