WUNRN
WUNRN Posts these articles as
the issue on the burka in UK is pervasive throughout the news. The theme is
divisive; and WUNRN welcomes links
and references from women, all ages,
in the UK, on the discourse, campaign, and political review in the United
Kingdom.
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Muslim Groups Challenge New Call for UK
Women wearing full-face veils as they shop in
By Ben Flanagan | Al Arabiya News,
Muslim groups across the
Dr Taj Hargey, an imam and head of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford on
Thursday launched a campaign to ban full face coverings, including the niqab,
from being worn in public.
“We want to make a burka-free
The European Court of Human Rights this month upheld a ban on full face veils
in
Groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) – and even the
“Firstly, he is a man. He should not really be articulating a view on what
women should or should not do,” said Talha Ahmad, chair of the membership
committee at the MCB.
“If I went around telling people to put their veil on, that would be equally
wrong,” he added. “Positions like his are very dangerous. He clearly doesn’t
understand the British values of freedom… His arguments feed into the whole
Islamophobic narrative.”
Security risk?
Hargey argues that permitting
full face coverings poses a security risk, among other objections. The UK
public seem to agree with him: 90 percent say burkas should not be allowed in
environments such as airport check-ins, according to a YouGov survey in
September. The same poll found that overall, 61 percent of British adults think
burkas should be banned.
Hargey cited examples of burkas being worn by men to commit robberies in
central London. Yet Smina Akhtar, director of the Glasgow-based Amina – The
Muslim Women’s Resource Centre, dismissed this.
“I’m not sure there’s any evidence to show that it is a security risk,” she
said. “It’s not going to reduce crime. Crime will continue. If those men had
not worn a burka, they would have found something else.”
Akhtar says that she chooses not to cover her face, but a minority of women in
her community do. She dismissed the ban proposed by Hargey.
“Women have a choice what they wear,” she said. “I’m not sure if he’s even read
the Quran… He’s being Islamophobic.”
It’s currently open season on attacking Muslims in the UK, Akhtar said, with
Islamophobia – especially hate crimes against women – on the rise.
With that in mind, she does not dismiss the notion that the UK could become
less tolerant towards the burka in future. “It could change. There is
definitely a move to the right in Europe and in Britain as well,” she said.
Social ‘apartheid’
Hargey argues that the full face
veil fuels “social segregation and community apartheid.”
But Akhtar dismissed that claim too. “It only creates a division if you want to
create a division,” she said. Some doctors and teachers do not wear the garment
while at work, she added. “Women who wear the burka can choose when to wear
it.”
Hargey told Al Arabiya News that the practice of wearing the full face veils is
“totally ridiculous,” and a key aim of his campaign is to get 100,000
signatures on an official petition, which would then oblige the UK Parliament
to debate the issue.
“No one – including women – has an unqualified right to dress how they like in
public,” he said. “You or I could not walk down the street naked, or wearing
just socks.”
He pointed out that Muslim women are prohibited from covering their faces
during the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. “If there’s no obligation to cover their
faces in the holiest places of Islam, why do they feel the need to cover their
faces in the UK?”
He said there is nothing in the Quran that requires people to mask their faces,
and that face veils promotes “gender disparity” and can cause health complains
due to a lack of vitamin D. His campaign extends to other apparel that obscures
the face, such as balaclavas and ski masks – saying no one has a right to
anonymity in public.
The practice of Muslims covering their face is a “fad,” he added. “How come
their mothers or grandmothers never wore it? Were they bad Muslims? No, of
course not,” he said.
Omer El-Hamdoon, president of the Muslim Association of Britain, said he
disagreed with a ban on the burka, saying women should be allowed to “wear
whatever they want.”
Credentials questioned
But he agreed with Hargey on
certain points, such as women never being forced to wear a veil, and that it
can have an impact on communication.
Several UK Muslim groups questioned Hargey’s credentials as an Islamic scholar.
“He personally doesn’t strike me as a scholar – in either the traditional or
contemporary sense – of Islamic theology,” said Ahmad.
