dna edit: To wear or not to wear

Questions of diversity and inclusiveness bind the public sphere in any multicultural society. There is an inherent tension between the two ideas that may be subterranean at times but takes over the national conversation at others. That has been on ample display in the UK over the past few days with the resurfacing of a contentious debate over the right of Muslim women to wear the niqab — a veil that covers the entire face except the eyes -- in public.

Two incidents in particular have become the loci of the debate; an institute of higher education, the Birmingham Metropolitan College, reversing its ban on all face and head coverings including the niqab after vocal protests and Judge Peter Murphy of the Blackfriars Crown Court ruling that while a Muslim defendant could appear in court in the niqab, she could not wear it while giving evidence. Politicians across the spectrum, from Home Office minister Jeremy Browne to the Conservative MPs who introduced a Face Covering (Prohibition) Bill in June, have called for a national debate about banning the niqab in public — but that is entirely the wrong way to frame the issue.

By definition, a citizen’s rights in a democratic nation rub up against other citizens’ liberties as well as societal and legal constraints. That makes debates on issues such as this one a grey area where mutual compromise is essential.
State fiats that seek to impose a black-and-white solution are rarely helpful, a blunt instrument where a more nuanced approach is needed. France and Belgium have demonstrated the folly of the former with their misguided bans on face veils.

The British politicians who seem to consider their continental cousins worthy of emulation may frame their rhetoric in terms of liberal ideals and helping Muslim women break free from community oppression, but there is a distinct whiff of xenophobia about their stance. From this perspective, the niqab is too blatant a symbol of otherness. It disrupts the comfortable — and wrong — imagining of modern British society as an Anglo-Saxon preserve where those with different cultural and religious markers must erase them to assimilate. Ergo, it must go and Muslim women must be saved from themselves — even if it tramples on their individual rights in instances where women wear it by choice.

In all of this, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has come across as the most sensible voice in saying that it would be un-British to impose a general ban on the niqab, but that in certain situations, it may be justified to ask the wearer to remove it. He has the right of it. In situations where security is a concern, such as at airports, or where the veil hampers the functioning of an institution, such as in classrooms and the evidence box — establishing face-to-face communication essential in both contexts — it is reasonable to ask that the niqab be temporarily removed, and Muslim organisations that view it as an infringement on their rights are mistaken. In all other situations, it is no one’s business — not those who would compel a woman to wear a niqab and not those who would forcibly stop her from wearing one — save the individual woman’s to decide.