I don't have time to this justice, but basically Jack Straw has said he prefers Muslim women to remove their veils when they meet him as he thinks it's quite nice to see people's faces. You can read the story here and here (if you're worried that the Telegraph is making the whole thing up) and get the Harry's Place view here (includes Galloway's risible response.)
Worth looking at the reactions from the Muslim community. Those hostile to Straw display a predictable disparity between what he actually said and what they are condemning. The response of the Tories and LibDems (quoted in the Telegraph piece) range from disappointing and banal to frankly vomit inducing (Simon Hughes.)
It's also worth quickly noting the extent to which 'assimilation' has become a dirty word because it "is saying that one culture or one way of life is superior to another". Uh, yeah. It is. Deal with it. My dad (an immigrant) used to use 'assimilated' as a term of high praise for anyone who had successfully adapted to the customs of the host country and was able to fully participate in it. But he was an apostate, so what did he know anyway?
17 comments:
There have inevitably been many column inches generated by Jack Straw's veil comments. Here are a couple, Houzan Mahmoud in The Guardian (yes! The Guardian!) and Saira Khan in The Times (just because I'm a big fan of The Apprentice). Martin Kettle (again, The Guardian) is quite good too.
I've only posted articles in support of Straw, because (even though I don't necessarily agree with every line) I'm glad Straw has raised this subject. I know it seems trivial - who cares what people wear? Right? But I think the issue of (political / religious) separatism is an important and (I guess by definition) a divisive one.
Leaving Islam aside, there's also the simple question of human interaction and being able to read people's expressions which is a large part of how we (in Britain) communicate.
But on a slightly more pedantic note, there are lazy arguments in this debate that irk me that I'd like to draw specific attention to:
1) When people say that no one has the right to tell anyone how to dress. What about the signs in banks telling couriers to remove their helmets? What about the Bluewater hoodie ban? What about school uniform? What about being forced to wear clothes at all. There are many instances when people are told how to dress. That ship has already sailed. The question is where we draw the line. (And just a reminder, Straw hasn't actually called for a change in the law.)
2) When people say 'are we going to tell Sikhs to remove their turbans?' apparently failing to understand that the turban does not obscure the face and therefore has no relevance to this particular debate about being 'masked'.
Oh, and finally, there's this:
Suspect in terror hunt used veil to evade arrest
By Sean O’Neill and Anthony Browne
A MALE suspect in a major anti-terrorist investigation in Britain escaped capture by allegedly disguising himself as a Muslim woman dressed in a burka, The Times can reveal.
The man, who was wanted in connection with serious terrorist offences, evaded arrest for several days as police searched for him across the country.
Read on...
And of course there are related, wider issues about communities withdrawing into themselves and the harm that causes, eg:
Spread of race ghettos fuels gang warfare
The Sunday Times
October 08, 2006
Two contrasting opinions on Jack Straw's comments.
1)Salman Rushdie backs Jack Straw's comments on the veil:
"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.
"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."
2) The blogger Judy K disagrees with Jack Straw comments on the veil in this post:
'The fact that the UK and the west face terrorist threats from deadly totalitarian Islamist groups should not be directly identified with minority cultural practices in particular Islamic societies which long precede the establishment of modern Islamism. Modern totalitarian Islamism seems to me to owe as much if not more to the methods and discourse of Leninism and Trotskyism as it does to traditional Islamic teaching and interpretation of that faith.'
A couple of things re: Judy K:
The fact that the UK and the west face terrorist threats from deadly totalitarian Islamist groups should not be directly identified with minority cultural practices in particular Islamic societies which long precede the establishment of modern Islamism.
Is it worth pointing out that Jack Straw never 'directly identified' veil wearing with Islamist terrorism? Here's his original article if you want to check.
As for the link between Leninism and totalitarian Islam, I think Judy may have a fair point. The Lenin link is certainly relevant to the unholy alliance between Islamists and Respect and may help us understand what life in an Islamist state might be like. However, as far as I'm aware no one is justifying the veil on the grounds that it's what Lenin or Trotsky would have wanted, so I'm not sure what this observation has to do with the issue under discussion, namely, a preference for seeing people's faces and (more widely) separatism.
