Mick Hartley

Something else I missed:

Muslim women will be allowed to wear a veil in court under new guidelines issued following a dispute last year.

The Judicial Studies Board’s Equal Treatment Advisory Committee examined whether women should be allowed to wear the full facial covering, the niqab.

Decisions should be made on each case and veils should not interfere with the administration of justice, it found.

It follows the adjournment of a case in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, after a legal advisor refused to remove her veil.

Judge George Glossop said he was having difficulty hearing legal executive Shabnam Mughal at the immigration court in November.

The guidelines say forcing a woman to choose between her religious identity and taking part in a court case could have a “significant impact on that woman’s sense of dignity” and could serve to “exclude and marginalise” her.

It doesn’t matter how many times Muslim scholars say that there’s absolutely no religious requirement in Islam that women should wear a niqab: these legal experts have decided that any expression of religious identity, no matter how eccentric, must be respected. Such is the power of religion. The requirements of justice, namely clear communication and the ability of everyone in court to form judgements, not only by what’s said but by facial expression, come second to a kind of cheap racism-awareness-course style of not wanting to offend anyone’s “sense of dignity”. That such face-covering in a public forum when interacting with others is totally offensive to a Western sensibility carries, of course, no weight.

That all this is done in the name of not wishing to “exclude and marginalise” these women is particularly ironic. Nothing could exclude and marginalise them more than dressing head to toe in a black gown with just a slit for the eyes. They’ve already excluded and marginalised themselves, very publicly and ostentatiously. That’s the whole point of wearing the niqab – to exclude and marginalise yourself from the supposedly decadent democratic social interactions that characterise Western society. A requirement to remove the veil in court is simply a requirement that they come and join the rest of us in the open social discourse and exchange of views that takes place in a British courtroom.

This should, of course, be a feminist cause, but here we are, in the 21st century, after those decades of female emancipation, arguing that women should be allowed to appear in court dressed head to toe in black with face covered, to protect men from feeling lustful urges – and nobody’s laughing. The sisters are, on the whole, silent.