IHRC Statement in response to Jack Straw’s comments on the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In response to news that Jack Straw has asked Muslims women to remove their veils when visiting his surgery, IHRC Chair Massoud Shadjareh stated:

“It is astonishing that someone as experienced and senior as Jack Straw does not realise that the job of an elected representative is to represent the interests of the constituency, not to selectively discriminate on the basis of religion.

“Muslims, particularly Muslim women, are persistently being preached at to engage in the political system and to gain a voice for themselves. Yet, here are Muslim women who are willing to actively engage in the system only to be told that they must compromise their religious beliefs and practices if they want to be heard.

“If Mr Straw believes it justified to ask women to remove their veils because he feels ‘uncomfortable’, what is to stop another MP asking men to shave their beards or cut their hair before visiting their surgeries, because they feel ‘uncomfortable’?”

Islamic Human Rights Commission press release, 6 October 2006

Respect calls on Straw to resign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Former foreign secretary Jack Straw’s disgraceful comments about women wearing the veil threaten to produce the deep ethnic divisions he pretends to oppose. Respect is deeply angered that so senior a Labour politician could come out with such crude, headline grabbing, Islamophobic prejudice.

“Who does Jack Straw think he is to tell his female constituents that he would prefer they disrobe before they meet him,” says Respect MP George Galloway. “For that is what this amounts to. It is a male politician telling women to wear less. When put like that, there’s no one who would be considered part of the civilised political spectrum who would have anything but contempt for Straw.

“Yet, because this is about Muslims, we are seriously being told this is about breaking down the ‘barriers to community cohesion’. It is not women choosing to wear what they want that is sowing division in our society. It is poverty, racism and the despicable competition between the Tory and New Labour front benches over who can grab the headlines as the hammer of the Muslims.

“You only have to look at the three nights of violence directed against one Muslim family in Windsor to see where the real threat to a united and diverse community comes from.”

Respect news report, 5 October 2006

‘Isolation is no longer an option for British Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Riots Over Mosque“The violence in the quintessentially English town of Windsor is a shocking example of what crude multiculturalism can lead to – neighbouring communities with seething resentments towards each other and nothing in common.

“The great omission of the first wave of mass immigration from Asia was the failure of Britain’s political class to tell new arrivals what was expected of them in terms of integrating and accepting British values. Time and again the supine British establishment chose to look the other way or howl down objectors as racist whenever Islamic practices clashed with our culture….

“This discredited approach is, shockingly, still predominant within the British establishment. Hence a Muslim police officer is excused shifts protecting the Israeli embassy, while Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has made a risible call for broadcasters to hire more Muslim women wearing the hijab to present television progammes.

“Things are beginning to change. Jack Straw is to be commended for asking Muslim women to discard their veils…. British Muslims must face up to their changed circumstances in the wake of last year’s London bombings. Insulating themselves against mainstream society must no longer be an option.”

Editorial in the Daily Express, 6 October 2006

‘I defend my right as a Muslim to wear a veil’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruqayyah Ghani, 23, a British-born Muslim from Manchester, reacted strongly to Mr Straw’s comments last night and defended her right to wear a veil. Miss Ghani was brought up in an Islamic environment but did not start to immerse herself in her religion until she was 18. At that stage she started to wear the hijab (head scarf) and two years later began covering her face in public.

“According to Islam, a woman should cover herself up in front of any men apart from those she cannot legally marry. That is why I wear the niqab (face veil). I have not been forced to wear it by my family, in fact I am the only one in my family who chooses to wear one. They were as surprised as some outside the family when I decided to start covering my face. But they accept it. People see it as a symbol of repression, but that, along with the stereotype of the Muslim woman covered from head to toe needs to be done away with.”

Miss Ghani rejected Mr Straw’s comments that the face veil hindered community relations. “I have successfully studied and have a job in the health service, it has not held me back. It can become a hindrance if you want to make it an issue but if you put it aside and deal with people on a personal level, it is not a problem.”

Daily Telegraph, 6 October 2006

Not that this line of argument finds favour with the Torygraph’s leader writers. An editorial in the same issue, headed “Straw leads where the Met fears to follow“, opines: “Integration is not aided by the wearing of veils, just as it is not aided by the failure of immigrants to learn English. It is another example of the damage done by multiculturalism to the cause of real integration. Mr Straw is to be commended for brushing aside the politically correct nostrums that have inhibited such discussion among senior politicians.”