Dr. Sheikh Ramzy, director of the Oxford Islamic Information Centre, said he
totally disagreed with Hargey’s viewpoint.
“This man Taj Hargey calls himself an imam. But he’s not an imam and he’s not
an Islamic scholar,” Ramzy said.
“He does not understand anything about Islam. I would like to leave it to the
sisters to choose what they would like to wear… It is an un-Islamic thing he is
trying to do.”
Hargey reacted angrily to his critics when contacted by Al Arabiya News. “I
have a pHD in Islamic Studies from Oxford University, so who’s to say I’m not
an Islamic scholar?,” he said. “Why don’t you ask them what qualifications they
have?”
No secular support
Yet Hargey did not receive fully
fledged support from even the UK’s National Secular Society, which campaigns
for the separation of religion and state.
Stephen Evans, campaigns manager at the society, said that – while the issue is
a complex one – a general ban would not be favorable.
“There are understandable and legitimate concerns about the wearing of the
burka or niqab, particularly regarding what it symbolises, its role in the
subjugation of women and its potential to hinder a woman's ability to
communicate and integrate within civil society,” he said.
“There are however compelling reasons, both practical and on principle, to
oppose attempts to introduce a general ban on the veil - not least a woman's
right to choose what she wears and her right to religious freedom.”
Despite that, Evans said he would support some public institutions to implement
their own polices restricting face coverings. It is “appropriate to protect
young girls from being compelled to wear the burka or niqab by prohibiting it
in our schools,” he said.
Yet despite the crackdown in Europe, Muslim women in Britain are currently free
to wear what they want.
Anything else would amount to harassment, said Ramzy. “As an Islamic scholar, I
do not recommend a face cover. But I do encourage freedom of choice,” he said.
“If you don’t want to see a woman in a burka, then turn your face”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This petition
will be delivered to:
MUSLIM
EDUCATIONAL CENTRE OF
BRITISH
MUSLIMS LAUNCH HISTORIC CAMPAIGN TO BAN THE BURKA IN THE UK
Following the landmark ECHR
ruling upholding the French and Belgian ban on all public
face-masking, the
Many Muslims have been misled by bogus propanganda from the fundamentalist Wahhabi, Salafi, Deobandi, Tabligh Jamati and Jamati Islami sects that the burqa / niqab is integral to Islam. It is completely untrue: there is no religious mandate for this primitive facial concealment.
The burqa/niqab is an archaic
tribal rag that is pre-Islamic and non-Qur'anic, and thus ipso
facto un-Muslim. The ludicrous custom of female public anonymity is an
imported Saudi-Afghan fad that has a suspicious provenance. This trendy
cultural contraption has no authentic Islamic foundation. Facial-masking first
originated for aristocratic and sexist reasons in ancient
The burqa / niqab should be resisted
on compelling theological, social, health, security, gender equality
and libertarian grounds so that
As integrated British
Muslims, we ask HMG to initiate a national debate in Parliament and
across the country so that the public cannot be duped by religious
zealots falsely claiming that face-masking is Islamic. If it is
proscribed on the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest site in Makkah, why do Muslim
women wish to wear it on the streets of
The obsessive fixation by
ultra-puritanical fanatics to hide women's faces under the pretext of religion
must be exposed as a fallacy. Their chauvinistic mysogyny is nothing but a
Trojan shari’ah horse that has to be routed, otherwise it will set a
dangerous precedent that will ultimately imperil
We call upon all thinking
British Muslims as well as those of other faiths and none,
to join us in extirpating this non-Qur’anic patriarchal control over
women. Let us petition the government and inundate our Members of
Parliament to do the right thing to finally outlaw this alien cultural
monstrosity from
So, in this holy month of
Ramadan, let us all work together to get rid of this unholy
mask that only serves to taint Islam and disparage Muslims. If
women wish to hide their hair that's fine, but if they want to conceal their
faces, that is another matter because no one has the right to public anonymity.