In the aftermath of the 11th September, 2001 attacks in th USA I wrote the following letter to The Independent, a UK daily newspaper. The letter was published, and started a short run of correspondence on the subject of the differences between western and Islamic culture:

Values we must defend

Sir
Last night my wife and I went to a party at our health club in support of breast cancer awareness. There were about 150 people there - men in suits, women in party dresses, alcohol, food, music, dancing and general laughter and frivolity.
Watching the proceedings brought it home to me very clearly how much we in the West take for granted. Under the Islamic religious fanatics there would be none of this. No music, dancing or enjoyment of any kind, no alcohol, no TV or films, and women treated as sub-humans.
If we don't stand up for our values against these extremists who would take it all away to further their own ends, just think how much we have to lose.

Published 23 October 2001

This letter prompted a reply a few days later from a Muslim woman living in England:

Islam frees women

Sir

Thank you to Barry Jones for his vivid description of the Western values of drink and partying, and for his attack on the Islamic ban on such behaviour (letter, 23 October).

When boasting of the frivolity in this society, he conveniently omits to mention the sheer moral decadence it leads to: sodomy; serial adultery; drugs; drink-driving leading to murder; extensive health and social problems related directly to alcohol; teenage pregnancy due to the sexual openness and sex-obsessiveness of society; lack of marital fidelity, resulting in countless people consumed with jealousy as they worry about which colleague their partner will have an affair with next; the manipulation of women on television, where furniture, chocolates, communications companies and even cars are marketed with images of scantily dressed women; glamour models who know that success is directly proportionate to the amount of clothing they remove in public. A culture in which women are "prized" (rather like farm animals) for their bodies, where women endure the pain of plastic surgery in order to conform to the ideals of men - so much for feminism.

As a Muslim woman, I wear the hejab with pride because I do not wish to be the subhuman sex object, alive purely for the gratification of men, that women are in Western culture. The decency, clean living and morality of Islamic fundamentalism is a far cry from the filth of modern decadence. Believe me, we Muslims have plenty of fun, but not in a way that involves alcohol-induced paralysis and lying in one's own vomit in bed with a total stranger.

Khola Hasan

Ilford, Essex

Published 27 October, 2001

This in turn prompted a reply from another reader in response:

Islam and the West

Sir

Thank you for printing the highly objectionable letter from Khola Hasan (27 October), who has inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Her letter, spiked throughout with vitriol, eminently displays the gulf that exists between the followers of Islam and Western culture, and exposes the inherent contempt held for us "infidels".

... Above all, our Western culture offers something that Ms. Hasan, with her puritanical and contemptuous attitude, probably finds completely alien: the freedom not to believe. Ms. Hasan's views are as abhorrent as any National Front supporter's, speaking only of intolerance and bigotry.

David Lee Taylor

London, N19

Published 30 October 2001

On the same day that this last letter was published, one of the Independent's regular columnists, David Aaronovitch, picked up on the correspondence and published an article entitled "How much more can we tolerate?", in which he said:

"Last week a woman wrote to The Independent about the status of women under a certain kind of Islam. Her letter had three distinguishing qualities. The first was that it was wonderfully well written and passionate; the second was that it was demented; and the third was that it was from Ilford.

"The correspondent had been moved to write in by an epistle from a bloke called Barry, which had argued that...at least Westerners knew how to have a good time. The woman from Ilford did not want this sort of good time. Her kind of good time - which she never quite managed to pin down - would not include the Western pleasures of.. drink-driving, sodomy and cosmetic surgery...These things turned Western women into sex objects, which virtuous Muslim culture did not.

..."This was a letter of pure hatred, and one that only an incredibly naive woman or a celibate priest could write and believe. Certainly few honest men could. If - because of your exceptional religious ethics - you had no problem with adultery, then why would you need the penalty of being able to stone adulteresses? Because men will stray, so the women must be restrained. The violent misogyny of the Taliban or the Saudi mutawwain (religious police) is based on a fear of female sexuality."