The editorial continues: “What a contrast to the supine behaviour of the Metropolitan Police when Pc Alexander Omar Basha sought to be excused duty outside the Israeli embassy – and was allowed to do so…. Once again, ultra-sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities appears to be warping the judgment of senior officers and could jeopardise the cohesion of the force.”

Nazis back Straw

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It’s not often that the fascists of the British National Party have a good word to say about a Labour politician, but they’re happy to applaud Jack Straw for “quite rightly, observing the problems of communication arising from the wearing of veils by Muslim women”, and they contrast Straw’s principled stand with the position of “other figures in the British establishment” who are “allowing the country’s native majority to descend headlong into a state of dhimmitude.”

BNP news article, 6 October 2006

Mad Mel and the BNP on the clash of civilisations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Taking up the report in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, Melanie Phillips announces that “France is currently under violent siege from the jihad – and buckling under the onslaught”. This supposedly demolishes the claim that last year’s French riots were “about poverty and unemployment and other such sub-Marxist claptap” – they were “actually all about French Muslims declaring their turf to be no-go areas for the French state”.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 6 October 2006

Mel’s co-thinkers in the British National Party concur: “The 21st century clash of civilisations is leading to bloodshed on the streets of Paris … with police officers being daily injured in rioting by Islamics.” The fascists predict: “The security authorities across western Europe have so far only had a mere glimpse of what horrors the next decade will deliver to their respective nation states. The sheer stupidity and criminality of the political leaders who have allowed an army of Islamic fifth columnists into our host nations will be repaid by chaos, death and destruction but it will be the ordinary voters who suffer; not those responsible for bringing about the apocalyptic end of Europe.”

BNP news article, 5 October 2006

MCB criticises Straw’s veil comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Straw’s comments play into the hands of the intolerant

The Muslim Council of Britain is concerned that the comments made yesterday by such a high-profile figure as Jack Straw may play into the hands of those who are intolerant of Muslims and Islam. There may be a difference of opinion on niqab (face-veil), but we have to respect a woman’s right to choose to adopt it. Mr Straw’s comments have the potential of further undermining civil liberties in our country, which appear to be gradually eroding in the aftermath of the terrible atrocities of July last year.

“There can be no doubt that we are already witnessing an increasingly bigoted anti-Muslim climate being fostered in Britain. Recent weeks have witnessed several arson attacks against mosques and assaults on Muslim individuals around the country. Jack Straw’s comments will hardly help,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

MCB press release, 6 October 2006

Demonising Islam and Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi, expressed alarm Friday about a new pernicious wave of provocative attacks from both politicians and religious leaders to vilify Islam. “In the last few months, the discourse has changed and it became an open season to demonise Islam,” he says.

Muslim News, 6 October 2006

The Islamic Human Rights Commission is also alarmed at the recent upsurge in anti-Muslim attacks and Islamophobia which have coincided with the month of Ramadan.

IHRC press release, 5 October 2006

Blaming the veil is wrong

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Why oh why can’t we Muslims just take some constructive criticism for a change? We live in ghettos, we can’t accept that terrorism is our fault, our Mosques are recruiting centres for jihadis and now Jack Straw has ‘sensibly’ pointed out that women who cover their faces are a hindrance to social cohesion, we’re up in arms again … ”

Rajnaara Akhtar of Protect-Hijab at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 6 October 2006

See also Protect-Hijab statement, 5 October 2006

Guardian blogger revolted by veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Jack Straw says that he is made to ‘feel uncomfortable’ by women wearing a full veil. I feel uncomfortable too and have been wondering about the nature of that discomfort and what I should do about it. When I walk down the street in London, or in Bristol where I live, and see a woman covered head to toe, I not only feel uncomfortable; I feel a physical sense of revulsion.”

Sue Blackmore at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 6 October 2006

Mike Marqusee takes a different line:

“Like Jack Straw, I find it awkward to talk with women who veil their faces. Unlike Jack Straw, I don’t assume that the onus is on them to relieve me of my discomfort, or that this discomfort is inevitable and entrenched, or that it betokens an unbridgeable cultural gap or irreconcilable social difference…. Speaking personally, the people I feel most uncomfortable talking with are perma-tanned politicians in expensive, perfectly pressed suits with a record of shameless mendacity. Jack Straw’s complicity in the lies that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq makes him responsible for divisions both domestic and foreign of far greater consequence, far greater menace to us all, than any woman walking the streets of Blackburn with her face veiled.”

Comment is Free, 6 October 2006