Tourists are welcome (but not them Muslims)

Last Saturday, a couple of scores of Muslim men gathered on the Sliema front. They were not being rowdy, they weren't drinking and they weren't swearing. All they had as props were some prayer rugs. Because, in fact, they were only interested in praying together. And they had a police permit to do so.

You would think, Malta being a free democratic country, that this would be a totally non-news event. Bzzz. Wrong answer - not with the racist hysteria gripping the island. For this whole week it's been the most read, most commented and most e-mailed article. Some of the comments to this simple gathering are truly alarming, chilling almost:

"Malta is a Catholic country. They have no right to come here and pray in front of us. I don't care what they do in the privacy of their own home, but not here."

"They should go to a mosque. That is where they belong. Or in some hole somewhere. But not here where I get my children to eat and have a good time."

"I would have had no problem if they were Catholics praying... in Malta we are all Catholics, so it's not a problem, but not them."

"If this happens again there will be trouble."

"I bet that their next step will be to make us remove our icons/crosses and statues from our streets or from schools."

"The authorities should never have given permission, much less protection, at the cost of the Maltese taxpayer."

"This is clear case of arrogance by a small group of men."

I'm sorry? Arrogance? Arrogant was the woman who insisted on walking her dog in front of them, twice. The comments get harsher and harsher. You would think that these men were planning a coup d'etat rather than reciting their Qur'an, or that their prayer beads were weapons of mass destruction.

The reaction, were it not in the context of our society's dark skin paranoia, would have been perplexing. These men simply prayed and then went their way: "We are not here to protest or threaten violence but to express our fundamental human right to gather in prayer," one of the leaders, Bader Zina, said.

They resorted to the Sliema front because the Planning Authority sealed off the Sliema flat where they normally gathered as it did not have a licence to be used as a place of worship. Fair enough. But then, they have every right to get a permit and hit the front.

It's not as if it's never been done before by religious groups. Didn't that touchy-feely, hand-clappy charismatic Edward Spiteri guy and his followers hog the Birzebbuga front for summer weekends on end?

Religion is being used as a poor excuse, a cover-up if you want, for racism. Yet again, the Catholic leaders have chosen to remain silent on the matter. They who should be encouraging the embracing of different religions, they who should be at the forefront of promoting tolerance and acceptance, they who should be reminding all and sundry that Christ after all said 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'

Where is the Church when it needs to voice its disapproval of this unacceptable prejudice?

I've been born and raised a Roman Catholic, but I'm all for French President Nikolas Sarkozy's call for a 'positive laïcité'.

We should all be appreciating the benefits of religion - any religion - and the way it brings about an ethical society which encourages human interaction and a sense of belonging.

A dear family friend is a perfect testimony to this. She was raised a Christian, converted to Buddhism and is now a very serene and very spiritual Gnostic, embracing all religions and free of the conformity set to us by religious dogmas. In her house a little statue of Buddha and a statue of Our Lady sit next to each other, in happy harmonious silence. If only we could take a leaf out of her peacefulness.

Instead, to paraphrase REM's tune, we're losing our religion: to hatred, intolerance and ignorance. "Turists [sic] Welcome" read most blackboards hanging outside our band/party clubs. Soon there'll be small print added, reminiscent of the US in the 1950s: "except 'em coloured ones".

We're fast becoming an irrevocably sad society indeed.