All the debate about Muslims and the veil has centred around women. What should they wear and how should they wear it? Perhaps it’s time we looked at what the veil tells us about Muslim men.

The Koran is little help. The verse cited in support of women wearing headscarves or veils is hardly specific: “And say to the believing women to cast down their eyes, and guard their private parts, and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward.” Islamic scholars have argued ever since about what precisely that means.

The presumption, though, is that immodest dress, however defined, will inflame men’s lust. But more extreme Muslim clerics suggest also that if it does, it is the woman who is to blame. Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, the Mufti of Australia, recently preached: “If you take uncovered meat and place it outside . . . and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

Unsurprisingly, this has led to a furore in Australia, with moderate Muslims speaking out against the Mufti, who finally agreed to take leave from preaching this week after suffering a minor heart attack. For, coming soon after several particularly nasty cases of gang rape by young Muslim men in Australia, the sheikh’s sermon seemed to be absolving the attackers from responsibility.

In the Sydney case to which he was referring, the 18-year-old victim was raped 25 times by up to 14 men. She hadn’t been walking, skimpily dressed, down a dark alley at 3am. She had been sitting on a train, wearing her best suit for a job interview and reading The Great Gatsby. Yet the rapists still called her a “slut” and an “Aussie pig”.

Of course only a minuscule fraction of Muslim men are rapists; the rest are upright, law-abiding citizens. But the premise of the dress code is still that men’s impulses cannot be controlled unless women hide themselves. Why should not Muslim men start to take more responsibility for their sexual desires, rather than expecting women to dress absurdly modestly, lest the sight of a bare arm or even a lock of hair should lead them to uncontrollable sexual urges?

The Mufti also preached that, in adultery, “Responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement.” Can’t the man be expected to resist the enticement? And what if he entices her?

If it were true that human beings were incapable of reining in their sexual desires, then men should dress modestly, too — otherwise we women would be tempted to jump on men in T-shirts or even those not wearing hats. That is what the Victorians believed: both men and women were covered head to toe for the sake of modesty.

It is the asymmetry that I object to in Muslim thought, the fact that men can wear what they like while women cannot. Are women supposed to be more evolved than men, more in control of their passions? In that case it seems odd that they are not even allowed to enter many mosques, let alone preach in them.

No, Muslim men seem to want to have it both ways. They want complete leadership of their community, with women’s voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals — feral cats in the Mufti’s sermon — when it comes to sex, unable to resist the charms of a woman with an uncovered head.

The issue ranges beyond the Muslim community. For it’s not much fun for the rest of womankind, dressed perfectly modestly in their own eyes, to know that, because their heads are bare or their calves exposed, many Muslim men will see them as tarts.

What is more, Western women are prepared to cover right up if they visit a strict Muslim country where local people would be offended by skimpy shirts or shorts. Yet there are still many Muslim women living in liberal Britain who continue to wear the full veil, hiding their face, whatever offence or alienation it might cause here. For Aishah Azmi, the Dewsbury classroom assistant, to refuse to uncover her face to a class of young children is as culturally insensitive as it would be for me to walk through a Middle Eastern souk in a pair of shorts.

It takes time for cultural change to take its course. I don’t blame Muslim men who were brought up in more traditional countries, such as Pakistan, for holding traditional views about women’s garb. But it is incumbent on the next generation, born and brought up here, to re-examine their parents’ prejudices in the context of this country’s values.

Young British Muslim men, surrounded by respectably dressed non-Muslim women who do not feel it necessary to cover their hair or swathe themselves in shapeless black cloth, ought to realise that such a society can exist without horrific levels of sexual predation. After all, in head-covering Pakistan, according to its Human Rights Commission, a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.

Whose fault is that?

Excellent vintage

I took our 15-year-old daughter to New York for a half-term treat last week. She had been begging to go since she was about 8, but I reckoned 15 was the peak age to appreciate the city’s fantastic retail opportunities.

With nearly two dollars to the pound and sale racks in every store, we found some brilliant bargains. But the biggest difference since my last trip was the number of “vintage” boutiques in the cool shopping areas.

Just as “investment” sounds so much better than “spending” from the mouth of Gordon Brown, so “vintage” sounds so much classier than “second-hand”. I asked an assistant in one shop whether all the jeans were second-hand and she looked at me as if I had just used the F-word.

The boutiques look incredibly stylish and have neither the musty smell nor the cheapness of Oxfam shops. But they are peddling the same product. Ethically they are one step down, as the money doesn’t go to charity. Still, you can console yourself that at least all those disposable fashions are being recycled.

Red alert

Red wine is the new panacea. As Dr Thomas Stuttaford keeps telling us, a couple of glasses a day should help us to live longer and healthier lives. And today we discover that it may also stop us putting on weight.

Hurray! Except that every time I drink red wine in the evening I have a terrible night’s sleep, waking in the small hours, thoughts in a whirl, unable to drop off again. So does my husband.

Do others share this problem? And is there anything we can do about it?

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