The celebrations are on hold

It is a world of mad disjunctions and crazy, and troubling, contrasts. We were in Iran today. Big game. It would be wrong to say that the country ground to a halt to watch it – but it wasn't too far off it. These things matter. They matter a lot.

It turned out all right in the end. Ireland conceded a stupid late goal, in the first minute of extra time, to lose

1 – 0. Carrying a two goal lead from the first leg, that was good enough to see us through to the World Cup finals. It was a good feeling – but not a great one. So why did I not feel like celebrating? It wasn't just my perfectionist's irritation at the late goal.

Let's get the football issues out of the way first. It is a great achievement for the Ireland manager, Mick McCarthy, and his team, to have successfully come through the fierce sporting tests with which the World Cup has confronted them to date. To have dispatched Holland at the group stage was remarkable. To have negotiated the entire group stage without losing a game was even more-so.

The campaign has been fought superbly, with a hugely impressive combination of professionalism and team spirit. And along the way, we have played some very fine football. Watching Mick McCarthy's Irish team in action, you get the feeling that they may be capable of acquitting themselves very well in the tournament of tournaments. You get the feeling that they have the resolve and the organisation that's required, as well as the passion.

Somehow, the whole has become greater than the sum of the parts. That it has is a tribute to Mick McCarthy himself, and the way in which he has welded a team, that was underrated by so many, into a potent force. I think commentators have consistently got it wrong about the capabilities of the Irish players. Too often, they have been dismissed as journeymen, as players of little real talent and skill.

Comparing the squad to that which operated under Jack Charlton, there may be a lower quota of very special individuals. But if we can take our full complement to the World Cup, I have a hunch that it will provide a platform on which some of our finest talents will finally assert themselves fully – a platform from which Shay Given, Stephen Carr, Mark Kinsella, Damien Duff and Robbie Keane will emerge as what commentators like to call world-class players, up there if not quite alongside Roy Keane, at least close to him, pushing for their own places in the pantheon of Irish greats.

But all that is for later. There is a football cliché that is appropriate to our achievement in qualifying: I don't think it has quite sunk in yet. Not for me anyway, and I suspect that this is true for others as well. My heart hasn't experienced the anticipated rush – but my head tells me that the effect on the country over the next six to eight months will be immensely uplifting. In a time of doom and gloom, and worse, there is something entirely positive for people here to look forward to and focus on.

The setting in which our rite of passage into the finals was enacted may have been a factor in the immediate sense of anti-climax. Football is only a game, they say. And yet, reading the reports coming back from Tehran, it was hard to accept this.

Iranian women would not be allowed to attend the match. There was a possibility that Irish women would not either. As the plane carrying the Irish team and media to Iran neared touchdown, the Irish women on board began to cover their heads. Even reading the reports, a picture of the place formed and with it a feel for the extent to which women are discriminated against there.

It is, of course, possible to be diplomatic about these things and to pass it off as, well, not your business. But is it OK for us to see blatant discrimination – in this case against women, but it could equally be against blacks or any other distinctive group, of whatever nature – as acceptable on the basis of some kind of cultural relativism? Is it right?

I know that there is a lot wrong with Irish society, and with Britain, and indeed with European society generally. But bad and all as things may be in this part of the world and further west in the U.S., the wholesale, systematic oppression of women, that is so central a part of the way in which Islamic tradition is currently interpreted, creates nothing short of a nightmare world that, for me, far exceeds in sheer unpleasantness, wrong-headedness and, in certain instances, genuine, pervasive evil, anything that we are familiar with.

I have a similar problem with religions based on the teaching of Christ, as I have with those based on the teachings of Mohammed, as I have with Judaism – as I have with all the rest, when it comes down to it. I see no basis whatsoever for believing in the notion that there is a God up there who sent down a messenger, or messengers, to give us a set of teachings according to which we have to live our lives. The bible, the gospels, the koran – to me, these are documents of historical interest that are worth reading on that account. But to believe that any of them hold the key to the meaning of our presence on earth, or a precise prescription as to how we should live or behave, seems absurd to me.

People are, of course, entitled to believe what they like – as John Lennon said, whatever gets you through the night is alright. There are lots of folks out there who like to play Bridge, and Bowls too, and I am quite prepared to accept their eccentricities. Jesus, if grown adults want to mudwrestle or play Dungeons and Dragons – fine! But I would have a problem with any society that based its laws on the writings of Tolkien or J.K.Rowling, and chopped off people's hands or stoned them to death if they transgressed. That is what the imposition of religious fundamentalism amounts to. We believe in this book. You must believe in it too – and if you act outside our interpretation of what it means, then we have the right to kill, or otherwise violate you.

On the night of Ireland's win, a victory of another kind was being enacted not far away, in Afghanistan. The news coming through was of the ongoing rout of the Taliban. Reading about the extent of the brutalisation of women under the Mullahs there, it was impossible not to feel that the fall of such a discredited regime was a thoroughly good thing. But observing the scenes of butchery on the streets of the fallen cities, as the Northern Alliance rolled forward, any decent human would have to feel sick at the shameful cruelty of it all.

The fall of the Taliban was engineered by disgraceful means, on the orders of President Bush and with the support of Tony Blair. That fact too poisoned any sense of celebration that might otherwise have been appropriate. Looking on from this distance, the dominant sense is one of foreboding, that the strife and the killing will go on and on – and that the people of Afghanistan will continue to live in abject poverty and under threat for years to come.

I guess, in the end, this is why it doesn't seem like the time to celebrate. Too much bad karma in the air. It would be wonderful if the world was a benign and tolerant place, in which people could live and let live. But it isn't. And even those with whom we share a common culture in so many ways are hopelessly compromised. Look at Bush. Look at Blair. Look at Northern Ireland.

It is imperative that we in Ireland, north and south, should fashion a genuinely open and pluralistic society in which there is respect for diversity – but which is built on the principles of equality of race, creed, colour and gender; of freedom of thought and freedom of expression; and which rejects sectarianism, bigotry and hatred. This issue of hotpress is dedicated to the pursuit of that ideal. We have a long way to go. But if and when we get there, that truly will be an event worth celebrating.

In the meantime, the football will provide a marvellous diversion. I know it will.