by Inaya Folarin Iman, spiked
These Islamic face coverings are undeniably misogynistic, but a ban is not the answer.
In her first intervention at Prime Minister’s Questions, newly elected Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin asked Keir Starmer if he would consider banning the burqa. It was a cleverly framed provocation. Given Starmer is so keen to strengthen the UK’s alignment with the EU, she said, would he, ‘in the interests of public safety’, follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and other European countries in banning that garment, which covers the face as well as the body?
Pochin’s enquiry immediately sparked outrage, some of it from some unexpected corners. The outgoing chair of Pochin’s own party, Zia Yusuf, called it a ‘dumb’ question. He said that Reform MPs should not be calling on the prime minister to ban the burqa when it was not Reform’s own policy. (Yusuf has now resigned from Reform. His frustrations had been mounting for some time, but the internal row over Pochin’s question seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.)
But in the main, the outrage came from all the usual suspects. Lib Dem MP Joshua Reynolds reprimanded Reform, tweeting that ‘there’s nothing British about the government telling you what you can and can’t wear’. Former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf reiterated Reynolds’s point, but in an extra-patronising way: ‘Here is an idea – regardless of whether it is a bikini or a burqa, how about politicians don’t tell women what to wear?’ Coming from some of the most illiberal politicians and parties in the UK, these appeals to freedom were more than a little unconvincing.
Plus, the question of the burqa is not as simple as Reform’s critics are making out. This is not just one piece of clothing among others. It is one of the most profoundly misogynistic garments in existence. It is a mobile prison for Muslim women. By completely covering a woman from head to toe, it sends the message that a woman’s presence in public is shameful or dangerous. That our faces and even hands are so powerful and tempting to men that they must be hidden. That’s why forms of veiling are compulsory in some of the world’s most repressive, Islamist and anti-woman regimes. It is a garment that a fundamentalist reading of Islam forces women to wear.
Read also:
The feminist case against the burqa by Josephine Bartosch, The Critic