Is Jack Straw a racist for requesting that women remove their veils?

[magicfarawaytree]

just watching the news. didnt personally think he had done anything terrible in asking.

I think that the problem with the Muslim Council of Britain, from a non-muslim pov, is that almost everyone (including the government) assumes that they do speak or the majority, if not all British muslims, and that therefore most British muslims (for example) would refuse to participate in the Holocaust Memorial Day because the MCB do. I understand from the Christian press (Church Times to be precise) that there are new Muslim groups currently trying to organise themselves to give a more representative view.

As a Christian myself there is no-one who speaks for me as I do not belong to any church. When I was an Anglican I sometimes agreed with the Archbishop of Canterbury (think it is actually the Archbishops' Council who decides official CofE policy, along with the Synod) but I left the church because I couldn't agree with them not accepting gay relationships as equal to straight ones.

By the way, did you know that there are no Christian representatives at all on Ruth Kelly's Community and Cohesion Committee thingy?

bubble99 The teacher could wear a veil the flicks back over the head, which she could lower down should any man wish to enter the class.

I still find that article strange, did they hire her knowing she wore a veil, or did she walk in with a veil on one morning???

fw - apprently(?) her terms of employment stated that she could wear the veil everywhere but the classroom - but don't quote me on it!

Well GT in that case she is a shit stirrer or incredibly stupid for breaching the terms of her contract...

I don't know if this is a surprise to anyone but Muslims in this country come from every different background - Muslims are White, Black and everything in between. There are some from extremely wealthy backgrounds, some barely surviving on benefits and everywhere in between. They come from countries all around the world and speak many different languages.
Individual Muslims and Muslim communities have various degrees of observing religious practices.
Its almost impossible to have one body to speak for all.
However, I think it is important that we do have an intelligent and well-advised body, with members from a variety of backgrounds, to represent us and inform us and I think most Muslims would agree.

Agree with your posting Wintersun. My brother teaches in a school which has a very high intake from a particular region in Bangladesh. Due to the cultural expectations of these children (rather than islamic precepts), the boys are very dismissive of all the female teachers in the school, often rude an unco-operative. This is something that they have learned from home, rather tha the mosque.

However to an outsider, the two things are easily confused and this doesn't help anyone.

That particular cultural aspect (the dismissing of females) is one that worries me most.

I don't see how it can change.

I believe it can only change by educating the women.
A lot of these cultures forget that in Islam it is a duty, not just a right, for men AND women to be educated.
I think compulsory English classes is an excellent step towards this and community leaders must encourage it.

Agree wintersun, in the cases I'm thinking about the parents were first generation immigrants and while the kids are fluent in English usualy the mums are not. In addition, they often don't know the rights that their religion gives them either.

Fuzzy - just going back to a qestion you asked earlier (er. whether the Muslim Council of GB speas for all Muslims). I'm a practising Catholic and the Pope doesn't speak for all catholics, although many non-catholics assume he does. Catholicism, like Islam, has many varying opinions and branches within in it. Our local priests for example supporst the idea of women priests. The pope is the reactionary and traditional extreme of catholicism. many of us within the church are more modern. Rome can issue directives, but that doesn't mean we all agree with them

I assmed the MC of GB was just one body who the government choose to liaise with, and there are many varying opinions within Muslims in the UK, as there are within Judaism etc.

The women who have been in the news for standing up in public and maintaining their right to wear the veil have all been women who grew up in the UK and have only recently decided they want to wear the veil. i.e. they have decided to don the face veil.

I think they are making a political point about their identity, which of course they are entitled to do.

wintersun, I do agree with you. As a Christian most of what gets reported as 'the Christian point of view' in no way squares with my own beliefs - usually it's the people who shout loudest and have the most far out views who get heard. So similarly I don't assume that the MCofGB speaks for all Muslims - how can it? But it does seem - and maybe this is because of the media - that the MCofGB seems to say that it does speak for all Muslims, and that the government treats it accordingly.

There could never be a repesentative body for all Christians, the in-fighting and back-stabbing would be unbelievable and they'd take ten yrs to make any decisions.

GT you aren't the only one who feels uneasy with this sort of attitude. It's about a million times worse if your in the inside trying to change it.

We're not all submissive little women without any knowledge of our islamic rights. Most of us know only too well what we are entitled to.
An interesting point being my husbands youngest brother, he point blank refused to marry a female scholar (although he is one himself..a male scholar abviously), he said he wanted to marry a woman who could recite the Quran by heart but not one who would be classed as an scholar... I remember joking with my dh that he was afraid a scholar would demand her islamic rights from him, dh in all seriousness said that yes that was what worried BIL, he'd seen far too many of his friends marriages breakdown, because their wives wouldn't play the submissive housemaid, many girls in India (regardless of religion I might add) find themselves being the unpaid workmaid once married. As it turned out BIL married a woman who could recite the Quran by heart and is also a scholar, they make a beautiful team, SIL says she loves consulting with her husband on points of islamic fiqh, when people come to her with regards their islamic rights......

Fuzzy, re the latest case. Apparently the woman didn't wear a vail to her interview, even though a male teacher was on the interview panel. She has since said she will not be unvailed if a male teacher is in the room. So you do have to wonder, as you posted, is she trying to stir things up.

