My firm belief is that it is an appalling choice that discriminates against women and subjugates them. One correspondent, a British woman who converted to Islam, says that the concept of the veil is flattering to women. They are asked to wear it, she believes, because Muslim men think them “too beautiful”.Lovely idea, but that’s just a prettified way of presenting the ugly idea that women are “asking for it” by existing, and have “got it coming” if they so much as smile at a man. That’s why these “too beautiful” women are considered to be the architects of their own misfortune if they are raped. Most modern Western Muslims have distanced themselves from these foul notions, and rightly so.

Those women and men trapped in fundamentalist interpretations of Islam need support in following suit.Look back in anger, KylieKylie is back, resplendently beautiful in her post-chemo crop, and gracefully accepting of her new role as top poster girl for breast cancer recovery. What a trouper she is.Tomorrow night, in the first big interview after her illness, she will share with the world some of the intimate details of her own and her family’s reactions to her treatment, including – touchingly – a matter-of-fact description of how she “had one day’s grace” before “we made the announcement and I was virtually a prisoner in the house”.I presume that Ms Minogue believes that the fabulousness of her career more than compensates for the relentless invasion into her privacy that it entails, and I do admire the equanimity with which she accepts this fact of her life.But I’m already cheesed off with the glamorous rebranding of breast cancer that her illness has inevitably prompted. It was unspeakable that the world’s press hung around trying to get shots of this woman as she underwent cancer treatment. She really ought to allow herself to be a lot grumpier about it.If music be the food of politics, play onI wouldn’t say that Rock ‘n’ Roll is Tom Stoppard’s best play. But since even Stoppard’s (pictured) lowest points are sublime in comparison with nearly everything else in contemporary theatre, it remains an inspiring and thought-provoking creation.It is, among other things, a meditation on cultural revolution that compares and contrasts the society-changing aspirations of rock and roll music with the society-changing aspirations of post-Soviet communism in Poland. The interesting thing is that while totalitarianism does not come out of the intellectual mincer looking at all good, the play could be read equally as vindication or critique of the power of popular music.Certainly it is understood in the play that music quickly stopped being an instrument of protest and started being an agent of capitalism.

But the uncomfortable fact that Syd Barrett, the stage representative of the early idealism of progressive rock had died the day before I saw the play sharpened the poignancy of the Pink Floyd founder’s disconnection from his creativity.Stoppard, I think, was arguing in Rock ‘n’ Roll that all systems subsume everybody and everything, one way or another, and that the way in which capitalism does so is the most sympathetic we have found. But Barrett, who was subsumed by the system in a troubling way because he was vulnerable, not because the market dictated a happy ending, rose in his death as a reminder that despite the play’s optimism, the market looks after those who can look after themselves.It’s a fine play indeed that draws further meaning from the developing narrative that it is exploring, even as it plays. It speaks of Stoppard’s wondrous ability to coax ideas into growth and luxuriance. Maybe there is hope for humanity if as well as organic produce, we can start consuming organic plays

More from Deborah Orr. Am I alone in not giving a brass pfennig what Marco Materazzi did or didn’t say to Zinedine Zidane in Berlin last Sunday evening? At times this week it has seemed as if I am. The issue has been furiously debated in the media, lip-reading experts have been brought in, the antagonists themselves have given contrasting accounts, Presidents and prime ministers have had their say, and the consensus in some quarters – and numerous quartiers – seems to be that if the Italian did utter something racist pertaining to the Frenchman’s parents, or something sexual about his sister, then, while the head-butt can in no way be excused, it was understandable.

Indeed, some have gone further and suggested that there was a kind of nobility about it.

More from Brian Viner. Sir: The findings of the survey by the Association of Graduate Recruiters, in which employers rated “competence in a foreign language” to be “unimportant” (Philip Hensher, 12 July) make sad reading. Perhaps they explain why British industry today is led by multi-lingual foreigners. Hensher hits the nail on the head when he implies that the less we learn about the different cultures of the world, the worse the world grows. We shall never know if John F Kennedy understood the pun of his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech It didn’t matter.

The Germans laughed at the joke, and the tension of the Cold War eased for a few hours.
Prime Minister Churchill on a visit to Paris in May 1940, was staggered to learn from the then French Government that there were no reserve forces to halt the Blitzkrieg onslaught though France. How was he to convey this vital information by open telephone line to the Cabinet in London without alerting the enemy? Answer; he had a general officer in his entourage who spoke fluent Hindi. Now the chances of the super-efficient Wehrmacht having a Hindi-speaking officer were of course remote. So Churchill’s general phoned London and reported this vital information in the language of Mahatma Gandhi to a fellow ex-Indian Army colleague, thus gaining vital hours of time to save the beleaguered British Expeditionary Force.If British industry recruiters really have this attitude of underrating language competence among potential employees, then I say they need their heads read. Perhaps that is why most of British industry today does not play in the premier leagues of the international business world.CHRIS LUMBSALISBURY Bloodshed will never defeat terrorism Sir: What an unholy mess! (“The wrath of Israel”, 14 July).