Costume Dramas (Part Two): Burkhas and Niqabs – The Case for a Ban

A compelling if often overlooked argument for a ban on the burkha (the robe with the gauze grille), as well as upon that other face-covering garment, the niqab (the robe with the eye-slit), must surely be the damaging effect that these shroud-like garments have on the health of pregnant wearers’ babies. In Australia, Britain, and other western countries, rickets – a disease of the past among inhabitants generally – is increasing in the offspring of women who wear these all-concealing garments. The reason, of course, is the insufficient exposure of the mothers to sunlight, and the consequent deprivation of the foetuses of Vitamin D. The lack of that vitamin is also causing bone disease among the women.

In some countries – Britain is certainly one – such Muslim women are being given vouchers for Vitamin D supplements, fortified baby formula, fruit and vegetables . This is a typical politically correct reaction – but why is it not deemed politically incorrect for the state to encourage in this way a garment which is a prison for women, designed to protect one man’s sexual property from the gaze of other men?

Australian former Prime Minister John Howard described the full cloaks and face coverings, in contrast to the hijab, as “confronting” for the population at large; British former Home Secretary Jack Straw stated that he’d ask any veiled constituent who came to speak to him to remove the impediment to free communication; Conservative MP Philip Hollobone, who announced his refusal to meet any constituent with her face covered, and delivered what the left-liberal Guardian perversely called “a slur on the burkha", was referred to the race relations authorities; Conservative MP Damian Green, Immigration Minister in the Cameron-Clegg Coalition, has breezily assured everyone that no Continental-type ban on the burkha would occur in Britain – such a ban is “a rather un-British thing to do” ; Conservative MP Caroline Spelman, Environment Minister in the Coalition, debased herself and betrayed other females by describing the burkha as empowering for women – seeing it on location in Afghanistan had convinced that “the burka confers dignity”.

Have people like Spelman never read what women who have worn the burkha or niqab say regarding what it feels like to wear these erasures of their femininity and personal identity?

Here, for example, is a British-born journalist of Pakistani origin, Zaiba Malik, describing her experience of the niqab (and remember, folks, that’s not the one with the grille, which must be terribly hard on the wearer’s eyes):

 “The reality is, I'm finding it hard to breathe. There is no real inlet for air and I can feel the heat of every breath I exhale, so my face just gets hotter and hotter. The slit for my eyes keeps slipping down to my nose, so I can barely see a thing. Throughout the day I trip up more times than I care to remember. As for peripheral vision, it's as if I'm stuck in a car buried in black snow. I can't fathom a way to drink my cappuccino and when I become aware that everybody in the coffee shop is wondering the same thing, I give up and just gaze at it.”

And here’s Elizabeth Wynhausen, a Sydney journalist, who similarly experimented with wearing the niqab:

 “I found that even on a mild spring day, the outfit was suffocatingly hot. The cloak restricted my movements. The veil restricted my vision. The straps pressed on my eyeballs. With my head swaddled in cloth and my face covered, I felt I could scarcely breathe. The sense that I had become an alien being was more oppressive still.”

The banning of the burkha and the niqab can be justified on the grounds of health and safety alone. It’s not just the risk of rickets. The restriction of peripheral vision has caused car accidents even for experienced wearers, and there have been accidents in which wearers have been strangled to death when the garments have become lodged in machinery – this happened recently in Australia, when a young mother’s head covering became entangled in a go-kart.

Tellingly, the disgusted stares that greeted Ms Malik and Ms Wynhausen as they went about their business fully covered was not confined to non-Muslims; there were plenty of dismayed glances from Muslim women dressed less drastically, in hijabs and long skirts. At a recent demonstration against proposals to ban the face veil in public held in Sydney, a niqab-clad speaker railed that "Islamic values are superior to flawed Western secular values”. For women like her (and the men who often compel them to drape themselves in what is effectively a portable form of purdah), the face-covering is emblematic of rejection of the surrounding culture and of integration.

But it’s not as if the Quran makes the all-enveloping garments mandatory. There is no shortage of imams and Muslim scholars who have pointed that out. Syrian universities have banned such garments even as western “liberals” strive to present bans as “Islamophobic”. As the Canada  Muslim Congress observed in a long and thoughtful article:

"We believe that the facemask worn by some Muslim women [is about] political symbolism that reflects the contempt of radical Islamist groups for Western civilisation. Today, the only forces that demand Muslim women to cover their faces are: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Arab World [and Europe], Al-Qaeda, and the Saudi religious establishment. All four groups see women as a source of sin and objects of sexuality, and Canada and the freedom of women in Canada and the West as manifestations of evil sexual depravity. Yet it is worth noting that leading clerics and scholars from both the Shia and Sunni communities have stated quite explicitly that the burka or niqab are not an Islamic requirement, but a cultural and tribal custom."

There is also the security issue: male robbers and other criminals (not only in non-Muslim countries) have dressed in burqas to disguise themselves, and there is also the threat of terrorists concealing weapons.

And for a taste of life in Islamic London see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRfT76s7UQ&feature=player_embedded