Anti-Muslim Religious Compulsion in the UK
This is apparently the face of the most frightening thing in the UK right now.
Niqaabi, veiled Muslim females. Apparently. Their choice to cover their faces is completely ruining British race relations and the veil needs to be done away with as a part of British society.
So were the words around British parliament this week as the row over British pol Jack Straw's veil comments continues to expand.
Straw said that at all official meetings, he expected Muslim women to remove their niqab veils. His statement was "Muslim women should not have to cover their faces".
While I'm sure he believes this is a wonderful sentiment and I'm sure he's brimming with gender egalitarianism, was this his place to say? At all? To the niqabi, she is fulfilling the words of a verse in Qur'an.
Perhaps this is just meant to be putting stronger pressure on immigrants to "conform to Western values". Of course, this means that pluralism and diversity have now officially gone down the drain and that multiculturalism is being tossed out as something that doesn't even work in theory. Once you start legislating people's values and outlooks as a condition of citizenship, you are headed on a slippery slope towards nothing but forced assimilation.
Jemima Khan, a convert to Islam and campaigner for Muslim women, said: "My belief also happens to be that covering the face is completely unnecessary in Islam... That said, while the sight of a woman in a veil may be shocking to the average Westerner, there are many Muslim women who will argue that a skeletal 14-year-old on a catwalk is equally disturbing."
(Some Muslim men as well.)
Harriet Harman of the British Labour Party:
On Islamic dress, for example, she makes Jack Straw's remarks on the niqab seem minor quibbles. Harman would prefer to see the veil gone from British society. "Because I want women to be fully included. If you want equality, you have to be in society, not hidden away from it."
Again, this is a politician with legislative power.
The abolition debate, she says, should be led by Muslim women, but there are none in the Commons. "You get there [to veil-free societies] by mobilising so that it doesn't seem anti- Islam . . . How can you stand as an MP when men's faces are on posters, and voters can't see yours? How can you [live an equal life] if you can't get a driving licence or a passport? The veil is an obstacle to women's participation, on equal terms, in society."
Abolition debate. Aboliishing niqab.
Some Muslim women see niqab as a mandatory part of their religious practice, some of whom are professional women who adopted the practice voluntarily. (See, for instance, The Niqabi Paralegal or these organizations.) These are the women who will now be told that they, by writ of Parliament, MUST take off their veils.
To borrow an American ideal, you now have a mix of church and state taking place in the UK with a macabre twist. The state is pushing ideals of one church to regulate another. This is the worst type of endorsement.
But of course, it's being done under the guise of feminism -- as if giving women equal choice as to what to wear isn't feminist, and as if saying men's Muslim religious attire IS acceptable but women's ISN'T does not reek of sexism -- and therefore will be more palatable to the left, but make no mistake. This is the same neocon Islamophobia which is sweeping Europe (and of course, as we know already, comes hand-in-hand with neo-fascists and anti-Semites).
So now a piece of cloth becomes an obstacle to British race relations, but anti-Semitic college rallies, rising hate crimes, Nazi-aligned soccer fans, and dentists with rocket launchers and right-wing propaganda aren't?
This is Babylon.