Judy lists a group of other people whose mode of dress makes people uneasy:
I can't think of any comparable warning on forms of dress given to any group in the UK by any political or public figure.
Consider these groups of people whose dress or personal appearance commonly produces negative reactions amongst the wider public:
Rastas; Hell's Angels; chassidic Jews; Goths; hoodies; motor cycle helmet wearers
When members of those groups start lobbying for separate laws or form groups dedicated to creating a Rasta/Hell's Angels/Goth state then I'm sure the discussion will widen to include them. (Yes, I know the Sikhs got a special dispensation re: motorcycle helmets but a) many people objected at the time, b) turban wearing is less controversially a cultural (as opposed to religious) practice than veil wearing, c) turbans don't cover the face so again are irrelevent to a discussion of the value of face-to-face meetings and d) Straw explicitly stated that he was talking about a preference, not calling for a law.
In a way I'm indebted to Judy, because she's given me an opportunity to post this interesting article by Rabbi Tony Bayfield which makes an explicit comparison with Orthodox jews. (He's a reform rabbi, so he's not really in love the separatism of the chassidim either.)
But the most 'nail on the headish' point is in the comments. Responding to the claim by another poster that the Amish "are a non-integrated community par excellence - yet being white and Christian means they arent condemned for not integrating", a contributor named Waltz responds:
Well, that and the fact that the Amish haven't blown up any of their fellow citizens, butchered any filmmakers, threatened to murder any novelists or cartoonists or Popes. Etc.
So to recap:
1) Not seeing people's faces makes Jack Straw uncomfortable (and he says so.)
2) Separatism makes Jack Straw uncomfortable (and he says so.)
3) Specifically Islamist separatism makes a lot of people uncomfortable beacuse Islamism is linked to terrorism (this is the point Judy answers with her Leninism comparison, but again that comparison illuminates a discussion of why Islamism is bad and is irrelevant to the 'badges' that identify the wearers as adherents.)
There's a lot of guff about veil wearing being a purely religious choice, but it is naive to not see the possibility that it also a political one. You might wear a Che t-shirt because it makes you feel good. But it's also quite likely that you think Castro's Cuba is pretty groovy. People make assumptions about you based on how you look. Anyone who's ever worn a suit to a job interview will agree. And if anyone starts up with a 'can't judge a book by it's cover' type argument I'll plotz. Show me someone who says you shouldn't judge by appearances and I'll show you a hypocrite. Give them a picture of a braying fox hunter or ball gowned debutante and see it they're really able to make no assumptions about what kind of person that might be. (And just for the record there's a whole legion of designers who make their living precisely because people do judge books by their covers!)
Look, there are many objections to the veil: for some it's a symbol of a misogyny; others are offended by the implication that men can't be trusted around women; others are uncomfortable with implied grades of piety; and some, like Jack Straw apparently, prefer to use their wonderful genetic inheritance that allows them to interpret a whole range of subtle facial clues when their talking to someone face to face.
If there's a call for change in the law I think I'd probably be aginst it. But in the meantime, if someone says I'd rather see who I'm talking to, I'm with them.
But in the meantime, if someone says I'd rather see who I'm talking to, I'm with them.
Me too. In fact, I also agree with much of what Jack Straw's has said on the veil. I quoted the Judy K blog to present an alternative view point on Straw's comments. (although it wasn't one that I entirely agreed with.)
Dan is absolutely right to point out that Jack Straw has never directly indentified veil wearing with Islamist terrorism. But some of the people commentating on Straw's article do make that direct connection. Melanie Phillips for one. Now, Phillips is a journalist I have linked to a number of times, she has been warning us of the dangers of Islamism for some time and I think deserves real respect for her formidible writing on the threat of terrorism... BUT I don't think she is right here:
But more significantly – and Straw did not say this – this type of veil is itself a direct threat to liberty. Clearly, it is a matter of debate within the Islamic world whether it – or, indeed, any type of veil – is necessary to satisfy the injunction upon women to preserve their modesty. What is beyond doubt is that the blackout veil is associated with most extreme interpretation of Islam, which holds that Islamic values must supersede all other values, including those of the secular state. Wearing this veil is thus a political statement of cultural and religious hostility to the British state. Objecting to it, therefore, is not an example of intolerance or religious discrimination. Religious garb should certainly be tolerated, even if it is outlandish; what people wear is their own affair. But this veil is not their own affair. It affects the rest of us because it is inherently aggressive and intimidatory. That is why it is unacceptable.'
