Another cracker of a piece from the writer Shazia Hobbs author of the novel ‘The Gori’s Daughter’. This time it is an article on the subject of the Burkha and why it is a troublesome garment that should be banned. This article was first published on the SEDAA website

The Burkha should be banned – By Shazia Hobbs.

Life today for Muslim women in the UK is completely different to when I was growing up. You know you are getting old when you start referring to the past as ‘the good old days’. But life in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 70s and 80s for Muslim women was actually really good. Yes, there was racism, but other communities had to put up with that too. The Muslim community doesn’t have a monopoly on victim status.

It was frightening to have our windows smashed by young white men who were not pleased we had moved into their predominantly white area. It was frightening to have white men and women shout out, ‘fucking darkies’ or ‘smelly Paki lover’. This is what I experienced when out with my mother, a white Catholic woman who had converted to Islam when she married my father. Thankfully, the racism from children at school was less frightening and it didn’t take long for me to be accepted by my classmates. Children are better at integrating than most adults.

Back then the Pakistani community was decent. Everything was all new and exciting. The men had come over to earn a living and make a new life in the UK and, in time called, for their families to join them or created new families, the first generation to be born in the UK — my generation.

Pakistani people, when they first arrived, were relaxed about their religion. There were few hijabs and niqabs and burqas were fewer still. Men with long beards were generally only very devout old men, or perhaps the occasional eccentric teenager who took his religion far too seriously, and it often went hand in hand with regular praying and memorising the whole Qur’an. The majority of Pakistani women and girls in the UK wore a headscarf, either round their neck or on their head, with some of their hair still visible.

Today Muslim girls face far less racism than when I was growing up, and again I would argue no worse than other ethnic minorities. The more serious problems they face are within their own communities, such as the dilemma of covering or not covering – assuming they have that choice. Everybody is interested in what a Muslim woman should wear and politicians in Europe are now discussing a ban on the niqab and burqa.

The burqa is a head to toe garment that has a piece of mesh to allow the women to see through. A niqab is a veil for the face that leaves the area around the eyes clear. Seeing a woman wearing these garments makes me feel uneasy — and I am a woman of Muslim heritage. It makes me feel uneasy for a number of reasons, the main one being I cannot see the woman behind the veil; I cannot see her facial expressions. Is she happy, is she miserable, is she bored talking to me, is she up to no good? Who knows?

When a woman wears a burqa or niqab I am denied the ability to receive crucial non-verbal communication that is a natural part of everyday human interactions in open and free societies. These are simple things we all take for granted when conversing with one another and meeting people for the first time.

Deep down you just know, or at the very least suspect, that the women wearing the burqas will be married to, or are the daughters of, men with beards, long beards. Men who take their religion very seriously. Men who regularly pray at the mosques that preach hate. Men who teach their children to hate the kuffar (non believers) and all things Western. To say families like this do not live in the UK is foolish.

Women can be seen in these veils at Islamic protests in the UK, protesting with banners calling for ‘Death to those who insult Islam,’ and ‘Shari’ah for Britain’ sometimes even accompanied by children in prams. Sadly, for too many people the face-veil symbolises something sinister and when you see burqa-clad women calling for Sharia Law, you can understand why.

Nowhere in the Qur’an does it say to cloak the women in a black bag with only a tiny piece of mesh to allow them to see where they are going. Nowhere in the Qur’an does it say to cover your hair, yet many Muslim women do, and they say it is their own free choice. But the whole question of what is or is not in the Qur’an seems irrelevant to me, because if burqas and hijabs are “nothing to do with Islam”, why then is it “Islamophobic” to object to them? And why are they always justified in the name of religious freedom?

Women in hijabs do not concern me as much as women in burqas, but I fear that our soft stance on the hijab — which, like the burqa, is also a symbol and tool of women’s oppression — has helped lay the path for making the burqa so acceptable in mainstream society. At least when someone is wearing a hijab, though, I can see their face and I can converse with them pretty much normally.

Some hijab wearers try to make non-hijab wearers feel guilty and shameful for not covering their head. There was one hijab wearing girl at my school in the 80s – yes just one. We all felt sorry for her; we, the lucky Muslim girls who did not have to wear even a scarf to school, never mind the hijab. Now some Muslim girls are feeling sorry for those without a hijab.

I used to think that the hijab-wearing girls and women who had a full face of make up (I swear some of these girls have a make up artist on speed dial), skin-tight clothes and high heels were defeating the purpose of the hijab. If it is to be worn to cover your hair and hide your beauty to the opposite sex, to make you look pious and protected in the eyes of Allah, then why draw attention to yourself? Now I view those girls as rebellious and mischievous, and I like that, even though they may not think that way of themselves.

But even though I might like their own sassy interpretation of how a hijab is to be worn, the downside is that it makes the hijab more and more acceptable and “trendy”, which I think is bad news. This then encourages high street retailers to cater for this fashion trend, normalising the hijab even more.

The burqa offers no such choices, and comes only in one style. The burqa/niqab is incredibly oppressive; it allows men to control the women in their families. How insecure does a man have to be that he will not allow his wife or daughters to leave the house until every part of her is covered up? These men claim their religion is compassionate yet they impose on their womenfolk an oppressive rule made by men to control women.

That we are even having a debate on whether the burqa should be banned or not is pathetic. When you see the actions of many burqa-clad Muslim women on the high streets of towns and cities in certain parts of the UK, promoting death to all things British, to behead those who insult Islam and calling for Sharia Law, you wonder why the ban is not in place already.

If anything, banning the face veil is probably one of the simplest ways Britain could assert its culture and its values in the face of hostile and uncompromising Islamisation. Banning the burqa should be low-hanging fruit. But Britain hasn’t even got the bottle to do that.

This is not tolerance — it is weakness. If we can’t win the easy battles, we will never win the difficult ones.