Sometimes people who have the best of intentions defeat their own purposes because of the way they go about things.

These past days we had two prime examples of this.

On the one hand, we have had the Muslim community gathering at the Msida square to do their Friday prayers because they were turned out of other places where they previously held prayers.

On the other hand, on Sunday a group who call themselves Maltese patriots held a protest in the same square, which protest was marred by some showing of journalists and also by the handing out of ham sandwiches.

Let us take the two related issues one by one.

According to a lengthy interview the Muslim leaders in Malta gave to MaltaToday, they want to congregate in an enclosed site but time and again they were turned out because of opposition from neighbours and concerns about parking. And this happened repeatedly, not just once.

They were asked why don’t they all go to the Paola mosque but they replied it is far away for people eg who live in the far North. And as for the open space at the mosque, they use this for parking.

It seems almost clear from this that the Friday meetings at Msida are designed to put pressure on whoever is responsible to enable the Muslim community to find a place where they can meet and pray.

Underneath this one can discern the whole scale xenophobic attitude of wide swathes of the Maltese population against Muslims, Arabs, what have you. This does not seem to deter Maltese landlords from renting out flats to Muslims and Arabs, although it is clear that a mosque is on quite a different level.

On the other hand, those who are concerned at the trend that is leading Malta to become a multicultural country can do far better than the antics seen at Msida on Sunday.

To organize the distribution of ham sandwiches is intentionally offensive and such activities have been punished in other countries.

The harassment of journalists is par for the course when this type of people are let loose. An example that comes to mind goes back to some of the public demonstrations by hunters some years ago when journalists were not just harassed but also beaten up.

Such antics provoke public reaction which is not what the organisers would want. In fact, they stopped an overenthusiastic member of theirs from giving more comments to the media because they realized his comments would harm the cause.

So far this issue in its various contours has been left in the hands of fringe organisations. It is high time for the issue, or the various issues that compose it, to be discussed by the country at large and by the country’s leaders in an effort to find acceptable solutions.

The more this country keeps sweeping the issue under the carpet the more it will fester and produce ill effects on the entire community.