Now, I agree that the full veil is associated with a very conservative and reactionary interpretation of Islam (they don't wear them in Iran for instance or most Muslim countries for that matter). However, I think Melanie Phillips goes too far when she says that although 'Religious garb should certainly be tolerated, even if it is outlandish' and that 'what people wear is their own affair' that the veil is 'not their own affair' and that it is 'inherently aggressive and intimidatory'.
Look, I don't like the veils at all. I might even agree with Rushdie that they suck. I think they make communication difficult in a way that just isn't comparable to any other religious garb I'm aware of. However I'm just not convinced by Mel that they are 'inherently aggressive and intimidatory'.
Here's Rod Liddle on the Veil in the Spectator (I've posted the whole thing as it is only available by subscription on The Spectator's own website).
Don't Attack The Veil
Rod Liddle
'Here’s how far things have moved in such a short space of time. Jack Straw, in an attempt to generate attention (and approval) for his quest to become deputy leader of the Labour party, lets it be known that he doesn’t like talking to Muslim women who are fully veiled. Within two days the entire British public — save for most of our Muslim citizens — are clamouring for space to agree with him. Notable highbrow liberal commentators conclude, sadly, that Mr Straw is right; that full veil, the niqab, really is a bit much, it is stretching our tolerance. Only a year ago the Guardian’s chief leader writer, Martin Kettle, told a Fabian conference on ‘Britishness’ the following: ‘Diversity in the society we live in is a given — that has to be the starting point for talking about Britishness and integration.’ But, for Martin, diversity no longer stretches to the clothes people are allowed to wear and still call themselves ‘British’. Here he was in the Guardian last week: ‘The veil is an explicit statement of separation and distance ...it literally comes between its wearer and other people. It is impossible not to see it as a barrier dividing the individual inside from the outside world.... It says, or seems to say, I do not wish to engage with you.’
Elsewhere in your morning newspapers there were little cut-out-and-keep drawings of niqabs and burkas and jilbabs and the rest, so that the readers could check out their local Muslim population to see if they were dressed in a manner which would please Jack Straw and Martin Kettle. Most people — including a good few Muslims — seemed to agree that a bit of covering up was fine — hair, breasts, etc — but not the whole face. A remarkable 97 per cent of people who took part in a telephone opinion poll for the Daily Express thought Muslims should banish the veil, right now. I heard a similar result (93 per cent) on a local radio station phone-in poll. These are self-selecting polls, of course. It may well be that there are more of us indulgent liberals around who don’t really mind what people wear, but didn’t phone in; we may find burkas and niqabs a bit disconcerting, but then we may also find the habitual uniform of Guardian leader writers a touch de trop — those post-Marxist foxed brown corduroy trousers redolent of separation and distance, a wish not to engage with the real world — either way, it is not something over which we have domain. It is none of our business. We try to see beyond the veil, or the sunglasses, or the safari suit. We don’t let it bother us too much.
Martin Kettle began his piece with the truism, or the self-fulfilling prophecy, that Jack Straw’s comments most definitely constituted an ‘issue’, to judge from the furore which followed. He then proceeded (in my opinion) to miss the entire point of what that issue really is. Not the stuff about veils and just how far it is OK for Muslim people to cover themselves up, nor even about the extent to which private behaviour becomes political. It is — to put it in terms those Chomsky-philes at the Guardian might understand — about the deep structure. By which I mean the rapidly hardening attitudes towards manifestations of Islam (although still, not Islam itself). And the political capital to be made out of taking a swipe at manifestations of Islam. We are groping towards a means of dealing with Islam and we are still getting it horribly wrong. We have become progressively less tolerant towards individuals who do not matter and towards superficial manifestations of Islam which do not remotely matter. But we still, somehow, cleave to the view that the creed of the religion, its ideology, is perfectly fine and dandy, peaceable and amenable to integration, despite the copious evidence to the contrary.