The full veil is not a religious requirement for Muslim women and therefore asking someone to remove her veil in order to have a conversation is not asking someone to do something that she is precluded from doing on any religious or moral grounds. As Jack Straw always ensures that another woman is present when speaking to a Muslim woman, he is being respectful and understanding of her religious observancies. I therefore don't think he has done anything wrong. As usual, however, the media have pounced on this and given it front page headlines and have thereby encouraged a few Muslim extremists to get on their high horses yet again. This serves the media's purpose in attempting to whip up yet more anti-Muslim feeling which, it seems to me, is the main purpose of focussing, yet again, on the voices of the loud but small minority who take offence rather than just ignoring what really is, not a big deal for most.

It is worth having such discussions because people will always fear or be wary of what they don't know. However, the more fundamental issues for this government in dealing with diversity and difference is the current policy of allowing the continuation of faith schools. If all children were educated together in secular schools, there would be more understanding. Leave religious education to parents!

I'm not so sure Derryair, this report suggests otherwise. I suppose there are a lot of factors which must be taken into consideration though.

We need multi-faith schools rather than secular ones. How can faiths understand each other unless they see them in practise (not just learned from the net?) And how do you think the disaffected youth of any faith feel about being told to leave their beliefs at the door each time they go to school?

Segregation for whatever reasons should not be encouraged. School is where all of us get a chance to integrate , discuss , disagree etc.. For cultural and religious reasons there are very few other places where people of different faiths and ethnicities can actually meet. I suppose I am trying to say that if Jack Straw really wants to explore issues of community relations, he could do more than merely raising issues about clothing. At the end of the day I would rather see a culturaly diverse society as opposed to a neutral sterile one where we all look and dress the same.

I agree that segregation is not good but things are sometimes not as clear-cut in reality as they are in theory. For example, I went to a mixed comprehensive and most of the time it was great but I did suffer racial abuse and was quite frightened of this. I would have jumped with glee that the idea of going to a school, any school where I wasn't seen as "different".

I'm not sure that some sections of society are ATN ready or able to really mix with other cultures, and that goes for whites as well as non-whites.

Nobody can say that the muslim full veil is not a religious requirement, for those who wear it they do believe it is an Islamic requirement.

No idea what the current woman causing such media furor feels about it. But those women who do wear the veil and whom I have spoken to believe it to be an edict of Islam, they don't do it to stand out or to annoy others. Wouldn't it be far easier not to wear the face veil as everyone has already said???

I was speaking to a friend of mine this afternoon about this, and he raised a point I'm not sure has been discussed all that much (though I haven't read much in the meejah, maybe it has). He said that the reason people feel a nebulous uneasiness about the veil, is because face-covering in our culture has traditionally been the preserve of criminals and those who were up to no good. Hence the need for men to uncover their heads when they went into churches, for example, to show openness (translated into respect for God). He was also saying that when he addresses people in Summer when he's wearing sunglasses, he takes them off so that they can see his eyes, out of politeness. "It's about communication, innit?" he said. The uneasiness at the sight of the veil, his point is, is a residual gut feeling born of very strong cultural traditions, which up to now haven't really been acknowledged or examined that much, as we take our own culture for granted.

I remember reading a while ago about how in the Carribbean, it's respectful to lower your eyes when an adult addresses you. Hence the frustration of teachers in Britain ("Look at me when I'm talking to you") at a perceived disrespect, when in fact it's not intended.

Could it just be that we have a very strong culture in Britain of looking each other in the face to show our honesty and openness (looking away, averting your gaze, is often described as "shifty" in our culture, where it might be described as "respectful" in another), which simply clashes with cultures where lowering eyes, covering faces, etc. means something different?

If so, then I think it's a good thing JS raised it, whatever his motivation (and him being a politician I'm happy to go along with those who say it probably isn't a good one). The more we're aware of our own gut reactions and why our cultural traditions should engender them, and of those of others, the better the communication between us, imo.

But weren't the women expected to wear some kind of covering on their heads in church though.

Interesting about the carribean custom, we have that too, lowering your gaze when being spoken to by an elder is considered respectful.... By the same token when a strange muslim man speaks to a woman he is expected to lowere his gaze in respect ie so the woman knows he's listening to her not ogling her.....

I haven't yet had the chance to read through this whole thread, but have just seen Phil Woolas sounding off on TV and am feeling very disturbed by how Muslim women are getting bullied by these men in power.

I do have problems with the veil. I do think it's acceptable to ask a classroom assistant to uncover her face when teaching English. At the hospital where I work we have decided that the staff in our patient advisory service (all Muslim women) should not have their faces covered when talking with patients, and I think that's right. The full niqab is such a barrier to communication in our culture that it cannot be acceptable in these jobs.

But Jack Straw demanding that a woman uncover her face when she comes to him for help is bullying. Phil Woolas demanding that a classroom assistant be sacked is bullying. There is a huge and complex cultural debate to be had here, but this is not the way to go about it.

Yes they were Fuzzy and not just in church - headcovering by women was absolutely the norm until quite recently, but the head covering did not obscure the face.

I don't know if there's ever been a period in Britain when it was ever normal or acceptable for women (much less men) to cover their faces. Even under puritanism? I don't know, but I don't think so.