It is a sign of just how backward Maltese society is, and not how advanced, progressive and liberal, that an issue is made of our ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’ of race, religion and sexuality. You are truly liberal when you are indifferent to a person’s race, religion and sexuality because to you, that is just another person and the factors which matter instead have nothing to do with any of that.

I find it excruciating to be in the midst of conversations, on the internet and in real life, that speak of people as The Other on the basis of their ethnicity, creed, skin colour or sexuality. These sorts of conversations are possible only because Maltese society has for years been so dull and homogenous, so unvariegated. This gives a sense of Us to the group, with pretty much everyone else marked out as different.

In a typical conversational group in a big European city, you would never be able to have a conversation about Those Others because Those Others would actually be One Of Us, right there with you at table. And that’s quite apart from the fact that you would immediately be perceived as a total klutz, a hick from the sticks, for speaking that way and manifesting those out-of-kilter beliefs. I once had the mortifying experience of sitting through the painfully oblivious anti-African comments of the only other Maltese person at our table, somewhere in northernmost Italy, while the highly civilised Italians there tried to change the subject with a polite remark or two that were designed to convey to him that his views and manner of speaking were not acceptable to them. I would have kicked him under the table, but his legs were a trifle short and I was afraid of missing.

The bigots are not the only problem, though they are the worst. The well-meaning are problematic too. The Nationalist Party has just held an iftar for Muslims, attended by the Leader of the Opposition. Not to be outdone, the Labour Party has now held one as well, attended by the Prime Minister. Journalists were invited to both, not as guests but to cover the ‘event’ and report on it. The fact that it is seen as an event, worthy of news coverage, is already a problem. The truly liberal would not see an iftar as something special, and if an Easter celebration for Christians is not worth calling in the reporters for, then they shouldn’t be called in for an iftar either. The point here is that by calling in the press you have highlighted the difference and undermined any goal you might have had of promoting inclusion. Unless, that is, the real goal is publicity and vote-catching.

On the radio, I heard a Nationalist Party politician talk about what an iftar is, its significance in Islamic ritual, and why the party held one. After just a few minutes, I switched stations because the terminology was anything but inclusive and the whole approach was irritatingly wrong. The language used – them, they, huma, ahna, us – was unbelievably misguided but perfectly reflected the way the politician probably thinks and the way people in general think too, which is why it is all so unworkable. Listening to that tosh, I substituted ‘Muslims’ for ‘Roman Catholics’, iftar for some peculiarly Papist ceremony or belief, and transposed the radio show to Britain, where a politician is talking about why his party has organised this ceremony for Catholics.

 “Well, you know, Catholics do this and Catholics do that, and we need better understanding of Catholics, and even though Catholics seem strange to us, and Catholics break their fast with this and that because you know, they have this tradition of starving themselves in Lent and then must eat something but you know how it is, they won’t eat meat or sweets or anything like that but they will eat quite a lot otherwise. So we thought we’d set up this meal and invite the Catholic community in Liverpool , you know, as a sort of outreach to Papists, so that we can all get to know each other better. And yes, we do know that Papism isn’t an ethnicity and that there are Papists here in Liverpool from all over the world, and what do you know, even some Papists who actually are British, but the overarching factor is the Papism, isn’t it – they are Papists before they are British blah blah blah. And we need better understanding of them blah blah blah.”

Now perhaps you get my drift. Every time an issue is made of something like this, you have defined what you believe to be the default majority, and that you think in terms of religious majorities and religious minorities when religion is a complete irrelevance in contemporary European society which does not have religious laws. If you treat people who happen to be Muslim rather than Christian in the same way that Captain Cook and his men might have approached some native tribe on a remote Pacific island, you are not helping to bring down walls. You are building them up, but with a little peep-hole through which we can observe each other.