Whole Body Veils (18/09/13)
Hugo Rifkind gets to the heart of the debate about whole body veils with his opinion piece for the Times.
The issue has nothing to do with people's human rights or ability to practice their religious beliefs - instead it's about how citizens interact with each other in public places.
To my mind, any religion that insists a woman must wear a bag over her head in public is crazy and offensive - but then I find lots of other things about religion offensive as well.
The difference with niqabs and burkas is that they have no place in the public spaces where people come together as equals - believers and non-believers alike - whether to work, teach, practice medicine or administer justice.
So, if a fundamentalist Muslim wants to wear a whole body veil indoors, in a Mosque or strolling in the park - then knock yourself out, I say.
But in other areas of public life I think it's an unacceptable way to behave - 'just bloody rude', as Hugo Rifkind says.
Veils shouldn’t be banned. Except sometimes
By Hugo Rifkind
A niqab is a barrier, worn to repel. It is un-British — but so too is a blanket ban on them being worn
The best contribution I have yet heard to the debate on the ethics of veils came a few months ago, on Radio 4, from the comedian Francesca Martinez. To avoid the glare of men, she noted, some women drape themselves from head to toe in material, save for the strip they cut away to see. She felt she had a more economical solution. “Keep that strip and get men to put it over their eyes,” she suggested, “and then you can wear what you like.”
Niqabs are very now. Last week, following a protest, Birmingham’s Metropolitan College un-banned the niqab after eight years. Yesterday, a judge in Tower Hamlets decided that a woman should be allowed to stand trial in a veil except for when she gave evidence, when she would be shielded behind a screen. Already, we know what a whole bunch of politicians think about this. All speak with a strange sort of detachment, as though the issue here were a grave and complicated one, with two rational sides. Rather than what it really is, a sexist and perhaps coercive belief that a woman in public ought to have her head in a bag.
Don’t flinch from this. By all means, let us debate the reach of the State, and the requirements of tolerance in a multicultural, multifaith society, and all that jazz. But at the heart of this lies the notion that a woman, by virtue of being a woman, ought to be invisible in a public space. That’s a notion to which, in my view, we ought to give a big old kick every time we happen to pass it. Few things are less British than the niqab, and few things should be less welcome to a Brit.
Although that doesn’t mean we ought to ban it. Well, except for sometimes, when we definitely should. Of course people shouldn’t be allowed to cover their faces in airport security or in court. I surprise myself with my own vehemence on this, but there is no doubt in my mind. Yesterday’s ruling in Tower Hamlets was hailed as a compromise, but it wasn’t one at all. It was a surrender to somebody who was attempting to reject centuries of convention in British courts.
Such situations, though, are rare. More often, I’d actually approve of a situation in which a woman has every right to wear a veil, but that right is not in any way protected from rival obligations. A bit like most clothes, in other words. A policeman, for example, has every right to march out of his house in a mankini as modelled by Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, but that doesn’t mean a judge needs to get involved if the DCI sends him home to change. In most lines of work you should be able to wear a veil up until the point where your boss tells you that you can’t. And, if you work in any sort of people-facing public service, let’s be honest, your boss ought to be telling you that pretty damn quickly.
With teachers, this seems to be how it works already. Some may forget, but last time Britain grew terribly perturbed — yet, you know, understanding — about the niqab was in 2006, when a woman called Aishah Azmi was sacked from her post as a teaching assistant by a Church of England school for refusing to unveil while teaching. Much as I try, I can’t think of any good reason why a teacher should have her face covered. I suppose you might argue it beneficial for children to be exposed to people in veils, and thus grow to understand it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to wear, but I’d respond that it isn’t, thus it isn’t. Pretty simple.
Yesterday, the Home Office minister Jeremy Browne seemed to be suggesting that face-coverings should be banned among school pupils, so as to protect vulnerable girls who are compelled to cover up by relatives. I take his point, but given that there’s little evidence that this actually happens much — veils are very rarely worn by children — it does sound like he’s picking a fight.
If so, he should pick it properly. Personally, in an utterly non-tub-thumping way, I’d be quite happy to find headmasters sending kids home for wearing any kind of religious garb — yarmulkes, bindis, whopping great crucifixes, whatever — in just the same way as they might do if they came in dressed as cowboys, aliens or Krusty the Clown. For some, it would be a liberation from the dogmas of their parents, and for others a bit of early education about what it means, or should mean, to live in a country where priests don’t call the shots.
Is it hard to imagine this ever happening? I suppose it is, and for reasons that help to show why the issue of veils has the potential to throw so many people into such an angry, humourless, erratic tizz. The veil is a fairly unique form of cultural symbol, after all. Not everything about Britain ought to be multicultural, and there are some forms of civic interaction that frankly ought to demand that you take your funny hat off. Elsewhere, though, while I might object to the clearly sexist rationale behind, say, a Somali’s hijab, or the wig of an ultra-Orthodox Jew, at least these are people who want me to know who they are. The veil isn’t like that. It isn’t a symbol of multiculturalism but a stand against it. Whether worn voluntarily or by compulsion, it’s an opt-out. It is what it looks like, which is a barrier worn to repel. In the end, there’s no other way of saying this. It’s just bloody rude.
