In an article for the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, Jack Straw MP has said he believes that women who wear veils that cover the face can make relations between communities "more difficult" and revealed his has asked women visiting his surgery to consider removing it. His opinions on this matter seems to me self-evidently true, and applaud his contribution to the debate and his personal actions.

This leads me into my wider discussion of Islamic dress: I see no merits in it, and furthermore, think its most extreme manifestations, such as the burqa, incredibly degrading to women.



The Koran - allegedly the literal word of God - tells women that they must "dress modestly". There is nothing wrong with this in itself, as long as one is relatvely sane in his defintion of modestly. Needless to say, any definition that requires the covering of the head or face is completely over the top, and begins to become something quite different. As we see in Afghanistan, such clothing has been part of class and tribal traditions, and have been ingrained so that they have been interpreted as part of Islam when they really should not be. That such garments are unnecessary to be a proper Muslim is my first point.

Secondly is what these things represent, chiefly, female subjugation and slavery (for ease I am concentrating on the burqa). They prevent other males from seeing any part whatsoever of a women's body when she is in public, and many claim that such dress is to prevent the female being seen in a purely physical sense rather than personal or spiritual sense. Yet it is forgotten the burqa is removed in the home in the presence of the husband. It must then be clear to us then that such clothing is designed to assert the husbands ownership of his wife in said physical sense, as that is the sense of her being that is being denied from others in the first place. It is in the very essence of what it is to be human to take physical form, since we are nothing else. This practice is then, precisely, slavery.

It is a complete mystery to me why wearing such extreme islamic dress, such as the burqa, is not infinitely more degrading than being, say, a pornographic film star: the latter is a freely chosen career, usually well paid, containing no allusions of grandeur, yet degrading the body in the regard that its specialness is taken away, as anyone may enjoy it and no one owns it; while the former come about through slavery (either literal or from what i deem ""mental slavery"), is often much hampering to fiscal reward, done in the belief that it will please a make-believe God, and degrades the body in the regard that it is property to which only the owner may enjoy. If we take the pursuit of greater female dignity seriously, then this debate is a key battleground.

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NB: That I firmly believe Islam is the misguided pursuit of anachronistic and superstitious teaching from a much more barbaric time must be seen in the context that I am an agnostic (albeit a relatively new one) and take the same view with all religions


Also it is worth remembering that my comments in no way necessarily reflect those of Aber CF, Conservative Future generally, of the Conservative Party