Letters to the editor – June 27, 2026

Rudeness at UN

Stephen Vassallo of Xewkija writes:

Danny Denon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, should learn to be civil. He personally attacked our former ambassador, Vanessa Frazier, who now serves as UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

Danny Danon and Vanessa Frazier clash during the UN meeting.

Maybe, he should remember he represents a country and its leaders who have been accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice and the UN Human Rights Commission.

People in glass houses…

Religious instruction

Peter Dingli of San Diego, California writes:

Charles Gauci’s recollection of his 1950s English schooling (‘Religion classes’, June 20) inadvertently stumbles upon a profound truth, though I suspect he draws from it entirely the wrong conclusion. He offers us a glimpse into a system that was, by accident rather than design, momentarily rational: secular state education during the week, with the business of supernatural indoctrination relegated to the weekends, safely confined within the walls of private property.

Yet, Gauci’s primary anxiety seems to be one of mere logistics and “reasonableness”. He complains that catering to the diverse array of religious denominations now present in Malta would be too cumbersome a chore for the school timetable. How characteristically modest. The objection to religious instruction in state-funded schools should not be that it is inconvenient but that it is fundamentally toxic.

The state has no business financing or organising the inculcation of tribal, sectarian mythologies. To divide children at the school gate by the faith of their parents is a form of psychological conscription. 

It teaches them to view one another not as future citizens or fellow scholars but as members of competing, mutually exclusive cosmos-management cartels.

If the parents of Malta wish to convince their offspring that the creator of the universe dictated an infallible book, whether it be the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah, let them indeed do so on their own time, with their own funds, and within the confines of their respective temples, mosques, or chapels.

The classroom should be a sanctuary for literacy, science, historical inquiry and critical thought. It is here that children must learn how to think, not what to fear. If we are to have “religious instruction” at all within school hours, let it be the objective, secular study of comparative religion and mythology, taught as literature and history, so that children may understand the various ways in which humanity has historically deceived itself.

To expect the public educational apparatus to carve out sacred hours for sectarian dogma is worse than unreasonable; it is an abdication of civic duty. The state should get out of the soul-saving business entirely and leave the priesthoods of all stripes to compete in the open market of superstition on Saturdays, Sundays or any other day they please.