‘Burkas no dif ferent to wearing a crucif ix’

Davidson leads fresh criticism of Boris but Tories are accused of ‘siding with minority’

MUSLIM women who wear burkas should be defended in the same way as Christians who wear a crucifix, a senior Conservative said yesterday, as the Tories faced a growing row over Boris Johnson’s comments on face veils.

Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said debate over burkas and crosses was “the same argument but in a different faith” and that the former foreign secretary’s remarks were offensive.

Jeremy Wright, the Culture Secretary, also said it was wrong to label face veils “oppressive”, but the Tories were accused of losing touch with voters as a poll showed 60 per cent think burkas should be banned in public places.

A former deputy mayor of London of Pakistani descent said the Tory leadership was siding with “a minority fringe of Islamists” who labelled any criticism of Islamic practice as Islamophobia, while other prominent Muslims said the burka “deserves to be ridiculed” and that Mr Johnson had nothing to apologise for.

There were also claims the burka row was being used by Remain-supporting MPS to attack Mr Johnson in an attempt to kill off his leadership ambitions, after Dominic Grieve, an archeurophile, said he would quit the party if Mr Johnson ever became leader. Lord Sheikh, the Muslim Conservative peer, called for “severe action” against Mr Johnson, and Lord Pickles, the Remainsupporting ex-communities secretary, said Mr Johnson had been given more “slack” than other Tories would be.

However, there were accusations of hypocrisy after it emerged that some of Mr Johnson’s critics had made disparaging comments about the wearing of burkas in the past.

Mr Johnson said burkas were “oppressive” and made women look like “bank robbers” or “letter boxes” in his column for The Daily Telegraph on Monday, in which he argued against a ban on wearing them. The Prime Minister told him to apologise, but he made it clear on Tuesday that he did not feel any need to do so. He made no further comment on the matter yesterday. Ar- guments over Mr Johnson’s choice of language gave way to a wider debate yesterday over whether Britain should follow France, Denmark and Belgium in banning burkas in public.

Some Muslims argue that the Koran requires women to dress modestly and cover their heads and bodies, but opponents of the burka say there is no specific requirement in Islamic texts for women to wear them, and accuse Muslim men of forcing women to cover themselves from head to toe.

Ms Davidson, who is widely seen as a future Tory leader, described Mr Johnson’s comments as “gratuitously offensive”. She said: “If you use the analogy of Christianity, would you ever write in

The Telegraph that you should have a debate about banning Christians from wearing crucifixes? It’s the same argument but it’s in a different faith, so why are the parameters different for one faith and not the other?”

She added that it had not gone well for men “through history” when they made “sweeping statements about what women should or shouldn’t wear”.

Asked by the BBC about Mr Johnson saying face veils were oppressive, Mr Wright replied: “That’s the sort of language I think we should try to avoid.”

Lord Sheikh said the party should remove the whip from Mr Johnson, adding: “Why not? He’s not a super-human being, he’s a member of the party.”

Mr Grieve added: “I don’t regard him as a fit and proper person to lead a political party and certainly not the Conservative Party.”

A poll by Sky News, however, suggested the Conservative leadership was out of step with voters. It found that 60 per cent of people did not believe Mr Johnson’s comments were racist, with the same proportion supporting a ban on the burka, even though Mr Johnson is opposed to one.

Maajid Nawaz, the reformist Muslim and head of the Left-of-centre counterextremism think-tank Quilliam, said the burka deserved to be “ridiculed”, as it was “the uniform of medieval patriarchal tyranny”. “It victim-blames

women for their beauty. Where this is enforced it symbolises violent misogyny. I’m not advocating banning this monstrosity but I refuse to defend it. It deserves to be ridiculed, not the women inside it.”

Meanwhile, Dr Taj Hargey, the Imam at Oxford Islamic Congregation, suggested Mr Johnson did not go far enough and should “not apologise for telling the truth” in a letter to The Times.

One senior Conservative warned that Mrs May’s response could prove to be an “own goal” for the party because “it sets the bar incredibly low for future investigations”.

Munira Mirza, Mr Johnson’s deputy when he was mayor of London, said: “There are many people in this country who are uncomfortable about the burka. There is a minority fringe of Islamists that pipe up every time someone tries to criticise any part of Islamic practice that call this Islamophobia.

“The establishment including the leadership of the party are siding with them… are saying you cannot use this kind of language.”

She added: “There is a political fight here. People who frankly couldn’t care less about the issues that Muslim women face are piling into Boris because Boris said it... Ken Clarke described it as bag. I don’t remember Anna Soubry, Sayeeda Warsi and others calling for his resignation.”

Remain-supporting Ms Soubry, a Tory MP, who said she “never saw an armed robber who looked like a woman in a burka”, had described wearing a burka as “a peculiar choice”.

The Labour Party also faced accusations of hypocrisy after citing Mr Johnson’s comments as evidence of Tory Islamophobia, after it emerged that Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, had said in the past that she would not want someone wearing a burka to look after her children. Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London, has previously called face veils “insidious”.

Conor Burns, an ally of Mr Johnson, accused Tory colleagues of jumping on a “bandwagon”. Nadine Dorries, the Tory backbencher, said: “You cannot expect a society that celebrates gay pride and embraces gay marriage to live harmoniously when condoning the suppression of women forced to cover up, segregate and become invisible.”