Mr Straw was elected MP for Blackburn in 1979. He is an observant chap and reportedly an extremely good constituency MP; we should assume that at some earlier point over the preceding 27 years it must have occurred to him that a substantial minority of his constituents were dressed from top to toe in Hessian sacking, with a small slit for the eyes. He must surely have met some of these women; but he failed to voice his concerns until last week. And you can understand why. Roll back ten or even five years, and any politician who requested female Muslim constituents to strip off a bit when attending surgery would be publicly eviscerated and deselected before you could say Laurence Robertson. Now, though, it is — as one Muslim commentator put it — open season on Muslims. Labour has learnt, this past year, that smacking the Muslims about actually plays rather well with the public and, crucially, does not cost them Muslim votes because, if we’re honest, the invasion of Iraq already accomplished that. There are no more Muslim votes to be lost. And so we have Jon Cruddas and Margaret Hodge and Ann Cryer articulating the legitimate concerns of white, working-class voters who feel estranged by their Muslim neighbours. We have John Reid grandstanding in front of Muslim community leaders, telling them to grass on their kids and — fortuitously, or otherwise — facing down a bearded nutter, a foaming representative from that specious, official paradigm — the ‘other’ Islam, the bad one, which wants us all killed. And Mr Straw now feels it’s a good time to advise Muslims on their dress code — and everybody agrees, even Martin Kettle.
But I’d contend that those phone poll votes — and the agonised perorations of liberal columnists, paragons of decency all of them — are evidence not of a specific dislike of the veil, but of a more general disaffection with and suspicion of Muslims per se. The veil is just the easy way in; something which they can grip hold of and at last vent their spleen.
And in attacking those who wear the full veil — rather than countering the bitter, misogynist ideology which insists that women disport themselves with modesty lest they incite the uncontrollable urges of men — we do ourselves down. In our confusion, faced with a coherent, intractable and antithetical ideology, we flail at the wrong targets and leave ourselves open to the one charge which we should reasonably be able to level at the Islamists, without being gainsaid: intolerance.
The veil — whether a gentle covering of the hair with an agreeably patterned silk scarf or the full burka — matters only in that it is a symbol of female subjugation. The varying extremes to which Muslim women will (‘voluntarily’) go in order to comply with their religious strictures does not matter one jot; what matters is the central tenet, that women need to dress this way because otherwise they will be culpable for the lascivious attentions of men. That they are thus guilty of contributory negligence. And that, further, women have a clearly defined and specific role in life, which is to support their menfolk and do as they are bidden.
The best response from us Western liberals, I would suggest, is to counter this primitive, bigoted ideology in public, and leave those individuals who adhere to it alone. Attack the cause, not the practitioners. In other words, do not allow our state schools to cede one inch to ‘local community leaders’ who insist that the girls should be allowed — or forced — to wear approximations of Muslim dress as part of the school uniform, as happens up and down the country. Make the girls wear exactly the same costume as every other girl in the school, with no concessions to creed. Let’s face it: if a white, Christian girl petitioned a headmaster or local education department to allow her to cover herself up from top to toe because she feared the predatory attentions of her male co-students, she would be sent to the school psychiatrist.
And Mr Straw would be better off attacking the sexism implicit in the stricture that forces some Muslim women to wear the veil, rather than wittering on about the difficulty this presents to him when he is trying to hold a constituency surgery. The truth is, the veil itself presents no real difficulty whatsoever. By his own admission, his meetings with veiled Muslim women were effected without rancour or obstruction. It is what lies behind the veil — not the individual, but the ideology.'
Here is David Davis, Shadow Home Secretary, on the veil debate:
Do Muslims really want apartheid here?
There are some issues that are so explosive they are only capable of being resolved if they are handled coolly and analytically. These are the unexploded bombs of modern politics and 10 days ago Jack Straw detonated one of them with his comments on the use of the veil by Muslim women.
