We need to talk about the burqa

In her first intervention at Prime Minister’s Questions, newly elected Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin asked Keir Starmer if he would consider banning the burqa. It was a cleverly framed provocation. Given Starmer is so keen to strengthen the UK’s alignment with the EU, she said, will he, ‘in the interests of public safety’, follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and other European countries in banning this garment, which covers the face as well as the body.

It immediately sparked outrage, some of it from some unexpected corners. The outgoing chair of Pochin’s own party, Zia Yusuf, called it a ‘dumb’ question. He said that Reform MPs should not be calling on the prime minister to ban the burqa when it was not Reform’s own policy. (Yusuf has now resigned from Reform. His frustrations had been mounting for some time, but the internal row over Pochin’s question seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.)

But in the main, the outrage came from all the usual suspects. Lib Dem MP Joshua Reynolds reprimanded Reform, tweeting that ‘there’s nothing British about the government telling you what you can and can’t wear’. Former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf reiterated Reynolds’s point, but in an extra-patronising way: ‘Here is an idea – regardless of whether it is a bikini or a burqa, how about politicians don’t tell women what to wear?’ Coming from some of the most illiberal politicians and parties in the UK, these appeals to freedom were more than a little unconvincing.

Plus, the question of the burqa is not as simple as Reform’s critics are making out. This is not just one piece of clothing among others. It is one of the most profoundly misogynistic garments in existence. It is a mobile prison for Muslim women. By completely covering a woman from head to toe, it sends the message that a woman’s presence in public is shameful or dangerous. That our faces and even hands are so powerful and tempting to men that they must be hidden. That’s why forms of veiling are compulsory in some of the world’s most repressive, Islamist and anti-woman regimes. It is a garment that a fundamentalist reading of Islam forces women to wear.

The burqa is undoubtedly an offensive, socially corrosive symbol at odds with our shared civic norms. But that doesn’t mean it should be banned. If we go down this illiberal route, we weaken our ability to defend symbolic gestures and acts that others may find offensive – like burning a Koran. Banning the burqa could, perversely, empower religious zealots seeking to clamp down on freedom of expression in other areas.

Furthermore, such bans don’t work. They don’t aid integration, or strengthen people’s attachment to a nation’s way of life, let alone make people safer. And we know this from the experience of our European neighbours. France banned face coverings in public places in 2011, and parts of its Muslim population are arguably more alienated from the French mainstream than ever before – some violently so.

This shows that integration can’t be achieved through force. Quite the opposite. Bans and prohibitions tend to reinforce the narrative that Western societies are hypocritical and hostile to Muslims. If politicians are serious about integration and social cohesion, they have to win people’s hearts and minds and convince them of the value of a broader cultural, national project.

Yet, while I think it’s important to tolerate the wearing of the burqa, this doesn’t mean we should be shy about criticising it. Certainly not for fear of being accused of racism and Islamophobia. These lazy accusations were thrown at Boris Johnson when he jokingly likened burqas to ‘letterboxes’ and their wearers to ‘bank robbers’ in a Telegraph column in 2018 – despite the fact that his column was defending women’s right to wear them.

The accusations of racism and Islamophobia levelled at critics of the burqa are especially weak given it’s not a racial marker at all. Islam is a religion, not a race. And it’s not even universally accepted within Islam. In fact, the wearing of the burqa is a contested practice within Islamic societies. So much so that it has been banned in several Muslim-majority countries, such as Tunisia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Chad and Senegal. It is worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women. To criticise the burqa, or even to ban it, is not to criticise Muslims as a whole. It is to take a stance against a specific, regressive interpretation of Islam. There is nothing racist about challenging religious practices that violate our basic shared moral and cultural norms.

All this speaks to a wider problem with our supposedly liberal politicians and pundits, with their multiculturalist defences of the burqa. They claim to champion diversity, but in doing so they treat the most hardline and intolerant elements of a minority culture as if they speak for all members of that minority culture – as if the most vocal, fundamentalist Muslims represent all Muslims.

We saw a good example of this liberal-elite attitude towards ethnic minorities just this week. In a debate on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Muslim commentator and spiked columnist Rakib Ehsan defended the act of burning a Koran on the grounds of freedom of speech. Former Labour adviser Scarlett McGwire, a white, non-Muslim woman debating Ehsan, proceeded to criticise his position, saying that there should be no right to burn the Koran because of its impact on Muslims. This perfectly illustrates the liberal-elite mindset, one that reduces minorities to their most conservative, intolerant spokesmen.

It’s vital that we debate the burqa, just as we debate any other aspect of our shared civic life. To treat Muslim practices as off-limits only entrenches the idea that Muslims are a monolithic bloc of perpetual outsiders opposed to the mainstream. This approach only fuels segregation at the expense of social solidarity.

While I don’t agree with the idea of a burqa ban, at least Reform MPs have put the role of hardline Islam in public life up for debate. If only more politicians had the same courage.

Inaya Folarin Iman is a spiked columnist and founder of the Equiano Project.