The Constitutional Aspects of the Veil Controversy in
The Leader of the Commons and former Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw dropped a bomb shell a few days ago by
writing a column in his constituency local paper saying he asked veiled Muslim
women to consider removing the Niqab ( full veil) when visiting him in his surgery. The
surprise was that many of them obliged, but the attack on him, from self-styled
Muslim leaders and from British left came as no surprise.
By Adel Darwish.
The heat of the
ongoing debate about the Muslim full-veil ( or
Niqab) in
The debate, or rather the uproar among Muslims, and
sections of the British left, began when the leader of the Commons Jack Straw revealed that during his meetings
with his female Muslim constituents in his weekly surgery in Blackburn, North
West England, he asked them politely (not demanded) to consider the niqab from
a broader perspective; and to think whether it was a barrier to their fully
communicating with their, male and female, fellow citizens?
Would they think
of it as coming in
the way of a face-to-face interaction between individuals?
The way the debate has been conducted – especially the noisy objections of
radical Islamists – raises some fundamental constitutional questions. The
Most important of which concerns the democratically elected government to fulfill its
obligations in a constitutional contract it agreed with voter, who is its
employer and pay the ministers' and civil servants salaries from his/her taxes.
The debate
also raised a question regarding the government own responsibility for social
cohesion and its obligation to protect the accepted cultural – by a
majority consensus- and the acceptable behavior,
and balancing this against the individual's sacred right to freedom of
expression and freedom of choice. It is also essential to put on record that
there are certain legal conditions and circumstances without which an
individual's choice, be it man or woman, cannot be considers as ' free'.
It is equally essential to ask whether "freedom of
choice" is a shield for authoritarian forces that do not, in their basic
creed, recognise individual's right to free choice.
By following the media coverage of this issue and also during my participation in
live BBC debates – with participants from ' Muslim communities', phoning
in; I noticed that the vast majority of the anti-Straw chorus of disapproval
was males although the subject was essentially a female issue. None of the
respondents were Muslim women from
Most of them are professional objectors, who have a ready format to raise
angrily condemning any artist, author,
academic, or a politician whom they
judge, apostate/kafir/crusader/enemy of Islam
according to the mode of their fatwa of the day- or fatwas handed down to them, to condemn such
unfortunate person as ' attacking'
Islam.
In almost
every case those professional Muslim objectors start a Spanish inquisition
style campaign against the individual in question, with the sole aim of forcing
him/her to abort their artistic or literary creation before it is has a chance
to come out to light. In most cases they do not bother read or view the subject
matter of what they have condemned. They simply confiscate his/her to free
expression.
The "Muslim leaders" condemned Mr. Straw because he proposed to
discuss or review the veil in the "wrong" forum or the "wrong
platform" as they said objectionably during their participation in the BBC
programme.
The "correct''
- read acceptable-platform or forum, in their own words, was the mosque or an
Islamic centre, NOT parliament and or the local MP (Member of Parliament)
surgery or election meetings in the constituencies. This is a constitutional trap,
since these self-styled "Muslim leaders" are not elected and thus non
representative.
Most of the
local mosques, or so called Islamic cultural centres
favoured by the self-styled
leaders as " the correct" forum, are controlled by ignorant imams,
most of whom hardly speak English as
their simple and basic education stopped in Pakistan's junior Koranic madrasa were most of them
come from. Most of the so-called Islamic cultural centres
are heavily influenced by the political agenda of their mainly foreign
financiers, away from the control and assessments of British voters.
The irony is that this dialogue about the veil between the women who took it
and the MP they freely elected to represent them in parliament has been going
on for years. It is only when Mr. Straw published the account of the dialogue in
the local newspaper in
The
discussion went, in the line of long established democratic traditions, in the
appropriate forum, namely the MP constituency surgery one day a week where he receives his constituents,
listens to their grievances, deals with their problems, and raises, on their
behalf, questions in the Commons.
In Mr Straw's
case a third of his constituency voters are Muslims.
So, which of the two forums is more legitimate and representative when it comes
to discussing issues that touch voters' lives? The surgery of an MP who is
democratically elected to represent the citizens, Muslims, and others; or
Islamic centers God knows who finances them and controlled by unelected, often
ignorant mini-tyrants?
Mr. Straw
is a shrewd politician who knows that criticising Islam would be a political suicide leading
to the loss of his seat in parliament. Hence his raising of the issue was a
calculated step that enjoyed the support of the Muslims in his constituency.
The female voters whom Mr. Straw asked to think again about the face veil as a
barrier to a free face-to-face discussion removed their veils willingly, and
with great relief, as some of them told me. Some of them later said they
thought exposing their faces might offend a man like Mr. Straw as if a woman's
face was an ' offending' part of the body; but they were mislead into this belief
by ignorant imams of deception and preachers of hate.
Direct
parliamentary representation, like the British system, through constituency representation
is a legal contract between the government and the voter as an individual. This
contract does not include an agreement between the government and ethnic or
religious blocs. In contrast, a system of proportional representation like in
I hope that
all MPs will follow Mr. Straw's example and ignore these "Islamic"
organisations, councils, and gatherings, especially those that are financed
from abroad, because they have no constitutional legitimacy. The elected MPs
should appeal directly to hundreds of thousands of the silent moderate majority
of British Muslims and engage them in a dialogue as individual voters just as Mr.
Straw did. This will free the silent majority of British Muslims from the
intimidation of the vocal and loud radical minority and give them the
opportunity to express themselves freely away from boisterous shouting of an
unelected minority consisting of demagogues who seek a clash between Muslims
and non-Muslims, or mercenaries getting rich through foreign funds financing fictitious
Islamic cultural activities.
Mr. Blair's
government should stop dealing with non representative organisations. The government
can redress its breech of the conditions of the electoral contract by removing
all ethnic barriers and working towards harmony among all sections of British society , beginning with encouraging all schools and local
authorities to return to the old fashion school uniform, which is the request of
parents of all faiths. This is necessary to restore discipline. Quarter of a
century ago when Muslim female students went to schools in uniform and we never
heard of a head
covering, a face veil, or a jellabia. Today these
former female students are good mothers, professionals, and successful
businesswomen and even made it to the upper House.
I support a woman's right to put on a bikini or a veil providing that she is
truly free to chose, most importantly when she reaches the age of consent, and
is able to choose from among several available options.
Dose the indoctrination,
mental manipulation and brainwashing of girls under the age of five by cloaking
them in a Taliban-style Burqa or Niqab give them the freedom
of choice when they reach the age of consent, that is, if they reach it at all before
being forced into an arranged marriage?
Most of those who raise the slogan "a woman has the right to wear the
veil" are male salafi fundamentalists who reject
the principle of a person's freedom of choice to begin with. How many times
they issued a fatwa of death against a Muslim who dares to interpret a Koranic text in a way that contradicts their ideology, even
though Islam is clear in rejecting the role of a priest as an intermediary
between man/woman and God?
Ijtihad (
the personal own interpretation of the text) is the individual's sacred right,
while seeking a priest's advice is only optional pending the individual's own
wish. And, incidentally, there are no verses in the Koran that specifically
obliges a woman to take the veil or cover her face; she is only advised to
dress ' modestly'; an advice also extending to men. There is no need, from a
pure Islamic view point, for an intervention or a fatwa by characters like sheikh,
Al-Qaradawi, or anyone else.
The vocal radical
fundamentalist minority, within the Muslim minority, always accuse the West of
failing to understand the "Muslims' culture." But have they tried to understand OUR British
culture?
My wife, for example, wouldn't dream of sunbathing in her bikini in a park in
© Adel Darwish 2006