The shock waves have reverberated around Britain, loudest in the Muslim communities. Which is not to say Jack Straw was wrong. He was not. His comments were perfectly proper and he highlighted an issue that is both important and difficult: the question of the very unity of our nation.
But first let us deal with what he did not say, but which appears to have been attributed to him. He did not say that Government or Parliament should take action to prevent the wearing of the veil. Indeed, like me, he would vote against any such law that was put before the House.
Nevertheless we must look beyond the symbolism — beyond the veil, as it were — to understand why what Mr Straw said struck such a chord in the population at large, and received support from the vast majority, whether black, white, Asian, Christian, Hindu, Sikh or, in many cases, Muslim.
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.
read the full article here
Some notification problems seem to occurring, so for those interested in this thread I recommend paying a visit to read an article by Rod Liddle (posted by Andy) and the thoughts of Wembley.
The Liddle piece basically argues that the veil isn't the problem, it's the ideology, stupid! Wembley takes issue with Phil Woolas, Peter Hain and Ruth Kelly. (Hey, I'm summarising like Finkelstein!)
Well worth listening to, especially because of Anthony Browne, author of the excellent book, Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain.
BBC Radio 4
Today Program
16/10/06
0810 We ask Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, of the Muslim Council of Britain, John Denham, former Home Office minister, and Anthony Browne, of The Times, if political correctness corrupts public debate.
Listen | Permalink
NOTE: interview referred to begins at 4'20"
David Aaronovitch warns against starting a culture war. It's a thought provoking article and well worth reading in full here.
'I not only think that Jeremiahs such as Liddle, and Melanie Phillips, of the Mail, are wrong, I think their approach could lead us into utter disaster. For a fortnight now we have been discussing veils — so just how many veil-wearing teachers are there? Ten? Five? Just Ms Azmi? What’s the problem for the rest of us once we have (rightly) taken the decision that she cannot teach while looking like a Dalek? Why should a Muslim cab- driver who is (also rightly) being sued for not carrying a guide dog make it to the banner front page of the London Evening Standard? Or a single Muslim chemist who refused to prescribe a “morning-after” Pill get half a page in the Telegraph?
In each case where a minister or an opposition spokesthing has given an opinion on matters Muslim in the past two weeks, I have agreed with much of what they have said, while wishing that they had spread the news more evenly over the national agenda. The interventions in the space of a fortnight, from at least four members of the Government and David Davis, have helped to create an atmosphere of assault. Mr Davis has said, for example, that “there is a growing feeling that the Muslim community is excessively sensitive to criticism”. Maybe, but if everyone says it every day for a week, the sensitivity becomes justified. Try it at home if you don’t believe me.
Put this together with the headlines and TV stories and, sure enough, we get the early signs of a physical response. There’s the woman on Merseyside who had her veil snatched from her; the Glasgow imam who was assaulted at an Islamic centre; the Falkirk mosque that was firebombed.
And the process of polarisation speeds up. The Muslim organisations feel under greater threat and the language turns increasingly intemperate.'
Veiled teacher linked to 7/7 bomber
Press Trust of India
October 23, 2006
The Muslim teacher suspended for refusing to work without her veil is connected to a hard-line mosque where the ringleader of the July 7 bombers worshipped, a media report said on Monday. The family of teacher Aishah Azmi, 24, plays a key role at the fundamentalist Markazi mosque in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, which was attended by suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan, the report claimed.
Until recently, Azmi's father was joint headmaster of the secondary school attached to the building. Her husband is Indian-born Ahmed Khan.The family are known to worship at the mosque and may have encountered Khan before his terrorist act last year, Daily Mail claimed. However, there is no suggestion that Azmi or anyone in her family have any connection with terrorism.
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Warning over UK race riot danger
BBC News
22 October 2006
The polarised debate over full-face veils could spark race riots in the UK, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality has warned. The issue "seems to have turned into something really quite ugly", Trevor Phillips told the Sunday Times. "This could be the trigger for the grim spiral that produced riots in the north of England five years ago," he said.
...
