Banning burqas is wrong move for UK

By Rosa Prince

The question rang out like a pistol shot across the House of Commons, where last week’s round of prime ministers’ questions had been passing in humdrum fashion. “Given the prime minister’s desire to strengthen strategic alignment with our European neighbors, will he — in the interests of public safety — follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and others, and ban the burqa?”

A shocked Keir Starmer mumbled a few words and swiftly moved on without addressing the question from Sarah Pochin, a new member of parliament from the populist Reform UK party.

The next day, having called Pochin’s question “dumb” on the grounds that a burqa ban isn’t Reform policy, the party’s chair Zia Yusuf, a practicing Muslim, quit his role, although he reversed his decision 48 hours later. In the interregnum, Reform came third in a by-election to the Scottish parliament it had hoped to win. To be sure, Reform did pretty well to turn the contest into a three-horse race between the winning Labour and the nationalist SNP, and to push the mainstream opposition Tories into fourth place. Pressed about the party’s failure to break through, another Reform MP, Richard Tice, told the BBC: “It is right that we should have a debate about whether or not the burqa is appropriate for a nation that’s founded in Christianity, where women are equal citizens and should not be viewed as second-class citizens.”

However uncomfortable it might make us, it’s fair for Tice to call for no taboos around discussing important matters relating to religion and how people of faith interact with the rest of the community. Yet while there are legitimate concerns around burqas, banning women from having free choice about what they wear smacks of the regressive attitudes of those who seek to force them to cover up.

The first time I witnessed women wearing burqas — a full covering concealing the body and head, including the face — in large numbers was in Afghanistan in the mid-2000s, soon after the Taliban had been driven out. The group’s presence was fresh enough that most women felt it unwise to expose their face on the streets of Kabul, and the sight of their vivid blue robes with tiny mesh peepholes at the eyes was chilling.

Outside the capital, I visited a village school that had reopened to girls and spent time with some women who were uncovered and bubbling with happiness and excitement at the prospect of their daughters receiving an education. It’s unbearable to think of those girls two decades on. As one of their first acts on returning to power in 2022, the Taliban again closed schools to girls and told women to adopt the burqa, in order, the official command said, to avoid “seduction.”

The burqa has become a more common sight on the streets of Britain in the last two decades too. In 2001, when the US-led invasion of Afghanistan known as Operation Enduring Freedom began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there were 1.55 million Muslims in the UK, according to census data, representing 3 per cent of the population. At the last census of 2021, that figure stood at 3.9 million, or 6.5 per cent. Many female Muslims in the UK wear the hijab — the broad term for a head covering in which the face is usually exposed. Many do not. And a much smaller number don the full burqa, although it is common enough that it’s not remarkable to see one being worn in the streets of most towns and cities.

In parts of Europe, tolerance for the burqa seems in inverse proportion to how common it is. Switzerland, which barred face coverings in public two years ago, is estimated to be home to only around 30 women who wear the garb. In Holland, where the practice was outlawed in 2022 but is rarely enforced, the number is thought to be in the hundreds.

Eight European countries outlaw burqas and the slightly less restrictive niqab, which allows a gap for the eyes, and there are also prohibitions in other parts of the world, including in some majority Muslim states in Africa where head covering is common but faces must be revealed. The issue of burqa bans has been most hotly discussed in France, where coverings are seen as a violation of the sacred constitutional principle of secularism, and religious symbols, including large crosses, Jewish kippahs and Sikh turbans, have been banned in public schools and colleges since the 1990s.

As Tice points out, Britain has an established church and is not a secular state, but I am led to the reverse conclusion: Surely in this context, a ban on burqas, which singles out one religion, smacks of racism?

He’s right to say that there’s something problematic about a burqa compared with other religious head coverings, due to its all-encompassing nature and the erasure of personhood that comes from eliminating the face from public view. No, we should not deny women the agency to wear whatever they want and observe their religion however they please. Yet there’s no requirement in the Quran to cover up, and the practice can really be seen as a reflection of culture rather than faith. Its implication is that women who do not cover up are somehow immodest and that men confronted with a naked face or hair may be unable to contain their desires. It is a symbol of oppression, as the women of Afghanistan know too well.

That doesn’t mean we should ban the burqa.

The issue was first discussed in the UK 20 years ago when then-Labour cabinet minister Jack Straw disclosed that he routinely asked women attending advice sessions in his northern England constituency of Blackburn, which has a large Muslim population, to remove their face coverings, describing them as a “ visible statement of separation and difference.”

I know Straw well and had been to his constituency with him, but I disagreed with him on this. While he suggested that those he asked to remove their veils had complied, I doubted whether they would seek his help again. After all, they were wearing the burqa or niqab for a reason, whether through compulsion or faith or a combination of the two, which was not addressed by his request to abandon it.

Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party which is being outflanked by Reform on the right, said at the weekend that she too refuses to help burqa-clad constituents, in an interview in which she declared that companies should be allowed to decline to employ those who insist on covering up. At present under UK law, firms may fall foul of discrimination laws if they refuse employment to someone wearing a hijab, although there are defenses. In a test case in 2007, a support worker who wore the niqab claimed constructive dismissal after the school that employed her said the covering impeded her capacity to communicate with children. Her claim was dismissed.

The law as it stands is sensible and balanced, and Badenoch and her Reform rivals’ attempts to blow the dog whistle by bringing the burqa back into political discourse is regrettable. Because while we shouldn’t be afraid of the debate once it’s raised, nor should we accept arguments that seek to accentuate otherness. Shouldn’t the goal be to encourage women of all backgrounds to play a full part in public life?