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'What not to wear is a question of equality'

Tuesday, 30 June 2009 21:25

Helen Martin in The Scotsman commenting on the burqa and equality:

‘If we are going to rank clothes by offensiveness I would put fat girls in crop tops and low slung minis or sausage-skin jeans way above the burkha. . . which is not to say I don't find them both equally ridiculous.

‘It [burqa] is however, foreign. Which leads me to its major flaw. Dark-skinned people require more exposure to sunlight than fair-skinned northerners in order to produce sufficient quantities of Vitamin D. It is no coincidence that rickets is primarily a condition suffered by Asian and Arab immigrants in the UK (particularly women and children) who compound what is, for them, too little sun by wearing clothes that are simply too covering, the worst of which is the burkha. It may be that woman want to wear it, or it may be that their men impose the silly garment on them. Neither situation would respond to any sort of legislation other than that formed by Muslim leaders.

‘If the only people who suffer from the burkha are those who wear it, why should it bother the rest of us? They choose, they take the consequences.

‘Facial communication is necessary and desirable in a whole host of occupations, from teaching to medicine to customer care. It is as daft to employ a burkha-wearing woman as a teacher in a British school or a nurse in a hospital as it is to employ her as a welder with a blowtorch. Regardless of what colour she is – and there are a considerable number of white, native British women who have become Muslim and now wear the garb – any woman has to accept that insisting on a particular style of dress limits her job prospects and opportunities.

‘The problem is that exercising that little piece of common sense when it comes to the burkha results in accusations of racial or religious discrimination.

‘If a girl insists on wearing a skimpy bra top and a micro mini and having a tattoo of the devil on her arm, she's not going to get a job in a funeral parlour. She's not an ideal recruit for a bank, nor would she make the grade as a prison officer.

‘A bloke who defends his right to wear the kilt all day and every day isn't going to make a great swimming pool attendant.

‘I'm happy to defend people's rights to wear what they like from a Borat mankini to a burkha. . . providing they accept the consequences of that decision. That goes for all of us. It's not discrimination, it's equality.’

Comments

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John - What are Muslim values of quality?

|2009-07-02 17:33:59

May be you'll have more support when people don't doubt your intentions and values. People are worried when you say human rights you don’t mean human rights but imposing yourself everywhere in the world. Below is form Pakistani law, I don‘t ever see Engage complaining about it. This speaks for itself.

ORDINANCE NO. XX OF 1984 PART II - AMENDMENT OF THE PAKISTAN PENAL CODE (ACT XLV OF 1860) (3) 298C...

Any person of the Quadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves ‘Ahmadis’ or by any other name), who … invites others to accept his faith, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.