Massoud Shadjareh, from the lobby group the Islamic Human Rights Commission, told BBC News 24 that "ministers after ministers after ministers" had been attacking the Muslim community recently, which was unfair and "not a means of respectable dialogue". "I have to say the Muslim community really has been extremely calm, and extremely responsible," he said.
Muslim Council of Britain secretary general Muhammad Abdul Bari said the integration debate had become "increasingly shrill and ugly". He accused Mr Phillips of having a "poor track record" on this issue and criticised him for not mentioning recent attacks against Muslims which "accompanied this so-called debate". Mr Abdul Bari said: "We have seen veils being forcefully pulled off Muslim women and Muslim individuals, including an imam in Glasgow, badly beaten up by thugs."
Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said Mr Phillips was right, adding that it was "absolutely necessary" to have the debate.
Symposium on the Veil & Islam & the West
National Review Online
October 25, 2006
Veil your meat?
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred." - Sheik Taj al Hilali (Australia's most senior Muslim cleric)
(I know we're probably done with this topic, but the quote amused me. Found via Dizzy Thinks.)
Doubt he'll apologise to the Jews, somehow:
Sheik says sorry for sex sermon
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Taj El-Din Hilaly - Wikipedia
1988 University of Sydney speech regarding Jews
Australian Jewish organisations have regularly accused Hilaly of anti-Semitism, a charge he denies. The charges began in 1988 when Hilaly delivered a lecture to a group of Muslim students at Sydney University on the topic "The Disposition of Jews in the light of the Qur'an." He was quoted as saying:
"The Jews struggle with humanity is as old as history itself; the present continuing struggle with the Islam nation is a natural continuation of the Jews enmity towards the human race as a whole. Judaism controls the world by…secret movements as the destructive doctrines and groups, such as communism, libertinism, Free Masons, Baha’ism, the Rotary clubs, the nationalistic and racist doctrines. The Jews try to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason, and economic hoarding."
He has not since apologised nor retracted his comments, in which he accused Jews of causing all wars.
...
2004 Sermon September 11 and Suicide bombing comments
In February 2004 Hilaly gave a sermon at a mosque in Sidon, Lebanon, whilst overseas the text of which was translated by the Australian Embassy in Beirut. It appeared to show him supporting terrorist attack. In his sermon Hilaly said:
"Sons of Islam, there is a war of infidels taking place everywhere. The true man is the boy who opposes Israeli tanks with strength and faith. The boy who, despite his mother's objections, goes out to war to become a martyr like his elder brother. The boy who tells his mother: 'Oh mother, don't cry for me if I die. Oh mother, Jihad has been imposed on me and I want to become a martyr'."
"September 11 is God's work against oppressors. Some of the things that happen in the world cannot be explained; a civilian airplane whose secrets cannot be explained if we ask its pilot who reached his objective without error, who led your steps? Or if we ask the giant that fell, who humiliated you? Or if we ask the President, who made you cry? God is the answer."
In his speech he also prophesized prophesized that Muslims would control the White House and appeared to support Hezbollah [13] [14]. The Australian Federal Police declined to investigate his activities overseas.
...
2006 Holocaust denial
In July 2006, he was sacked from Prime Minister of Australia John Howard's Muslim Community Reference Group following comments he made in which he denied the Holocaust, calling it a "Zionist lie". He also referred to Israel as a "cancer". This prompted calls for legal action to be pursued against him, in a country which has the highest per-capita number of Holocaust survivors in the world outside Israel.
Brilliant, never blogged from a Kazakh site before!
Khatami urges UK Muslims to respect laws
Kazinform
03/11/2006
Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami urged Britain’s Muslims yesterday to respect the country’s laws, while saying women should be left to decide themselves whether to wear the niqab (full-face Islamic veil). His comments came in the wake of fierce protests over the issue in recent weeks, sparked by a senior British government minister who called on Muslim women to remove the niqab when they talk to him.
"The principle of (the) Islamic veil is an Islamic issue," Khatami said in a BBC radio interview, adding: "This is something that women should choose themselves. It is not something which can be imposed on people by force."
But he added: "Muslims should realize that they are living within the British society and should respect its rules and regulations. The British society should accept the Muslims as citizens and compatriots."
