Burkas and a deafening silence from feminists

On a London bus, I noticed a woman in a niqab — leaving only her eyes on show — get on with a man. He took two Oyster cards out of his wallet, touched in on the pad and put them back. Perhaps she drives a car and has a career of her own, but I wouldn’t bet on it. This woman was not even allowed to control her own Oyster card. d.

and she is far from unique. u e. Like a huge number of Muslim m women, she is condemned d to a half-life, entombed in the victim-blaming black cloth of a medieval mind cast. In one of the most exciting cities in the world, she and others like her are sequestered away, often at the behest of fathers, brothers ers and husbands.

Many are enraged about Boris Johnson comparing women in burkas or niqabs to letter boxes or bank robbers. He is to be investigated by the Tory Party for his comments, despite the insistence of at least one imam that he was telling the truth: the head covering has no Koranic legitimacy. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson says wearing a niqab or a burka is the same as wearing a crucifix, but is that entirely true? I see it not as religious devotion, but as male subjugation; a symbol of oppression, not fervour. and while both sexes can, and do, wear a crucifix, only women are bundled behind the veil. Meanwhile, while feminists rail about the gla glass ceiling, gender pay gaps, w women on the boards of c companies and being g greeted with ‘hey guys’. Yet this terrible injustice happens to thousands of women in our midst and th there is barely a squeak abo about it. Jus Just like there were few voices raised in i outrage when grooming gangs of mainly Pakistani men were raping vulnerable white girls. Or the recent revelations that young Muslim girls are ‘disappeared’ abroad to be married off by their families. no, let’s all fume about Boris instead. Even if, underneath all this bluster, he is telling the awful truth.