“People wear veils voluntarily in this country, or seek out wives who wear them, because they want to advertise very strongly that they subscribe to an alternative value system to the mainstream.

“That value system often involves such unacceptable notions as a liking for sharia law and the anti-women brutalities it entails.

“Why take such a hostile stance, then act all oppressed when people register their distaste for it? … Women can wear veils if they want to, I guess. But they should bear in mind that many fellow citizens think them a total abomination – and for sound reasons.”

Deborah Orr in the Independent, 14 October 2006

Cf. “Attacks on Muslims rise after veils row” in the same issue.

Muslims turned on Salman Rushdie today for saying that veils “suck”. It came after the author stoked up the debate started by Jack Straw when the Commons leader said he asked constituents to remove their veils which he saw as a barrier to race relations.

Rushdie said: “He wasn’t doing anything compulsory. He was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.”

Rushdie’s comments came in an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme about his new joint exhibition with sculptor Anish Kapoor.

Rushdie said: “Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there’s not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted wearing the veil. I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I’m completely on [Straw’s] side.”

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain who has clashed with the author over the Satanic Verses, said Rushdie had “no credibility whatsoever” within the Muslim community. “You can only have a debate with open minds, not closed minds. Islamophobes are currently doing all they can to attack Islam and it doesn’t surprise me if he is now jumping on the bandwagon,” he said.

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“… the hijab, niqab, jilbab, chador and burqa. I can’t think of a more dramatic visual symbol of oppression, the inescapable fact being that the vast majority of women who cover their hair, faces and bodies do so because they have no choice…. Muslim women in this country may [sic] be telling the truth when they say they are covering their hair and faces out of choice, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been influenced by relatives and male clerics….

“The veil in its various forms signals that women have conditional access to public space, allowed to participate in the world outside the home only if they follow certain rules…. when women cover themselves, they are demonstrating their acceptance of an ideology that gives them fewer rights than men and an inferior place in society….

“Far from being a protection for women – it hasn’t prevented alarming levels of rape in Afghanistan and Iraq – the veil protects men from casual arousal. It also establishes women as the sexual property of individual men – fathers, husbands and sons – who are the only people allowed to see them uncovered.

“In that sense Mr Straw’s interventions, while useful in kicking off an overlong debate, do not go nearly far enough. The practice of covering women is a human rights issue in two senses, not just as a symbol of inequality, but because accusations of racism, cultural insensitivity and Islamophobia are commonly used to silence its critics. But if I loathe the niqab and the burqa when I see women wearing them in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be hypocritical to pretend I don’t find them equally offensive on my local high street.”

Joan Smith, Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006