In yesterday’s burqa post I mentioned the likely reason why Ashrafi’s wife-in-a-sack was present at the ceremony: “because she can be given the medal – later pictures show her with the medal round her neck – so that Ashrafi himself doesn’t have to touch a woman”.
Here’s a later, better picture with the medal in place. No male-to-female contact was required in the making of this image:
Ashrafi and the archbishop are smiling. We don’t know about the woman, but it seems unlikely. Eyes are downcast.
I also said that I now thought, on balance, that the burqa and other such face coverings should be banned. But it’s not going to happen, so there’s little point in dwelling on it. More realistically, we could perhaps hope for a time when such face coverings can be ridiculed – a much better and more British approach to the problem. And if this picture doesn’t do it then I don’t know what would.
British media, and especially the BBC, treat the burqa and niqab as sacred garments, never to be mocked. When Boris Johnson suggested in 2018 that, though he was against banning face coverings, women in burqas looked like pillar boxes, he was roundly condemned:
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been accused of Islamophobia after saying Muslim women wearing burkas “look like letter boxes”.
He said he was against bans on face-covering veils in public places, in his Telegraph column, but that it was “ridiculous” people chose to wear them.
The Muslim Council of Britain accused him of “pandering to the far right”.
Labour MP Jess Phillips said she would report Mr Johnson to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the comments were “particularly regrettable in this current climate, where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred is becoming worryingly pervasive”.
And so on. But they do look ridiculous. They need to be mocked, not pandered to.
Now the BBC is releasing old That Mitchell and Webb Look episodes on iPlayer – with some scenes cut, including scenes with a burqa – “11 sketches have been removed from the episodes, including ones involving a racist war re-enactment, a burqa-wearing makeover-show contestant and a “tribe” living in a garden centre.” Deemed too offensive. It’s a deferential slow creep towards acceptance of hard-line Muslim practices. Just like the archbishop.
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