Janice Turner in the Times "Frenzy about the burka is no help to women"

Dress codes of state and private employees can insist that their staff have faces uncovered.

I don't agree with a ban, but I do think restrictions are perfectly fine.

slientcrow I agree. I don't really know where I stand - but I know I'm only being asked to think about it by a man who doesn't actually give a stuff about women whatsoever.

I do know a dogwhistle when I see one.

Very very very few women go out and about in a niquab in my UK city. I probably see one every few weeks. It’s a reasonably large city too, with many many hijab wearing women.

Conversely I see niquabis in my city daily, and it's quite small. Less burka, but enough to see at least a couple. You can't use observational anecdata of raw numbers on this one, I think you have to ask more questions. Veiling is a mixture of religious and cultural practice: where you have particular groups clustered together, you'll have different practices. A very rough analogy might be styles of church building - where you have a lot of Catholics (particularly generations of immigrants), you'll tend to have more ornate churches. Where you have more Baptists and Methodists, church buildings are plain and unadorned (I grew up in an evangelical church that was little more than a shed). That's cultural interpretation, not a biblical law.

I honestly don't know where I could stand on this one, I can see all the different avenues of thought. What I'm hearing is a great deal of sound and thunder - and dog-whistling - from a man who wants to keep his name at the top of the list for next PM (or failing that, a lucrative seat on a board or in the Lords), and not a lot of input from women who actually wear the veil.

Odd that not one of the billions of Muslim men has taken this route to get closer to their god.

No men wear a face veil but millions of Arab men wear a thobe which covers everything except for the face, hands and feet. Obviously this law is rooted in misogyny but millions of men do cover up to get closet to their God.

I agree with a ban.

But the only way to enforce the ban is to make women who are wearing them take it off. How is forcing women to take off clothing better than forcing women to put it on??

I decided that for me, that to be closer to God, the best act of devotion, was, for me to wear the face veil

"In the Quran, it says for women to 'lower down their garments' it means to cover up

These are quotes from a young Muslim woman in Wales. Odd that not one of the billions of Muslim men has taken this route to get closer to their god.

I imagine that every damaging practise throughout history enacted upon females and not males had advocates earnestly saying and believing that the practise was a free choice.
Footbinding, corsets, crinolines, FGM, child marriage. Some have been ended, others still persist.

What is the difference between those which are history and those which are current?

The will to reject them. Sometimes they die out naturally through successful education, and other times the law decides they are intolerable, which involves denying the individual choice of those who want to continue a practise that harms others in society.

Very very very few women go out and about in a niquab in my UK city. I probably see one every few weeks. It’s a reasonably large city too, with many many hijab wearing women.

I wonder how many of the teens/young women wearing hijab when their mothers do not has an element of teenage rebellion. The Islamic equivalent of the very short skirt.

Another thought experiment I posted on another thread: instead of banning the burqua pass a law that says that the male relatives of every woman who wears it must wear it as well. The custom would most likely vanish overnight. I know, I know, unenforceable.....

Ah that thought was complete in my head

"Solution is of course an end to women being seen as sex objects and then our clothes will carry no more significance than men's clothes do"

and then there would be no more extremes of dress seen as in menswear

I agree with a ban.

Solution is of course an end to women being seen as sex objects and then our clothes will carry no more significance than men's clothes do

Choosing to wear a burqa or a niqab in the UK or Europe fully endorses the view that women are sex objects and is about as far as you could get from the idea that clothes are just clothes.

Dont agree with a ban.

Do consider that in this country it is not a cultural norm to cover your face and in fact is generally associated with danger / illegality. When I was growing up there were two sorts of people who covered their faces - terrortists and people who were about to commit a serious (armed) robbery. This should not be underestimated in our national knee jerk to face coverings. It is a cultural no-no.

As for the rest of it I feel very torn. I agree with many for and against points. I have read that covering in the UK means no leering no continuous assessment of your body which was so intrustive when I was a teen. Of course we also know that covering does not "protect" you from any forms of abuse (and in the UK women who wear identifiable islamic garb are at high risk of verbal & physical assault).

I agree that it's all about sexual objectiifcation with covering totally at one end and taking it all off at the other. Those French police who made the woman on the beach strip. Yay liberation.

In the end it all comes back to men and how they view / treat women. As private or public property - both are awful - and women navigate this as best they can in the circs they are in.

Solution is of course an end to women being seen as sex objects and then our clothes will carry no more significance than men's clothes do .

Which 3 Anna? I live in one of those and it really is a common sight in many areas,not just traditional inner city parts.

