When Iram Hussain, a 28-year-old IT teacher at a Manchester secondary school, takes classes of GCSE boys they can see nothing but her eyes. She wears the full niqab, an all-enveloping, black burqa-like garment that leaves only a letterbox slit as a window to the world.

Her teaching experiences make her think Jack Straw has got it wrong when he says the veil hampers communication and makes better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims more difficult.

“I’ve been teaching for 10 years and there is more to communication than facial expression,” said Hussain. “Jack Straw is missing the point; community integration is not about clothing. You could conform on clothing but still be a very angry person. Some people just don’t know how to communicate.”

The leader of the House of Commons is the MP for nearby Blackburn, where more than 25% of the population are Muslims, mainly of Pakistani origin, and women draped from head to toe in niqabs are not an uncommon sight. He revealed in his column in the Lancashire Telegraph last week that he had got into the habit of suggesting that veiled women constituents visiting his surgery sessions remove their covering because “I felt uncomfortable talking to someone ‘face-to-face’ who I could not see”.

Hussain said: “Just because he prefers to see my lips and nose, unless it was for the purposes of identification, I wouldn’t give in to that preference.”

She is one of a generation of “post 9/11” young Muslims, reinventing their Islamic practice for life in 21st-century Britain. Hussain grew up in a “so-called Muslim” household in Burnley — her mother never wore a veil — and started “covering” six years ago.

“My religion is definitely not through my culture,” she said. “I am more British than Pakistani. I prefer chips over curry. But I needed to understand Islam and Islam requires you to dress modestly.”

She laughed when asked whether her husband had influenced her: “It’s a purely personal decision. I don’t cover in female company, but in front of other (ie, non-family member) men, yes.”

The debate stirred up by Straw has left white feminists in a quandary. Julie Burchill, the writer and broadcaster, said: “I don’t blame women born into Islamic families for wearing the veil. They are prisoners, pure and simple; and as the growing rate of Muslim ‘honour’ killings in this country proves, the slightest show of spirit on their part often provokes a violent response from the very men who should be their champions and protectors.”

Burchill draws the line at veiled white Muslims, however: “When I see a dumb, white bitch convert wearing Islamic dress, I feel massive revulsion and contempt, as they have actually chosen enslavement.”

Who is right? Are Muslim women enslaved and why do they wear the veil? Are Straw’s comments, as Westminster cynics suggest, a political stunt prompted by ambitions for the Labour deputy leadership, or has he dared to tackle a problem of deep significance to a traditionally tolerant society that needs to confront the consequences of the resurgence of Islam? There are various types of Islamic veil — and different reasons for wearing one. Straw’s Muslim constituents are a long way culturally from the “blinging burqas” who haunt the designer stores of Knightsbridge in west London. These shrouded women from wealthy Middle Eastern families cast off their shapeless garments at home to reveal couture clothes, high-heeled shoes, ostentatious jewellery and generous amounts of make-up.

Blackburn is a long way culturally, too, from the north London comprehensive where an all-Muslim girl band took part in a “battle of the bands” two weeks ago. Their exuberantly raucous rock was unimpeded by the fact that the lead singer was wearing a hijab scarf and the drummer’s face was hidden by a veil.

Controversies in the past few years over the right to wear female Islamic dress in schools have centred on the hijab — banned in schools in France — and the ankle-length jilbab tunic. The uncompromising niqab — which is banned in Turkey and Tunisia — escaped debate until Straw lighted on it.

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