I was having a look around the MEMRI site and found this article from a Reformist Muslim writer (he makes a similiar point to the one in JP's post above):
"When Foreigners Come to Islamic Countries… We Insist That They Respect Our Traditions"
"Something important happened recently in Australia that made us ask ourselves, Who are we and what is our attitude towards others?
"When foreigners come to Islamic countries to work, live, or visit, we insist that they respect our Islamic and Arab traditions. We also expect foreign workers in our countries to respect the customs of our religion, and sometimes we even go overboard and demand that their wives cover their heads with a veil, and demand that they not eat in public during the days of Ramadan, and refrain from eating pork, drinking wine, and the like… In all the Islamic countries, anyone accused of harming the sensibilities of the native residents is punished, deported, or imprisoned…"
[...]
"In a secular country, do Muslims have the right to build mosques, teach the Koran, or support the [Islamic] religious schools? Must the Muslim be entitled to have more than one wife in America, Russia, Europe, or China? Can they impose Koranic punishments in these [countries]?…
"In principle, this entire matter begins and ends with our views towards others, with the question of whether we think that others have rights or not, and with the question of whether Islam is a religion capable of coexisting in a secular society without being condescending towards others - particularly with regard to the civil laws in the Western democracies."
[...]
"This brings us back to Australia. Last week, Australia's Conservative Prime Minister John Howard summoned to his office a large group of Muslim clerics from the Muslim community living in the continent, and presented them with an ultimatum. He said that Australia, which is fundamentally a land of immigrants, demands of everyone who resides in it… 'full allegiance' to the secular Australian constitution and not to any other law common in the countries whence the immigrants came...
"Just in case the words of the prime minister were not sufficiently clear, Treasurer Peter Costello added that the Muslim clerics must adhere to the secular laws, and that if they do not do so, they must leave Australia…
"The issue of 'live and let live' has turned into an existential issue [for Muslims living in non-Muslim countries]. In accordance with the current democratic values and with other values, the non-Muslim majority lives in systems based on separation of religion and state… Since it is not reasonable [to assume] that the situation will change… it is imperative that our Muslim brothers living abroad share the values of those who prefer secularism.
"Muslims living abroad cannot assume that they can impose their values - just as we do not permit Christians living among us to impose their values upon us…"
'The Dutch cabinet has backed a proposal by the country's immigration minister to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public places.
The burqa, a full body covering that also obscures the face, would be banned by law in the street, and in trains, schools, buses and the law courts.
The cabinet said burqas disturb public order, citizens and safety.'
There is an interesting post on the story at the Libertarian Blog Samizdata. The writer asks whether this is a) an unacceptable state repression of personal liberty and freedom of choice or b) a necessary and welcome bulwark against the growth of radical Islam in Europe? In the comments Natalie Solent writes:
"The burqa is obviously bad. Where it is not oppressive it is arrogant. The situation ought to be
- you want to wear it in the street? OK, if you must.
- you want to wear it in my shopping centre? Sorry, against company policy. OR Welcome inside. Depends on the company.
- you want to wear it in an airport? Ha ha, most amusing madam. This nice gentleman will now escort you to the exit.
I very much agree with this part of what TomWright wrote: "We are no longer allowed to respond to such a perceived threat in any meaningful way. We can not refuse service if someone enters our store in such attire, due to anti-discrimination laws, nor can we verbally complain to those wearing a face covering for similar reasons. We will either be accused of being intolerant or, in the case of Britain, and the US in some places, possibly arrested and/or accused of a crime or civil rights violation. ( I may be misunderstanding recent laws, but not by much). I will cease to care about someones choice to wear a face covering when I can freely refuse service to someone that wears one, or demand they leave my property, or be able to respond to such a perceived threat in the traditional way: By a direct verbal warning, followed by an ounce or so of buckshot if they fail to heed that warning."
However I draw the opposite conclusion from his. If we admit the government's right to control people's clothes we strengthen the very forces that have stopped us using the voluntary, individual social pressures that are the best defence against creeping surrender. Where coercive institutions are strong a fanatical minority is well placed to capture them and turn them to its own purposes."
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