Women in Iran didn't 'choose' to wear such restrictive clothing before they were forced to. When they had the choice they wore ordinary clothes.

www.google.com/search?q=women+in+iran+in+the+seventies&client=firefox-b&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE-_S7s-fcAhVKKMAKHWPUCK0Q_AUICigB&biw=1252&bih=578

Yeah, I'm not in favour of doing a ban. There is just too much that can go wrong both for the women concerned, in provoking a backlash and in setting precedent for other bans.

In our society walking around with a full face covering in public is considered downright hostile and potentially threatening.

Totally agree with this. It is a very hostile and culturally insensitive thing to do in the UK.

Also it is often second generation young women who 'choose' this hostile garb - some as a big 'fuck you!' to us infidels and there is a link with some pretty extremist views. Hair covering is fair enough if you feel uncomfortable about showing your hair, but covering your face is taking it to another level.

It needs to be tackled but it is tricky to, without stoking up cultural racism and misogyny. There are probably quite a lot of steps to take in preparation, rather than doing a 'ban'.

I find it extremely surprising that no one ever seems to give a thought to the feelings of a vast number women in this country who find the sight of the garment not an indication of the wearer’s pious heart - though that may well be the way it is sold to those who actually choose to wear it here - but of historic and, as is the case for millions of women in the world, continued female subjugation

I agree with that second article. I see the idea of choosing to wear a burqa and niqab as just one end of the line where choosing to be a prostitute or a stripper because that is so empowering is at the other end.

They all represent objectification of the female body. At one extreme the female body is so shameful and lust provoking it must be covered up and at the other extreme it is so shameful and lust provoking it must be displayed.

There's an element of polite 'Thank you for your thoughts' from Muslim women on this topic, I think

Really? The comment about being uncomfortable at Janice Turner did not come across that way at all; more thank you for your thoughts, but now shut up.

Three of those yes. Including areas where you would see them. Still thinking you would struggle to make up massive numbers.

I'm happy to correct you AnnaMagnani
Have you been to Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham,Blackburn,Bolton,Walsall or Coventry (for eg) lately?

I suggest you have a closer look.

Are their really only 1000 women in the UK who wear the niqab?

I could well believe it. Since moving out of London I've seen absolutely zero women wearing it. Don't see women in other cities with it - though happy to be corrected.

Even in London, there were none in the area I lived although many little 5-6 yr old girls in hijab. If you went to specific areas of London you would see women in niqab but even there it wasn't all the women. And they'd be in groups of women who weren't all in niqab either.

I do suspect one woman in niqab visually counts as about 30 in the memory.

I feel the same way about women in burqas as I do about men in motorcycle helmets or balaclavas. In our society walking around with a full face covering in public is considered downright hostile and potentially threatening. I am unhappy with the idea of an outright ban, but full face veils should be banned in schools, banks, hospitals and courts.

Here's a comment on the article that I found thought provoking:

I find it extremely surprising that no one ever seems to give a thought to the feelings of a vast number women in this country who find the sight of the garment not an indication of the wearer’s pious heart - though that may well be the way it is sold to those who actually choose to wear it here - but of historic and, as is the case for millions of women in the world, continued female subjugation.

The sight raises an inner alarm for we are painfully aware that for so very many women in the world there is no such choice but intense pressure often enforced by law or violent reprisal: the burka or niqab is no gentle gown.

Recently we read of those who wish to see removed from public view the statues and busts of nineteenth century industrialists with links to slavery, reputations of men long dead are being judged and condemned for involvement in colonialism. How extraordinary and mystifying then that those who feel deeply upset and concerned about the acceptance and normalisation of the niqab with its indisputable connection to continued oppression and exclusion of women from the ‘male’ public sphere, of sexual apartheid no less, should be so readily labelled as right wing and have their motivations questioned as being deeply unreasonable if not racist.

We are not simply concerned for our own feelings and historic wrongs but for the freedoms of future generations of females in this country, our possible grandchildren and great grandchildren, long after we are gone.

I did not use to think it should be banned but that it should be held up to scrutiny and criticism but it is clear that that is not to be allowed and therefore I feel is must be banned along with hijabs for girls of primary school age.

LassWiADelicateAir I didn't say that it should be off limits. However I do think there are parallels: men telling women how to do feminism, British non-Muslims telling British Muslims how to be Muslim. There's an element of polite 'Thank you for your thoughts' from Muslim women on this topic, I think.

Also agree that the numbers seem way off - I saw a huge number of women in Manchester wearing full face covering on a recent visit - it was a shock as I hadn't been in many years. From overhearing their conversations, most of them seemed to be British-born and raised.

Janice Turner usually has a piece in the Comments section in the Saturday Times.

I usually like Janice, but am uncomfortable with all the articles by non-Muslim British people on this topic

I am far more uncomfortable with your suggestion that commenting on this issue should be off limits.