So should nuns be allowed to wear hijabs?
Does the above image offend you? Do you believe that there is no place in our country for people who cover themselves so thoroughly? Do you fret, perhaps, that the women in the picture have been brainwashed into accepting an oppressive belief-system?
Let's try a little experiment. When we discuss the hijab, let's think of it as a traditional coif and habit. Are we really saying that in this country, where we have traditionally lifted the freedom of the individual above the power of the collective, the state should tell us what we're allowed to wear?
Freedom includes the right of free association. Societies and institutions should be allowed to set any membership obligations they please. Schools should be entirely free to demand uniforms, employers to impose dress codes. If a shopping centre wants to ban hoodies or niqabs – or crosses or yarmulkes, come to that, if it's mad enough to want to turn customers away – that is its right. But British ministers do not tell their people how to dress. This is something, I'm pleased to say, that differentiates us from Iran or Saudi Arabia or France.
"But this isn't about freedom," a hundred Tweeters tell me, "it's about a culture war". I'm often struck by how many people think they can make something true simply by declaring "this isn't about X, it's about Y", but leave that aside. What's odd is to see elements of the authoritarian Right joining with elements of the politically correct Left in seeking to treat minority groups differently before the law.
It ought to be a simple, obvious premise: we are allowed, in the normal run of things, to wear whatever we like. There may sometimes be special circumstances: when passing through airport security, say. And some of the free associations that set their own rules will inevitably be state-funded (universities, for example) or state-run (law courts). But the general point holds: provided you avoid indecent exposure, you can dress as you please.
The only reason we're having this discussion is that, a generation ago, chunks of the public sector became obsessed – I don't use that word lightly – with ethnicity. Virtually every issue was reinterpreted as a struggle against racism. Because the most visible symbols of religious devotion (hijabs and Sikhs' turbans) tended to be worn by people who were not white, chunks of the Left forgot what ought to have been their guiding principle: equality before the law. Instead – like, paradoxically, the apartheid authorities in South Africa – they started categorising people. Some large corporations followed suit. British Airways, keen to allow hijabs but not bulky crucifixes, got itself into the ludicrous position of decreeing that religious items might be worn by employees if there was a "mandatory scriptural requirement". What constitutes a mandatory scriptural requirement? The question has divided theologians for centuries. It has led to schisms, even wars. But don’t worry, we now have an ultimate arbiter: British Airways.
More absurd still are the people (many of whom will be commenting below) who, while professing their dislike for Islam, also claim extraordinary expertise in precisely what that faith is supposed to demand from its adherents. Now they, too, want to classify us by law.
I thought we had got past all that when we repealed the Test Acts. How sad to see it creeping back in.
So long and thanks for all the clicks
November 30th, 2014 22:43
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