Welcome to Ireland, Tír na cead míle fáilte (land of a thousand welcomes). Sure to be sure, begorrah, lets have a guinness, etc. Ireland has managed to propagate an image of a care-free, idyllic land where the stress of the modern world is absent. The nation sees twice as many tourists to its 40 shades of green shores than its population a year, which I’m sure is some sort of record.

However, this image is a piece of crap. Firstly, the nation is extremely racist. Zhao Liutao, a chinese student, was killed, the cause of death was head injuries which caused brain damage. Mary O’Rourke, the former education minister and current leader of the Seanad said her staff worked “like blacks” during her nomination for the seanad, and then refused to apologise (”political correctness gone wrong” to even ask her to) she meant it in a complimentary sense.

Secondly, the suicide rate in Ireland has quadroupled since 1990, while the cost of living keeps on creeping up and the effects of “rip-off Ireland” take hold.

Thirdly, we pollute.  We pollute and then we pretend we don’t.

That being said, I did not expect the following…

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From the Sunday times:

What did we do to deserve your hatred?

Ireland’s 26,000 Muslims know all about the war on terror — they now live in constant fear of abuse, says Brian Carroll

Their head scarves frame faces that are unmistakably Irish and their Dublin accents seem out of place among the strictures of their religious dress.

They are unlikely targets of racial abuse, but Patricia Fitzpatrick, 43, and Lesley Carter, 35, have been spat upon, called Pakis, Osama Bin Laden and even “Jewish bastards” on the streets of their native city.

As converts to Islam they have joined Ireland’s estimated 26,000-strong Muslim population (Err, census says “19,147 Muslims“, but, thats an aside), which has become the focus of controversy since the discovery of planned terrorist attacks in Britain two weeks ago.

Last week two Algerian-born Irish citizens — a man and a woman — were arrested under anti-terrorist legislation in Wales. Although both were released without charge, the media coverage did nothing to improve intercommunity harmony in Ireland.

“I always felt people would leave me alone because I’m Irish. But now when they look at the newspaper and see the story about Irish Muslims arrested in Wales, I wonder what people think of me today?” Fitzpatrick says.

She accepts that there may be a tiny element of extremism in Ireland. But it’s among Muslims who have moved here, not those born here. “There are terrorists in every society,” she said. “Were all the Irish people in the IRA? Don’t judge us all.”

Her Muslim name is Saffiyyah and she was raised in York Street, Dublin, in a working-class family of 13. Carter grew up in Ballybrack.

They refused to be interviewed individually because neither can be left alone with a man. So one sits quietly while the other talks.

Carter clasps her hands together and stares at her feet while Fitzpatrick explains that at the age of 23 she married a Libyan national, Khairi, eight days after meeting him and now has six children aged from four to 18.

Fitzpatrick had converted to Islam two years earlier. “Something was missing for me. I started searching for answers. They had just finished building the mosque on the South Circular Road and I saw the moon shape and said to a friend: ‘Let’s go in and find out what it’s all about.’

“I hid it from my family. I couldn’t tell my brothers I wanted to be a Muslim. I used to go in the summer with an umbrella over my head. But they spotted me.”

Her family thought she had joined a cult, presuming Muhammad was the cult leader. One brother threatened to burn down the mosque.

“I got a hard time from my family for years. They’d say things like ‘Where’s your camel?’ I was their funny half hour, especially when they got drink in them,” she said.

Theresa, Fitzpatrick’s mother, cried throughout her daughter’s wedding ceremony. “I didn’t know what to make of it,” she admits, “but by degrees we got to know Khairi. He’s a lovely man and a good husband.”

The Fitzpatricks moved to Libya for 10 years, returning in the late 1990s to live in Kilmainham. “I noticed a big difference when I came back — a lot more racism. I was walking down Sandymount the other day with my mother and I got spat on. Then yesterday, around the corner from where I live, I was called a terrorist.”

A man recently called her a “Jewish bastard”, betraying his ignorance and his racism. “If you had seen the hatred in his eyes,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m afraid for my children, afraid to let them out of my sight. My son got spat on going to the shops.”

 Shortly after the 7/7 attacks in London, she was buying a school bag in a shop. The shop assistants laughed and said they knew what the bag was going to be used for.

Shortly after the 7/7 attacks in London, she was buying a school bag in a shop. The shop assistants laughed and said they knew what the bag was going to be used for. “It’s only hitting Ireland now about Irish Muslims and terrorism. Now you are afraid of nightfall: are you going to get a brick through your window?” Carter has kept her hands clasped and eyes downcast throughout.

“I’m a Bracker,” she finally says in her soft Dublin accent, a reference to her native suburb. When she was 20 she went to England on a two-week holiday, met an Egyptian Muslim, married him a week later and lived in Essex for seven years. Her parents only found out about it afterwards.

Carter’s mother, Terry, said finding out her daughter had married a man she barely knew was every parent’s nightmare. “But once we got to know him and knew he was going to look after our daughter and our grandchildren, things changed. We accepted it.”

Though married 14 years, Carter only converted to Islam four years ago. She used to sit outside the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland in Clonskeagh when her husband went in to pray. One day she joined him. “I used to laugh at people who said they had a calling from God, but now I feel I’ve had one to become a Muslim.”

When she began to wear a hijab, she was harassed, called a Paki and told to go back to wherever she came from. Ignorant youths called the mother of four Osama Bin Laden.

The recent thwarted suicide bombings and the arrests in London have heightened tensions, she admits.

“We’re not like what the media are portraying us as. I don’t think any person should be branded as a nationality or religion. It’s sad Muslims can be branded like this.

“I have an 11-year-old son and we are planning to go to Florida and he’s scared, asking: ‘Mammy, what if they take you at the airport, because you wear the scarf?’” Fitzpatrick, whose husband is a shopkeeper in Dublin city centre, agrees. “You can’t paint us all as extremists and terrorists. People have the right to fight for their country, but lunatics that blow people up don’t stand for me.

“Now it’s across the papers about Irish Muslims being arrested. Now it’s like all Irish Muslims are terrorists. My kids are in the scouts and the football team, they go swimming, play in the park and do the things other kids do.”

But whatever lies in store, she does not regret the journey she has taken. “No matter what happens in my life now, I would never go back,” she says. “I have found peace.”

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Doesn’t it make you want to stand up and sing Amhrán na bhFiann loud and proud?