The next time was when I went to Basra a few months after the war in 2003. I had been inside the country for about ten seconds when the driver asked me if I would mind covering up. Since, at the time, he was driving with great skill on a very dodgy road that was prone to kidnappings, I immediately began to cover up. He apologised but said that it made him feel more comfortable. In Basra, most women wore the full crow’s outfit when out in public.

It was August and incredibly hot (60C) and dislike of foreigners was festering by the day. Soon, the only safe way to work was swathed in black. Guy de Maupassant wrote that Saudi women in their 360-degree black cloaks look “like death out for a walk” but, in Basra, it kept me alive.

Jack Straw thinks that the veil makes people feel separate, but that depends on who you are. Certainly, when among Muslim women, it made me feel as if I belonged. But should it not always be up to a woman what she wears? Some women are told to wear the burka, others choose to. There is a world of difference.

There was one moment, in Basra, that summed it up for me. It was absolutely boiling and I had spent all morning in a courtroom. The electricity wasn’t working and so there was no air conditioning. The judges, who had on suits, where swimming in sweat. I was almost comatose. I took a break and went outside. There I saw a woman who looked an apparition: she was a black shade from top to toe (burka, veil, gloves, socks). There was no sign of humanity there except that, in one gloved hand, she held a palm fan which she frantically waved at herself.

I peered at her in disbelief. I said to a friend that, given the heat, her outfit seemed insane. “It’s probably not her choice,” he said. “Her husband will require her to do this.”

I slumped against the wall. I too was all in black except for my hands and my feet, which were in sandals. After a while, a man came over and pointed at my feet. I looked down and saw that my burkha had risen up a bit and that my feet and one ankle was showing. He said I had to cover them up. I did (there were riots that day in another part of town) but I hated doing it. For, with that command, he had taken away my freedom to choose.

FOR

“My belief also happens to be that covering the face is completely unnecessary in Islam”
Jemima Khan, convert to Islam

“We shouldn’t shoot someone for being honest”
Shahid Malik, Labour MP

“I totally agree with Jack Straw. I think it is completely unacceptable for these local Muslim ‘representatives’ to react how they are”
Yasmin Alhibai-Brown, Muslim commentator

“Obviously for us we are used to facial communication where we pick up signals from each other’s faces“
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham

“Jack Straw has shown remarkable courage in addressing an issue of critical importance”
Patrick Sookhdeo, of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity

AGAINST

“Misconceived. Many of these women find Mr Straw’s comments offensive and disturbing”
Lancashire Council of Mosques

“If someone in Jack Straw’s position can get away with asking Muslim women to remove their veils, what is to stop employers, bus drivers or shopkeepers?”
Zareen Roohi Ahmed, chief executive of the British Muslim Forum

“It is not women choosing to wear what they want that is sowing divisions in our society. It is poverty, racism and the despicable competition between the Tory and the New Labour frontbenchers over who can grab the headlines as the hammer of the Muslims”
George Galloway

“He’s trivialised a real and serious problem of . . . segregation”
Chatherine Hossain, Muslim Public Affairs Committee

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