Debate in the Guardian letters column.
Category Archives: Hijab
CRE head says Straw ‘completely right’ over veil
Britain’s race watchdog has said Jack Straw was “completely right” to express his concerns about Muslim women wearing veils. Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, also gave his full support to schools that ban girls from wearing veils in lessons.
With the row intensifying over Muslim dress, Mr Phillips told MPs he believed that Mr Straw, the Leader of the Commons, had taken a “perfectly reasonable” stance last week. “I think it’s right for him to say ‘would you mind not making me feel uncomfortable’ in this case, as long as it is clearly understood the answer to that can be ‘no’.” He added: “Jack Straw was completely right to raise this. It is not a question of public policy, but a question of social etiquette and manners.”
Mr Phillips also said he believed the wearing of veils for religious reasons should not override school-uniform policies, providing they have been “arrived at properly”. “If I were the headteacher in a school, I would probably say veils should not be worn in the classroom,” he told the Commons Education and Skills Committee.
Phillips, of course, was recently appointed by Ruth Kelly as chair of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights, despite widespread opposition. As the Mayor of London commented at the time: “… what Trevor is doing is trying to move the race agenda away from a celebration of multi-culturalism and pandering to the Right, and I have to say it’s absolutely disgraceful.”
Timothy Garton Ash tells Islamophobes to stop whingeing
“The most tiresome argument in this whole debate is that the niqab makes white, middle-class English people feel ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘threatened’. Well, I want to say, what a load of whingeing wusses. Threatened by drunken football hooligans or muggers – that I can understand. But threatened by a woman quietly going about her business in a veil? As for uncomfortable: myself, I feel uncomfortable with a certain kind of pink-faced Englishman wearing crimson braces, a white-cuffed pinstriped shirt and a bow tie. Their clothing is a fair predictor of the views that will come out of their mouths. But I don’t ask them to take off their braces.”
Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian, 12 October 2006
Veil is ‘an invitation to rape’ – BHL
The JC interviews French philospher Bernard-Henri Levy:
“Our time is almost up, but BHL becomes the most animated I have seen him when I ask him about Jack Straw’s intervention on Muslim women and the veil. ‘Jack Straw’, he says, leaning close to me, ‘made a great point. He did not say that he was against the veil. He said it is much easier, much more comfortable, respectful, to speak with a woman with a naked face. And without knowing, he quoted Levinas, who is the philosopher of the face. Levinas says that [having seen] the naked face of your interlocutor, you cannot kill him or her, you cannot rape him, you cannot violate him. So when the Muslims say that the veil is to protect women, it is the contrary. The veil is an invitation to rape’.”
Abolish Muslim veils, says Harman
The strongest condemnation yet of the Muslim veil from a Government minister was made today by Harriet Harman.
She called for a campaign to abolish it because it kept women down and “hid” them from society. “How can you [live an equal life] if you can’t get a driving licence or a passport,” she said. “The veil is an obstacle to women’s participation, on equal terms, in society.”
The Constitutional Affairs Minister went further than Commons Leader Jack Straw who said the veil made him feel uncomfortable. She told the New Statesman: “If you want equality, you have to be in society, not hidden away from it.”
Ms Harman – who is bidding to become Labour’s deputy leader with a strong pitch for women’s votes – said she was dismayed to see “the young women whose mothers fought against the veil, and who now see their daughters taking it up as a symbol of commitment to their religion”. She said she wished the abolition debate was being led by Muslim women – but there were none in the Commons.
Ms Harman defended Mr Straw’s intervention but said it was “depressing” that some people had accused Mr Straw of speaking out for electoral gain.
Evening Standard, 12 October 2006
Rabbi condemns Straw’s veil comments
An Ilford rabbi yesterday condemned Jack Straw after he said he would prefer it if Muslim women did not wear the full veil.
