Charles Moore’s notes: Liberal-leaning Muslims are the people most opposed to the niqab

We are not allowed to know any details about the Muslim woman, charged with intimidating a witness, who has been ordered to take off her full-face veil to give evidence in court. But when it is all over, it will not be surprising if she turns out to be a convert. All mainstream religions have some sort of teaching about what to wear. Within living memory, for example, it was all but compulsory for women to have their heads covered in church. But general teachings in favour of modesty have different cultural applications, and it is usually false to claim that a religion absolutely insists upon a particular garment. What happens is that zealots, often manipulating ignorant converts, decide to make dress into a shibboleth. Teachers in schools with substantial Muslim populations will tell you that the people most opposed to the niqab are those Muslim parents who interpret their religion more liberally. If the public authorities give in to the dress demands, they make the moderates the prisoners of the fanatics. It is as bogus as if Christian revivalists demanded that all the faithful abstain from meat during Lent. What school would listen to that?

Almost the only remaining dress rule in Christianity is that a man should not wear a hat in church. A couple of years ago, I was in Westminster Cathedral when I spotted a Muslim couple walking around. She was in a veil; he wore a hat. I was pleased to see them there, and so I wondered whether to do nothing, but then I decided that I would not thank a Muslim so polite that he let me cause offence in a mosque by staying shod, and so I approached the couple. ‘You are very welcome here,’ I said, ‘but I wonder if the gentleman would mind taking off his hat.