Much more sensible were the comments in June by another Muslim woman, Saira Khan [a runner up in the first series of The Apprentice], who says "the veil is simply a tool of oppression which is being used to alienate and control women under the guise of religious freedom..... Girls as young as four are wearing the hijab to school: that is not a freely made choice".
She also says: "Shockingly, the Dickensian bone disease rickets has reemerged in the British Muslim community because women are not getting enough vital vitamin D from sunlight because they are being consigned to life under a shroud."
Meantime, Hugo Rifkind says that women should have the right, but should not wear the burka, because it's "rude". Hear, hear! There is -- or was and ought to be -- a sense of common courtesy in any civilized society.
See Hugo's article below (I couldn't find this online, so it's a jpeg; click to enlarge)
And Carol Sarler, also in the Speccie, takes that thought a bit further by saying that the burka curtails her freedom. Right again. She also makes the point that if a burka is to stake a claim to modesty, it is "implicitly and even provocatively reproaching me and mine for immodesty". [I could add: it also reflects the males of our community who, apparently, cannot control themselves in the presence of an un-burka'd women].
How nice -- and common-sensical, and courteous -- it would have been if the idiot Baroness Warsi had said something along those lines; that women may have the right to wear it, but should not. And perhaps expressed some concern for the 4-year olds, and the "health and safety aspects" (rickets).
Instead of which she spruiks the same line as the "fundamentalist and hate preachers working in Britain...." (Saira Khan). Sad and stupid.