Writing to the Chair of the Ilford Islamic Centre, Ilford Federation Synagogue’s Rabbi Alex Chapper said: “I feel his comments were totally unacceptable and display, at best, insensitivity to, and at worst, an ignorance of the laws, customs and practices of Islam. It is nonsense to suggest that, ‘women who wore veils made community relations more difficult’, rather it is remarks such as these that create divisions and intolerance in Britain.”
Rabbi Chapper told the Jewish News: “If you’re going to single out for condemnation, or even ban, one style of dress where do you draw the line? Could the kipah or sheitel be next, are they divisive in Mr Straw’s eye?”
Women with nose-bags over their faces have no place on British streets
“Since Jack Straw ignited a national debate by saying constituents who wear the niqab, leaving only their eyes exposed, made him uncomfortable, Muslim women’s views have got extensive and respectful coverage. They claim Mr Straw has saddened and insulted them. But what about the way the veil makes the majority of British women feel?
“A fortysomething mother in a practical Boden skirt and short-sleeved top sitting on a train opposite a woman in the full veil can suddenly be made to feel as tarty and sexually provocative as a Page 3 girl. It’s not a nice sensation – to feel judged for wearing your own clothes in your own country.
“The truth is that females who cover their faces and bodies make us uneasy. The veil is often downright intimidating. It implies a submission that is upsetting when women here fought so hard to be free. No one I know objects to a Muslim headscarf. But as for all the other restrictive clothing, I just don’t like seeing them on British streets.
“Nor do I want to see another newspaper provide, as it did this week, a cut-out-and-keep fashion guide to the different types of veil: ‘And here we see Mumtaz, or rather we don’t see Mumtaz because the poor kid is wearing a nose-bag over her face, modelling the latest line in female-inhibiting shrouds from the House of Taliban’.”
Allison Pearson in the Daily Mail, 11 October 2006
‘The veil question has exposed a staggering level of thoughtless illiberalism’
The furore over the right to wear the veil has exposed the double standards of the liberal anti-Islam agenda, David Edgar argues.
Brown backs Straw over veil
Gordon Brown threw his weight behind Jack Straw last night and declared that it would be better for Britain if fewer Muslim women wore veils.
The Chancellor broke ranks to become the first Cabinet minister publicly to endorse Mr Straw’s call for women to discard the veil, which he described as a symbol of separation.
Tony Blair broke his silence on the issue too, but he stressed that women must be free to choose what they wear. In contrast, Mr Brown threw his weight behind the Leader of the Commons.
Asked by the BBC if Mr Straw had been right to say it would help integration if Muslim women did not wear the veil, he said: “Yes, but I think he is not proposing new laws, he is proposing a debate about the cultural changes that might have to take place in Britain. I would emphasis the importance of what we do to integrate people into our country including the language, history and curriculum.”
Pressed to say if he thought it would be “better for Britain” if fewer Muslim women wore veils, Mr Brown replied: “That is what Jack Straw has said and I support. But I think the important thing is that we have a debate on this.”
Islamophobia is part of the ‘war on terror’
“For many Muslim women in Britain and Europe, the decision to wear a veil is not about ‘internalising oppression’. It is a statement of identity adopted in the face of rising Islamophobia and government demands to step through yet one more hoop to prove you are a ‘good Muslim’.
“Muslim women have been to the fore in the anti-war movement – something that has truly brought people together in common cause and given confidence to Muslim women to speak out.
“It ill behoves middle class Westerners, whether Jack Straw or supposed feminists, to dictate what women should wear. What’s at issue is not women’s rights, but an Islamophobic agenda which is the battle cry of the US led global ‘war on terror’.”
Editorial in Socialist Worker, 14 October 2006
See also “Stop scapegoating Muslims – it’s war and racism that fuel division“, “Jack Straw’s veil comments are ammunition for racists” and “A right wing attack on multiculturalism“, plus reports on the Blackburn demonstration against Straw and the so-called “race riot” in Windsor.