POST BOX JOKE HYPOCRISY

Re: “Going postal at Boris”, (PostBag, Aug 18).

Immediately following the publication of Boris Johnson’s comparison of the burqa to a letterbox, the left wing British newspaper The Guardian naturally pushed its way to the front of the self-promoting and “virtue signalling” mob clambering aboard the passing bandwagon, and described the comment as a “tasteless newspaper column joke”, and inevitably labelled Boris with the increasingly meaningless accusation of “Islamophobia”.

However, back in 2013, the same newspaper published an article by one of its journalists, a Muslim lady by the name of Remona Aly, who made the following amusing observation, or joke, one might call it: “Since the burka eye opening slit has been called a letterbox, and with the privatisation of the Royal Mail, seize the moment to set up an independent mobile mail service, AKA the Burqa Post”.

No cries of outrage from all quarters, no accusations of Islamophobia, no demands for Remona Aly to resign, no grovelling apology from The Guardian.

Maybe in “multicultural” Britain it’s acceptable for a Muslim woman to poke gentle fun at her own kind, but it’s forbidden territory for a white Christian male.

The old quip tells us that “Hypocrisy is the glue that binds society together”, but it doesn’t always work like that.

Robin Grant