Isn’t there a middle ground? It makes sense that a woman should be allowed to wear a niqab by choice in public, where communication with strangers is not necessitated. But, does it make sense for women to cover their faces while teaching? I think standards have to be set for professions that are based on communication, including teaching, which ban clothing that covers the face. Facial expressions are just as important as the voice in teaching children.

Just take the court ruling today on a teaching assistant, Aishah Azmi, who wears the niqab as an example. Azmi can’t be an effective teacher if she hides such important visual cues as her face from her students. If you disagree with this remark, consider this.

Extensive research on early child development has demonstrated infants develop their social skills by watching adults in their surroundings. Imagine that a day-care assistant covers her face while attending to a three or four-year old. The child’s social development is at risk. As a teacher, you accept partial responsibility for a student’s learning.

I wonder what if teachers were allowed to wear hijabs, and not niqabs, to school? There is a line there because the former close off another line of communication and the latter does not. I think the Muslim community must make it clear where it stands on this issue.

Surely there is a legitimate difference here. Immigrants to Britain should expect change more to fit into the host community than vice versa. When in Rome …. is merely good manners & a community having decided move should alreadybe psychologicly prepared for change.

It may be that the 2nd generation have more trouble with this idea than the first.

And that new awareness makes us nervous of just why women choose to dress that way in the UK – we worry that within their communities they are not being treated equally… the police now have a dedicated ‘hounour killing’ team I understand, and estimate >100 such deaths of women a year.
For someone born in this country, and without experience of islamic society here or abroad, it’s really hard to understand the culture behind such killings.
But the fact that full-veiling says that it is women’s responsibility to cover up due to a male failing for uncontrollable lust, makes the ‘it’s just clothing’ argument very weak.

observer from kent

In another breath he’s extolling the virtues of seprateness when it comes to faith schools.

Could it be that separateness embodied by faith schools is not a subject Jack feels uncomfortable about because with faith schools cutting across other religions – including fundementalist Christian schools which finance the governments policy to privatise schools and sell them off to religious fanatics to teach creationism in this country – you cannot pin the separateness down to one particular group?

Why is Jack and others jumping on this bandwagon when just up the road from Jacks constituency the police have found the largest haul of chemical and explosive equipment and matrials ever actually found in a domestic property.

http://www.pendletoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=8&ArticleID=1806619

Why is Jack not talking about this? It could not possdibly be because this find – as oppossed to the non-finds we have become used to – was NOT the responsibility of Muslims but (allegadly) EX members of the BNP – i.e. White people.

Indeed, you cannot ev en find this in the news. Its what Orwell woul;d have recognised as a non event. Something that officially did not happen and is being airbrusdhed out so we can hysterically talk about an item of clothing worn by a small minority of a community because it’s ,their turn on the roster to be scapegoated and villified.

No wonder Muslims are pissed off with this constant fixation on every trivial thing about them whilst this Lancashire bomb factory and attacks on a Windsor mosque go virtually unreported and unremarked.

Would it perhaps be a good idea to try applying the samer standards to ourselves as we do to others or is that considered to be non-British now?

“Non-Muslim values”? What on earth are those? The “non-Muslims” I know range from people who hold sophisticated views on metaphysical naturalism, to those who hold to a very literal bibilical fundamentalism. They’re totally different people.

I really dislike the use of “non-Muslim”. Though I’ve used it myself in the past, I now try and avoid using it in either written or verbal format. It’s a totally bogus “classification”.

a: “Imagine moving to abroad to a Muslim country and claiming the right for you and your descendants to wander half-dressed through the streets. And be drunk as well if you feel like it.”

We’re talking about Britain and not “some foreign Muslim country”. Do keep up.

JS has not said that the niqab is the most pressing issue. This started in a the column he writes weekly in the Lancashire Telegraph. I too would like to see him discusss Iraq and Afghanistan; but he should also discuss other issues. This is one of those.

*When a politician stops caring what the voters think, and starts appealing to history or the US Senate or whatever as Tony Blair has started to do, then we’re in trouble.