Is the Indo systemically anti-Muslim?

Certainly, some Muslims seem to think so.

As far as I'm aware, there have been at least two complaints to the Press Council and Ombudsman from Irish based Muslims about articles that appeared in the Irish Independent.

One was a somewhat inflammatory piece by commentator Kevin Myers, whose flights of fancy I've previously examined here.

The other complaint apparently relates to Ian O'Doherty (airbrushed above), whose otherwise interesting and light-hearted column I-Spy is regularly marred by his blinkered defence of all things Neo-Con or Israeli, and his blanket demonising of Islam.

After yet another crack about Shariah law in Ireland from Ian, a large number of Irish Muslims finally had enough and collectively wrote a letter to the editor, which was published in today's edition.

What I found intriguing, though, is that the grammar of the letter was sporadically abysmal. Not consistently so, just sporadically so, almost as if errors had been deliberately inserted to make the writers look stupid.

What errors JC, I hear you ask with my now well-known superpower of being able to hear your thoughts over the interweb?

Errors like: "Let us start with Saudi Arabia as an example quote by himcountry in the world named after a family..."

Or "We would also like to point out to yourMuslims were unmatched in the advances in the fields of mathematics..."

Or "It is similar to what the British didthe IRA was bombing Britain."

Now, some of the signatories included at least two consultant surgeons, not to mention other doctors, as well as 'students, shopkeepers and housewives.'

Either we are to believe that they took it in turns writing a line each, which might explain why a letter that is otherwise coherent and eloquent could include a series of incomprehensible grammar clangers.

Or we could assume that the Indo butchered the letter for their own impenetrable reasons.

I wonder which it is? Could the Indo be so systematically anti-Muslim as to deliberately make a community of Muslims out to be illiterate?

Sex and the Pity

According to 'Colonel' Kevin Myers, in his forthcoming tome about the Troubles, he was barely able to file copy most days due to the amount of women he was boffing in Belfast.

In yesterday's Sunday Times, we got two self-indulgent broadsheet pages of his Belfast bedpost notches, full of glorious detail about how our hero was paramour to Provos and lothario of Loyalists in the early Seventies.

In fairness, the Colonel didn't have his recognisably pendulous jowls back then, and I've little doubt that to the denizens of Belfast back then, a plummy English accent that wasn't accompanied by battle fatigues and a rifle was a real novelty.

But am I the only person to find his account of love across the barricades more than a tad unlikely?

Let me be frank - some of his Don Juantics simply stretch my disbelief suspenders to breaking point. Let me quote a couple of examples. After being taken back to the Falls Road house of a prominent Provo by his missus, Myers is interrupted in his nocturnal adventure when the aforementioned paramilitary returns unexpectedly. Myers assumes the position (hiding under the bed.)

"And so it proceeded, her nagging and his bluster, until finally he went downstairs to make the tea. I rolled out from under the bed, scooped the remains of my clothes from the floor and without kissing my girl of the night farewell, hopped into the only other bedroom, where the sister was drunkenly slumbering. I had no choice but to slip in beside her and hope she didn’t notice."

The Colonel manages to make his excuses and leave in good journalistic fashion of course, albeit his quick exit means he drives home in his pelt with an accidental armful of the cuckolded Provo's undies.

He manages to get caught in flagrante a second time with 'classically Protestant' Trudy on the other side of town. Her rugby playing hubby returns early from the game, while Myers again assumes the position:

"I leapt nimbly over the bed and lay alongside it, in the small gap between it and the wall beneath the curtained window. But it had taken too long. Erskine had grown impatient and had gone to the front of the house, where he was hauling the unlocked sash window open, just inches above me."

Again, using the quick wit for which he is famed, he makes his escape unharmed by husband.

"This was the second time a husband had nearly caught me, but on different sides of the sectarian divide. With such gallant cross-community endeavours as mine, peace was surely at hand."

Surely indeed, Kevin. What did it take in the end, three more decades? You should have put it about a bit more.

Now, I'm not saying he couldn't have got one or two pity shags. After all, Belfast back then was like that line from Pulp's song 'Common People' - "We drink and smoke and screw because there's nothing else to do."

But does he really expect people to believe all this sleeping with the enemies guff? My arse, he does.

I reckon he's just seeking to take the piss out of a place which he seems to have despised for many years. That or desperately trying to flog his book.