ONCE MORE Harry Russell, ex-banker, has lived up to his column’s name, Wild Coot, on June 28 in the Daily Nation.
Louis D. Brandeis US Supreme Court Justice (1916-39) said “Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance”.
Russell once more uses his so-called fertility rate argument to create an unjustified fear of Muslims in what has been for over a century, a peaceful Barbados.
A xenophobe according to the dictionary is “a person who is unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign persons”.
Your earlier article juxtaposed immigrants and the fertility rate among Muslims in our country. In other words, Russell, your writings show that you are xenophobic.
Russell, if you smelt something fishy, it certainly wasn’t any red herrings, because as an ex-banker, a senior person and one who has the privilege of a column in a respectable paper, you would recognise the importance of research before putting pen to paper.
I spared you the embarrassment of telling you that despite your continued insistence on Muslims seemingly behaving like rabbits, the reality is far different.
The census of 2000 put the number of Muslims at 1 659. This number, despite the fact that the first known Muslim arrived here around 1910, notwithstanding the hundreds brought as slaves before this.
I can’t say what the exact figure will be in this census but as the “secretary”, I am sure I speak from a position of authority when I say that number will not surpass one percent of the total population of Barbados.
Now, ex-banker, not only is my navel string also buried here, but my mother’s, grandmother’s (somewhere in St Andrew), great grandmother’s and perhaps several more generations before her.
So I don’t understand your point. Furthermore, your column raises several questions; what or who constitutes “the native population”?
What is the “natural culture of Barbados” and what is a “Barbados uniform”?
At what point, Russell, does an immigrant and/or his or her offspring become part of the “native population”? In closing, Russell, don’t be afraid, say my name…
SULEIMAN BULBULIA
