Jack Straw certainly stirred up a lot of controversy with his comments about trying to talk to someone wearing a veil. The strange thing is that I know its controversial but I still don't know if he is right or wrong. A lot may depend on how the story has been spun.
For a start I have to confess I get confused about all these names for the different types of headgear – but then I get confused by womens' fashion generally. If I can't tell the difference between a sack dress and a bolero I am unlikely to understand burkas, niqabs and hijabs.
Anyway, as a general rule I think we should all wear what we want to, and although I have to follow convention myself I don't see why we can't wear shorts to work, t-shirts to the opera, and jeans to a job interview. I think you should be able to go to a decent restaurant without a tie on. I know there is some argument about whether women wear the veils because of cultural pressure in some cases, or because they just want to in others, but for those doing it out of choice its up to them. I just wish I had that freedom.
The thing is, I know that if I decided to wear a nice IRA-style balaclava I would be told to take it off several times a day, just like if I insisted on wearing a full-face crash helmet. Now why is that?
In some cases there are good reasons – petrol stations do not like obscured faces: they like to get a decent picture of their armed robbers on the CCTV camera. I think that if I had to talk to someone wearing a balaclava like the one in the picture I would feel uneasy. Possibly threatened.
It seems to me like Jack Straw raised the issue with his constituents in a polite way, as a request and not a demand, to reflect his own uneasiness which is probably not for cultural reasons. I think thats fine. If he insisted on women de-veiling that would have been wrong.
The best thing he could do is go onto Newsnight and if Paxman starts trying to criticise him he should whip out an IRA special or a 'gimp mask' and put it on for the remainder of the interview. If nothing else it would be hilarious.
Like you I am undecided and I agree that people should be able to wear what they want. But it’s the double standard that annoys me. If you wander through a shopping centre in a hoody you are asked to take the hood down for security reasons yet women in veils are not asked to uncover their faces. I get the feeling security personnel are too afraid of being branded racist to do so.
I think that for some muslim women, asking them to take off their veil, in the presence of a man who is not a relative, would be like asking any other woman to strip to her underwear. I don’t think that Jack Straw was asking anyone to do that – I think the media leapt on the reported comment like a scabby dog on a bone.
The media hyping up a nothing story into a major storm of controversy?
That just doesn’t seem like the media I know and love, eh? Eh? Oh.