Islamophobia Watch

By Deborah Orr

Independent, 8 July 2006

I've been more and more troubled lately by the sight of veiled women swathed in heavy black, getting on with their everyday business in Britain. A woman on the bus the other day looked like she was auditioning for an Islamic version of the Blues Brothers, with the only part of her body uncovered by her drapes, hidden behind very black sunglasses. A little dressmaker's pin carefully threaded at her temple held the cloth very securely over her face.

A woman taking her children to school pushed a daughter in a McLaren, dressed prettily in Western clothes that she'd one day, presumably, be told to cover up in shame at being a female. The mother chivvied her boy along to school in the normal way – "cmon, hurry up, we'll be late" – which made the contrast between her actions and appearance all the more striking.

She was dressed outlandishly in an outfit that proclaimed her adherence to an ancient religious code that contradicts the law of this land in its denial of equality of opportunity to women and men, and advocates a life for women so circumscribed that even a small measure of independent life outside the home is impossible. How could this woman, constrained as she was, be expected to bring up a son and daughter who would thrive in a culture that has such different expectations of men and women to hers? The answer has to be – rather less than suitably.

Most bizarrely of all, a woman was seated in a restaurant at Selfridges in London's Oxford Street, with her husband and her son, both of whom were dressed in the expensive designer clothes that constitute a large part of the store's stock. She was dressed in black like the other women I'd recently noticed, except that she even had a little curtain covering the whole of her face.

She was eating with her family, except that as they tucked with gusto into their food, she had to use one hand to eat and the other rhythmically and modestly to lift her veil in order to spoon her meal into her mouth. Maybe – like other Muslim women, we're told – she revels in the fact that there are bright, stylish clothes under her veils, and make-up on her face. More fool her then, that she understands the pleasure of female display but still believes that her own small pleasures are something dangerous and incendiary, to be suppressed outside the privacy of her home.

Multiculturalism tells us that it is rude and insensitive to be critical of such garb, and that we must tolerate and even celebrate difference. But I'm afraid I find that the sort of difference these women proclaim by getting themselves up in these sinister weeds to be deeply offensive. I understand that in a free society they are entitled to dress as they please, just as I am.

But I also understand that in a free society I am at liberty to say that the values these outfits imply are repulsive and insulting to me. I find these clothes to be physical manifestations of outdated traditional practices, dating from early Islam and before, that oppress and victimize women, sometimes in the most degrading, cruel and barbaric of ways. Looking at women in these outfits, and comprehending some of the beliefs they imply, is awful and saddening.

According to the Somali-born feminist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the contrast between the veil and what goes on behind it is even more striking than apologists for the shrouding of women claim. Writing about the situation in the Netherlands – where Ali is so controversial that the latest set of headlines about her ended in the fall of the government – she points out that about 10 to 15 operations to "restore" the hymens of young women are performed every month, and that "the increase in abortions is directly related to the influx of Moroccan and Turkish women". She also points out that there are many women in refuges in Holland because domestic violence is a permitted Islamic practice.

Ali, a former Muslim and Dutch MP who campaigns for the emancipation of Muslim women, describes in her book The Caged Virgin (The Free Press) what the veil represents: "A constant reminder to the outside world of the stifling morality that makes Muslim men the owners of women and obliges them to prevent their mothers, sisters, aunts, sisters-in-law, cousins, nieces, and wives from having sexual contact."

I can do without this "constant reminder" when I'm shopping, taking the children to school, or at any other time. Ali argues that the last thing Muslim women need is Western "tolerance" of the stultifying cultural practices that set them apart from the modern world. I, for one, am more than happy to go along with that.