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Letters

Wednesday, 25th June 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Hijab opponents
Sir: Rod Liddle, in his attack on the tribunal that awarded £4,000 to Bushra Noah (‘Liddle Britain, 21 July), deploys an old chestnut beloved of hijab opponents everywhere: that there is nothing in the Koran which demands that women cover their hair. The claim would be irrelevant even if it were true, since the Koran is not the only source of Islamic law. We are told in the Koran to obey God and His messenger, which means that when we know that the Prophet has told us to do something, we do it.

However, chapter 24, verse 31 instructs that the believing women be told to extend their head-coverings to cover the tops of their dresses, which is impossible to do unless the woman wears a head-covering in the first place. The fact that many Muslim women do not do this is irrelevant; just because some are not observant does not mean nobody should be, or should lose the right to be if they want to make a decent living.

Matthew J. Smith
New Malden, Surrey

Modest success
Sir: Robin Oakley has done it again. Following his selection Look Here winning the Oaks at 47 to 1, his advice proved nearly as profitable at Ascot; Campanologist winning a race there at odds of 19 to 1. Mr Oakley is so modest he doesn’t even mention these successes in his column. Please permit an appreciative long-time reader to blow his trumpet for him.

Billy Purves
Sydney, New South Wales

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Derek Smith

June 27th, 2008 5:10am

What nonsense is this from Andrew Roberts? Does he really believe that the equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb in conventional explosives can be packed into an 18-ton truck?

This battle has just begun

‘I was excited and delighted by it in that first Bombay minute,’ says the narrator in Gregory David Roberts’s great novel Shantaram.

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

New Labour has always preserved from the hard Left the Leninist idea that the party (or, in Blair/Brown theory, ‘the project’) is the only reality to be respected.

Diary

Rani Singh

I’ve just emerged from the gym, winding down after a day’s writing, when my son Sukhraj calls, alerting me to sudden news of explosions and fatalities in Mumbai.