Don’t ban Boris …ban the burka!
People feel uneasy when a person in a burka enters a Tube carriage
Is Boris Islamophobic? Is the Pope a cisgender Venusian?
“Boris, he is Turkish!” exclaimed a group of Muslims with fraternal glee when I chatted to them on holiday 10 days ago. That was before the blond bombshell’s column in this paper on Monday in which he made a strong case for Britain not banning the burka as Denmark has just done.
Boris’s notably liberal argument was forgotten, however, as critics conveniently focused on his contention that it was “absolutely ridiculous… to go around looking like letter boxes”.
This was “dog-whistle politics”, according to Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who fretted about the sensitivities of “the community”.
Boris’s remarks “fanned the flames of Islamophobia”, said rent-a-spuriousoutrage MP David Lammy.
Mohammed Amin, Conservative Muslim Forum chairman, told the BBC that it was deplorable: “Boris spent half the article slagging off Muslim women.” He didn’t, but why let facts get in the way of a self-righteous soundbite?
Yesterday, cravenly caving, Brandon Lewis, the Tory party chairman, asked Boris to apologise. That followed Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister, saying on the Today programme that there was “a degree of offence” in Mr Johnson’s remarks. “I would never have made such a comment,” simpered Burt, and “many people would find it offensive”.
No, they wouldn’t, Alistair, trust me. Most British people don’t think Boris went far enough. Most British people agree with Manuel Valls, former French prime minister, that the burka and other ghastly life-restricting, humanity-obliterating shrouds are based on “the enslavement of women”.
Two years ago, a Yougov poll found that 57 per cent of the public supported a ban on wearing the burka in public in the UK, with just 25 per cent against. That view was held even more vehemently by women than men. I’m not surprised. Those of us who believe the full-face veil is a symbol of everything our grandmothers fought against in their struggle for equality are appalled to see an increase of women and girls wearing those ominous garments, cutting them off and making integration impossible.
The fact is, you would hear Boris’s remarks in any pub or shop. People agree that it is “weird and bullying” to expect women to cover their faces. “Letter boxes” is a milder description for a style of dress that belongs in the dystopian nightmare of The Handmaid’s Tale, not on British streets. People feel uneasy when a person in a burka enters a Tube carriage. (Failed 21/7 bomb suspect Yassin Omar tried to make his getaway wearing one.) People intuit that the burka is the hardline Islamists sticking two fingers up at our way of life, but it has become difficult to say so because of a combination of hardline Muslims and soft Corbynistas squealing “racist” every time legitimate concerns are raised. By cannily (and dishonestly) positioning the burka as an emblem of female “choice”, rather than male oppression, this unlikely alliance has effectively shut down discussion.
It must count as one of the bitterest ironies of modern times: thanks to Western liberals, there is some corner of an English town that is forever Saudi.
Where has all this abject tolerance and nervous silence got us? Consider the shocking reports recently that British teenagers are being forced to marry abroad, raped and impregnated, as the Home Office “turns a blind eye” by handing visas to their “husbands”.
Figures suggest thousands of victims were married off in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Somalia, before some were then used to permit criminals a route into the UK.
This cruel phenomenon was first exposed by Ray Honeyford, a Bradford middle-school head teacher, who challenged the forces of “anti-racism”, which preferred diversity to integration and signing up to British values. Mr Honeyford, as Roger Scruton said on his death, “was branded as a racist, horribly pilloried and sacked for saying what everyone now admits to be true”. That was almost 35 years ago. How many girls might have been saved had we heeded his warning?
Last year, dozens of brave women tried to block visas for men they were forced to marry, but an investigation showed that in almost half the cases visas were approved. Campaigners working with victims accused immigration officials of failing to take action against foreign abusers for fear of – guess what? – being called racist.
It was exactly the same institutional terror of calling out Muslim misogynist behaviour that allowed child grooming to go unchecked in Rotherham and Rochdale. So anxious have we been to avoid giving offence that, for decades, members of Baroness Warsi’s highly sensitive “community” have been allowed to make a mockery of the law, colluding with abduction, rape and illegal immigration.
After explaining to an undercover reporter how to get a victim’s husband into the UK without her consent, one solicitor said of a 15-year-old being dragged to Asia to marry a stranger: “If she is mentally or physically ready, then there’s no harm in it.” And Mohammed Amin has the nerve to call Boris Johnson “deplorable”!
Let me tell you what is deplorable. Deplorable is treating your daughters like prize heifers with no wishes or feelings of their own. Deplorable is allowing her to go to a British school until she is 14, then kidnapping her, depriving her of her rights and allowing her to be raped by some grizzled uncle because her baby will accrue valuable points on a visa. Deplorable is not allowing your women to learn English, the better to keep them slaves in the home. Deplorable is importing wives from your home country and keeping them isolated so your kids will never feel truly British, contributing to social tensions and the threat of terrorism. Deplorable is the abominable burka which, even as I write, young women in Iran are risking their very lives to cast off.
So, tell me this: for what exactly is Boris Johnson supposed to apologise? For eloquently rejecting a ban on the burka already adopted by France, Belgium, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. Are they all Islamophobic, too? Or might they have decided that a garment that has no theological basis in Islam is inimical to Western values of equality, respect and freedom and that defending those values is more important than offending “the community”? Those countries showed some balls and took a moral stand. So should Britain.
I see that the Labour MP Naz Shah joined the Boris Bashers yesterday, saying she had written to Brandon Lewis “to ask what action will be taken against Boris Johnson for his ugly and naked Islamophobia”. This is the same Ms Shah who, not long ago, shared a tweet that said: “Those abused girls in Rotherham … need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.”
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The policy of our complicit institutions, our Home Office, cringing politicians and liberal elite. Let girls be abducted and raped and dressed in black sacks, but say nothing to spare the feelings of the community, eh?
It makes my blood boil. If pointing all this out makes you Islamophobic, well, count me in. I’d rather be Team Boris than Team Naz. I’d rather stand up for innocent girls than genuflect to malicious, misogynist men. Oh, and three extremely loud cheers for our columnist who has, rightly, refused to apologise. Why say sorry for writing what the majority of Britons believe?
Don’t ban Boris. Ban the burka!