THEY call a spade a spade in Yorkshire. No PC nonsense up theer, tha knows. In Calderdale, if they think a burqa looks like something out of the Ku Klux Klan, they soddin’ well say so.
Well, Councillor Alan Clegg does, anyway. He and a number of other councillors are proposing Calderdale Council staff be banned from wearing burqas and niqabs – both of them potentially all-enveloping garments that obscure much of the person you’re talking to, in often intimidating ways, and in the name of a bonkers religion.
“Council workers are often facing the public and I don’t think the public feels comfortable or safe facing someone they essentially cannot see,” Councillor Clegg 
told the Halifax Courier. “It’s a matter of common sense. How would you feel if a social worker turned up at your door wearing something that resembled a Ku Klux Klan outfit?”
As you might expect, Muslims resent this.
Amjid Mahmood, secretary of the Muslim Association of Calderdale, said many Muslims would protest at the proposals. “If a person wishes to express their faith through dress, which causes no harm to anyone, then for the council to approve such action would be an infringement of their rights,” he said.
Right, so it’s OK to feel intimidated. It’s OK if the fact that a person’s face is hidden makes her impossible to identify. How are vulnerable people talking to bin-bag-clad social workers going to feel?
The matter is likely to be discussed by the council’s equality subgroup in January.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
November 18th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Burqas and niqabs are not meant to intimidate like the KKK robes.
The only people being scared of burqas are the culturally ignorant.
It is wrong if a government forces women to wears them & it’s also wrong for a government to force women not wear them. It should be up to the woman herself to make up her own mind. Yes I know there is intolerance within Muslim communities against those women who chose not to wear the veil just as their is intolerance against women who wear “immodest” clothing in other religious communities.
November 19th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
It seems to me that focusing on the niqab risks turning a general problem into a particular problem and therefore associating it irretrievably with prejudice.
The question should not be “Is it fair to ban the niqab in the workplace?” but “Does the employer have a right to set a dress code?” In all the places where I have worked, there was a dress code. For example, in one place, men were required to wear “business shirts” and ties. Looking around at the clothes worn by employees, including uniforms, semi-uniforms and “approved” garments, it appears that a de facto right does exist for employers to specify how their employees should dress.
In the name of multiculturalism, we have got into the habit of making concessions to people for “religious” reasons. For example, in one workplace, I was not allowed to timetable my Jewish colleagues to work on Friday afternoons. We had perfectly good intentions in making these concessions but now, suddenly, they have come back to bite us.
Personally, I do not think that an employer has to make a case for banning a particular style of dress in the workplace. All s/he need do is to specify the acceptable dress code and send home anyone who breaches it.
At the moment, employers do feel obliged to make a case for banning certain forms of dress, especially if these have religious or ethnic significance. They therefore cannot escape accusations of racism, religious intolerance, etc. because by making a case they inevitably invite the accusations.
The way forward, it seems to me, is to make a clear job description for every job (e.g. specifying that check-out staff will have to sell all of the goods stocked by the supermarket not just those items they personally approve of) and a clear dress code and get the candidate to sign assent to these before finally being employed.
Pressure groups would still try to claim these rules were racist, etc. but the accusations would be hollow. The message would be “You have been informed what the job entails and it is up to you to take it or refuse it.”
November 20th, 2007 at 5:30 am
The burqa should be seen like the swastika–extremely distateful. Banning it is a major step back for religious freedoms. They already did this (or tried to, I read about it a few years back) in the Netherlands, making up some bullshit about a “threat to public security” posed by the veils.