SIR, — This extract from a letter recently received from a young
Aden-born Arab makes it easy to understand why Anglo-Arab enmity gets steadily worse :
It may interest you to know that the Govern- ment of Aden have stopped the import of qat to this country (Aden) from 1st April. 1 do not know what the result will be in the very near future. Many of the Muslims are asking why the govern- ment does not also prohibit the import of alcohol. As you know our Quran forbids us to take alcohol but qat is not forbidden.
The gap of misunderstanding between govern- ment and most of the public is getting wider and wider, both parties are isolated from each other.
Addiction io qat (the leaves of Catha edulis or Abyssinian tea imported from the Yemen and Ethiopia), while less harmful physically than addic- tion to alcohol, does great economic damage. Besides the expense of importation and taxation, the .actual qat-chewing is a grave waste of time. Yet by what right have we to forbid the Muslim to chew qat while continuing to permit the Christian, in a Muslim country, to imbibe alcohol?
Considerable hardship would be imposed by the prohibition of alcohol, but the simultaneous banning of qat and alcohol would have had a profound effect throughout south-west Arabia. Another blun- der, another opportunity missed.—Yours faithfully,
Barbados, BW I
HELEN COCHRANE;
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