Liddle Britain

Don’t attack the veil

Wednesday, 11th October 2006

Rod Liddle says we should not be challenging Muslim women, but displaying the courage to ask why they cover their faces in the first place. All else is appeasement

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.’

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