Backlash as Boris says women in burkas look like letter boxes

BORIS Johnson last night faced a back- lash for saying Muslim women wearing burkas look like ‘letter boxes’ or ‘bank robbers’.

The former foreign secretary said he was opposed to a ban on wearing the face-covering veils in public places, but dismissed the garments as ‘absolutely ridiculous’.

The Muslim Council of Britain accused him of ‘pandering to the far-Right’, while the Conservative Muslim Forum demanded he apologise.

Mr Johnson’s remarks came after Denmark last week followed France, Germany, Austria and Belgium in banning face-coverings in public places.

Mr Johnson said he felt ‘fully entitled’ to expect women to remove face coverings when talking to him at his MP’s surgery, and said schools and universities should be able to take the same approach if a student ‘turns up ... looking like a bank robber’.

‘If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you,’ he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

‘If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran. It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.’

Businesses and government agencies should also be able to ‘enforce a dress code that enables their employees to interact with customers’, including by allowing them to see their faces. But he added: ‘Such restrictions are not quite the same as telling a free-born adult woman what she may or may not wear, in a public place, when she is simply minding her own business.’

A total ban would boost radicals who claim there is a ‘clash of civilisations’ between Islam and the West, he said.

Mohammed Amin, chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum, said Mr Johnson’s choice of language was ‘very unfortunate’.

He told BuzzFeed News: ‘He could apologise and he could take a Trappist vow and just stay silent for the next 12 months.’

Imam Qari Asim, an imam who sits on the Government’s Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group, accused Mr Johnson of ‘fanning the flames of Islamaphobia’. The Muslim Council of Britain said the remarks were ‘particularly regrettable in this current climate, where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred is becoming worryingly pervasive’.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘The long-standing government position on this is clear – we do not support a ban on the wearing of the veil in public.’