Category Archives: Women

Tories accuse Muslims of ‘creating apartheid by shutting themselves off’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Davis (2)The Conservatives today accuse Muslim leaders of encouraging “voluntary apartheid” in Britain by shutting themselves away in closed societies and demanding protection from criticism.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, says that Britain risks social and religious divisions so profound that society’s very foundations, such as the freedom of speech, will become “corroded” and that the perfect conditions for home-grown terrorism will be created.

His stark intervention, in an article for The Sunday Telegraph, represents a toughening of the Tory stance on the dangers of Islamic radicalism and follows calls from some leading ministers for Muslim women to remove their veils. It is also a departure from the “caring Conservatism” message laid out by David Cameron.

Mr Davis says he supports the stance on veils adopted by Jack Straw, the Commons Leader, but believes the wider issue is one of the “very unity of our nation”.

“What Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether, in Britain, we are developing a divided society. Whether we are creating a series of closed societies within our open society. Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid. At the starkest level, we may be creating conditions in the recesses of our society that foster home-grown terrorism.”

Sunday Telegraph, 15 October 2006

Robert Spencer welcomes this example of “Anti-dhimmitude from the Conservative Party”.

Dhimmi Watch, 15 October 2006

Mayor says the freedom to dress in accordance with ones religious conscience is a fundamental human right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said:

“Britain today faces a concerted campaign by sections of the media and some politicians, fanned by fascist grouplets, aimed at sowing hatred against Muslims. This has now culminated in physical attacks, firebombings, and assaults on women. This constitutes an attack on civil and religious liberties including an attempt to suppress the right of persons of all faiths to dress in accordance with their religious convictions.

“Whatever a person’s view on the most suitable forms of dress they have no right to impose this on others – it is a fundamental human right that every person should be allowed to dress in accordance with their religious views, as dictated only by their individual conscience. This right had to be defended in the past for Sikhs and other communities and it must be today for Muslims or indeed any other community that faces such a challenge. It applies equally therefore to those who wish to wear crucifixes.

“The prosperity and cohesion of London as one of the most diverse city’s in the world is inextricably linked to respect for these basic principles of freedom of individual choice.”

GLA press release, 14 October 2006

Mayor defends multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Interviewed on this morning’s Today progamme, Ken Livingstone was asked: “Which do you think is more important: the freedom of religion and cultural identity which encourages many young Muslim women to wear the veil, or a sense of integration in a society in which everybody has fundamentally some kind of common commitment to that society and its values?” The Mayor replied:

“But I think we’ve got that. We have here – and London typifies it more than almost anywhere else in Europe – a whole group of shared values, but at the same time people can continue to carry on with their cultural difference. Step back and think, if we had said, over a hundred years ago to the great wave of Jewish refugees fleeing anti-semitism in Russia, ‘you can come here but you’ve got to leave your religion, you’ve got to leave your form of dress’, we would have been immeasurably diminished as a society. That community gave a vast amount to London.

“I don’t hear politicians saying that they feel intimidated or cut off because Orthodox Jews dress the way they do. We fought a long time ago to get the right for Sikhs to wear their turban while they’re in the police force or on the buses. It seems there’s a different standard being applied to Muslims. And it’s nothing to do with domestic politics. It’s the background of war and oil and international politics that drives that agenda.”

If veiled women suffer hostility, they only have themselves to blame

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Deborah Orr“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.

Galloway raises Islamophobia fear

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Galloway RespectIslamophobia is a problem that must be addressed, MP George Galloway has told his Respect party’s annual conference in North London. Mr Galloway’s speech focused on the treatment of Muslims in Britain.

He singled out Jack Straw, who sparked a row when he revealed he asks Muslim women wearing veils to his surgery if they would consider removing them. Mr Galloway said Mr Straw had joined “the Dutch auction in New Labour of who can be most beastly to a minority”.

BBC news, 14 October 2006

Attacks on Muslims rise after veils row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobic attacks have surged in the past month in the wake of controversial remarks by ministers about British Muslims, say campaign groups.

The rise in verbal and physical assaults includes a spate of incidents in which Muslim women have been abused for wearing veils and scarves. They come in the week that the issue was raised by Jack Straw, the Leader of the Commons.

Muslim groups blame part of the rise in incidents, which also include assaults, firebombings and racist e-mails, on comments made by politicians and negative media reporting.

At least six Muslim women have been abused for wearing scarves or veils after Mr Straw said last week that he asks Muslim women who visit his constituency surgeries in Blackburn to remove their veil.

In one incident a Muslim woman aged in her 20s had her hijab or headscarf pulled off her head and thrown to the ground by a young white man while she was at Canning Town Tube station in east London. The attack happened on the same day that a Muslim woman had the veil torn from her face by a white man who uttered racial abuse as she waited at a bus-stop in Liverpool’s Toxteth district.

Both incidents occurred last Friday – the day after Mr Straw described the veil as, “a visible statement of separation”.

There were also reports that a young Muslim girl wearing a veil in Mr Straw’s Blackburn constituency was confronted by three youths last Friday night. One allegedly threw a newspaper at her and shouted: “Jack has told you to take off your veil.”

Three days later, a 21-year-old Turkish student told Muslim News that she was standing outside a supermarket in Canterbury, Kent, wearing a hijab when she was verbally abused by a middle-aged white woman. The older woman told her she hated her being in Britain and wanted her to leave.

On the same day in Hackney, east London, a black Muslim woman wearing a veil was getting off a bus when a passenger shouted out: “Why don’t you show your lovely hair?”

The sixth incident involved a Muslim woman wearing a hijab, who reported that when she got on to the London Underground two men standing next to her deliberately started discussing their support for a ban on veils.

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Muslim teacher defends her veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim support teacher suspended for wearing a veil in class says it was never a problem for her pupils. Headfield Church of England Junior School, in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, said pupils found it hard to understand her during English language lessons. But Aishah Azmi, 24, said: “They never complained.” She added she was willing to take the veil off in class, but not in front of any male colleagues.

BBC News, 14 October 2006

‘What we need is sisterhood’ – Salma Yaqoob on feminist opponents of the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salma addressing rally“Veiled Muslim women are caricatured as oppressed victims who need rescuing from their controlling men, while at the same time accused of being threatening creatures who really should stop intimidating the (overly tolerant) majority. What is distinctly lacking is any sense of genuine empathy for British Muslim women and how this ‘debate’ may be impacting on them….

“White feminists who feel they are doing their Muslim sisters a favour should think again. The Muslim community in general, and Muslim women in particular, are on the receiving end of some pretty ugly racism. I don’t ask you to like the choices we make. I simply ask that you respect our rights to make our own choices, and join with us to defend our rights to exercise choices that are freely made. Right now what Muslim women need from non-Muslim women is a little sisterhood.”

Salma Yaqoob at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 13 October 2006

CRE head says Straw ‘completely right’ over veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Trevor PhillipsBritain’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.

Independent, 12 October 2006

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.”