I see that UKIP thinks it a good idea to ban Muslim women from wearing the veil in the public. The burka and “other face covering veils” should be outlawed, Farage pronounced today. His reasons given are that full veils are socially divisive and symbolic of the subordination of women. What a low and filthy attempt to suck up a few more right wing votes. To pass a law legislating what people can wear and what they can’t. Except not “people”, but Muslims – that is the only section of the population to whom this stricture applies. So it is quintessentially racist – much as is our demands for the prosecution of Muslim protestors and our banning of radical, if ludicrous and offensive Muslims groups. There is no other explanation for it that I can see, and speaking as a “tedious racist” (© Diane Abbott, The Guardian, Roy Greenslade and many others) myself, I know of what I speak, presumably.
I don’t for a moment doubt that the veil is symbolic of the subjugation of women: what we should do is counter the ideology behind the veil, not the right of people to wear whatever the hell they like. We will end up giving so much away, out of our fear of Islam – all the things that matter.
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