Letters to the editor – May 20, 2026

The illusion of debate

Peter Dingli of San Diego, California writes:

The current hysteria surrounding the candidacy of Omar Rababah and the subsequent defence of Malta’s “Catholic identity” is a sterling example of the intellectual bankruptcy that occurs when a society mistakes religious tribalism for political discourse.

We are told, with a wearisome air of benevolence, that Rababah has “every right to speak”. This is the democratic equivalent of being told that water is wet. The right to propose ideas is not a concession granted by the generous but the very foundation of a free society. However, the moment he proposes introducing Qur’anic teaching into state schools, the national intellect appears to suffer a collective blackout.

Omar Rababah possesses the same human dignity as everyone else. Photo: Omar Rababah/Facebook

On one side, the self-appointed guardians of “inclusivity” reach for the word “Islamophobia”, a term designed by totalitarians and used by the gullible to treat a rational objection to religious dogma as a clinical psychiatric condition. Let us be clear: to find the tenets of any religion, be it Islam, Christianity, or the cult of Scientology, to be regressive or incompatible with Enlightenment values is not a “phobia”; it is an essential exercise of the critical faculty.

On the other side, we have the defence of Malta’s “Catholic cultural identity”. This argument, echoed by Mariana Debono (‘Who killed political debate? Omar Rababah’s case’, May 10), is a classic attempt to have one’s host and eat it too.

She invokes the catechism to condemn racism, as if we required the permission of a medieval bureaucracy to find bigotry distasteful. She then leans on a 1964 constitution to suggest that Malta is a closed book rather than a living republic. You cannot claim to be a modern, neutral state while simultaneously insisting that one particular brand of supernaturalism has a permanent seat at the head of the table.

The true “death of debate” is not caused by “labels” but by the refusal to treat ideas with the contempt they often deserve. If Rababah wants more religion in schools, he should be opposed not because of his ancestry or his race but because the classroom should be a sanctuary of reason, not a playground for competing superstitions.

Democracy is not the “difficult art” of balancing the feelings of various religious factions. It is the uncompromising insistence that no faith, whether established by the constitution or proposed by a candidate, be allowed to dictate the terms of public life.

Until Malta decides whether it is a republic of citizens or a collection of parishes, its “political debate” will remain nothing more than a noisy, sectarian squabble.