What pains me is that we’ve lost the knack of navigating this, or even comfortably talking about it. The grey, essential space between not liking something and outlawing it has almost disappeared. Why not first speak of engaging with those tiny parts of already small communities that wear them, and politely asking them not to?
It’s cowardice. It’s a lack of confidence in our own values and our ability to articulate them. We are like the neighbours who call the police about noise complaints, afraid to simply knock on the door. Not actually wanting to look each other in the face, even if we could.
A niqab is a barrier, worn to repel. It is un-British — but so too is a blanket ban on them being worn
The best contribution I have yet heard to the debate on the ethics of veils came a few months ago, on Radio 4, from the comedian Francesca Martinez. To avoid the glare of men, she noted, some women drape themselves from head to toe in material, save for the strip they cut away to see. She felt she had a more economical solution. “Keep that strip and get men to put it over their eyes,” she suggested, “and then you can wear what you like.”
Niqabs are very now. Last week, following a protest, Birmingham’s Metropolitan College un-banned the niqab after eight years. Yesterday, a judge in Tower Hamlets decided that a woman should be allowed to stand trial in a veil except for when she gave evidence, when she would be shielded behind a screen. Already, we know what a whole bunch of politicians think about this. All speak with a strange sort of detachment, as though the issue here were a grave and complicated one, with two rational sides. Rather than what it really is, a sexist and perhaps coercive belief that a woman in public ought to have her head in a bag.
Don’t flinch from this. By all means, let us debate the reach of the State, and the requirements of tolerance in a multicultural, multifaith society, and all that jazz. But at the heart of this lies the notion that a woman, by virtue of being a woman, ought to be invisible in a public space. That’s a notion to which, in my view, we ought to give a big old kick every time we happen to pass it. Few things are less British than the niqab, and few things should be less welcome to a Brit.
Although that doesn’t mean we ought to ban it. Well, except for sometimes, when we definitely should. Of course people shouldn’t be allowed to cover their faces in airport security or in court. I surprise myself with my own vehemence on this, but there is no doubt in my mind. Yesterday’s ruling in Tower Hamlets was hailed as a compromise, but it wasn’t one at all. It was a surrender to somebody who was attempting to reject centuries of convention in British courts.
Such situations, though, are rare. More often, I’d actually approve of a situation in which a woman has every right to wear a veil, but that right is not in any way protected from rival obligations. A bit like most clothes, in other words. A policeman, for example, has every right to march out of his house in a mankini as modelled by Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, but that doesn’t mean a judge needs to get involved if the DCI sends him home to change. In most lines of work you should be able to wear a veil up until the point where your boss tells you that you can’t. And, if you work in any sort of people-facing public service, let’s be honest, your boss ought to be telling you that pretty damn quickly.
With teachers, this seems to be how it works already. Some may forget, but last time Britain grew terribly perturbed — yet, you know, understanding — about the niqab was in 2006, when a woman called Aishah Azmi was sacked from her post as a teaching assistant by a Church of England school for refusing to unveil while teaching. Much as I try, I can’t think of any good reason why a teacher should have her face covered. I suppose you might argue it beneficial for children to be exposed to people in veils, and thus grow to understand it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to wear, but I’d respond that it isn’t, thus it isn’t. Pretty simple.
Yesterday, the Home Office minister Jeremy Browne seemed to be suggesting that face-coverings should be banned among school pupils, so as to protect vulnerable girls who are compelled to cover up by relatives. I take his point, but given that there’s little evidence that this actually happens much — veils are very rarely worn by children — it does sound like he’s picking a fight.
If so, he should pick it properly. Personally, in an utterly non-tub-thumping way, I’d be quite happy to find headmasters sending kids home for wearing any kind of religious garb — yarmulkes, bindis, whopping great crucifixes, whatever — in just the same way as they might do if they came in dressed as cowboys, aliens or Krusty the Clown. For some, it would be a liberation from the dogmas of their parents, and for others a bit of early education about what it means, or should mean, to live in a country where priests don’t call the shots.
Is it hard to imagine this ever happening? I suppose it is, and for reasons that help to show why the issue of veils has the potential to throw so many people into such an angry, humourless, erratic tizz. The veil is a fairly unique form of cultural symbol, after all. Not everything about Britain ought to be multicultural, and there are some forms of civic interaction that frankly ought to demand that you take your funny hat off. Elsewhere, though, while I might object to the clearly sexist rationale behind, say, a Somali’s hijab, or the wig of an ultra-Orthodox Jew, at least these are people who want me to know who they are. The veil isn’t like that. It isn’t a symbol of multiculturalism but a stand against it. Whether worn voluntarily or by compulsion, it’s an opt-out. It is what it looks like, which is a barrier worn to repel. In the end, there’s no other way of saying this. It’s just bloody rude.
What pains me is that we’ve lost the knack of navigating this, or even comfortably talking about it. The grey, essential space between not liking something and outlawing it has almost disappeared. Why not first speak of engaging with those tiny parts of already small communities that wear them, and politely asking them not to?
It’s cowardice. It’s a lack of confidence in our own values and our ability to articulate them. We are like the neighbours who call the police about noise complaints, afraid to simply knock on the door. Not actually wanting to look each other in the face, even if we could.
