Bobbies in burkas is the mad child of Macpherson’s racist verdict on the police

Sep 17, 2016 by Jill

by Kathy Gyngell, The Conservative Woman:

What a mess the police are in. Forget PC Plod. Today, ‘Politically Correct Constable’ is more like it.

Last week, the diversity-genuflecting Chief Constable of West Midlands Police said the force would consider allowing a Muslim recruit to wear a burka if she so requested.

We could just laugh this off. Bobbies in burkas could be the latest Police Academy sequel – a burka’d up lady cop entraps suspect in her voluminous folds, or frightens him into submission.

But it’s not a spoof. The West Midlands’s top copper is serious. His burka concession may be in defiance of common sense, but it follows the immutable logic of diversity. If he has already agreed to hijabs and to Sikh turbans, what reason has he to reject the burka?

Where do you draw the line once you start compromise over culture or religion? What will be left of police uniform as we recognise it?

Of course, the police should never have agreed to hijabs in the first place. Neither the hijab nor the burka is a religious requirement of the Koran so the comparison with the Sikh turban should have been a non-starter. Not cutting one’s hair is one of the five essentials to the Sikh religion as required of a Sikh male. That is where it should begin and end.

Nehru’s comment in the movie Gandhi, if I remember correctly, during the Hindu-Muslim riots, was along the lines of, ‘Police is police. There is no Hindu police or Muslim police.’ Quite so, and that is how it should be here.

What will be the next request he will dare not refuse? That his force should help enforce local Sharia law, in the name of good community relations too?

Far-fetched? Well there are already between 30 Sharia councils (that the University of Reading has identified) and “85 at least” (that a 2009 report by the think tank Civitas identified) across the country.

Read here