As Reform UK splits over a stale debate, Muslim women’s voices remain conspicuously absent
~ James Horton ~
Many had thought very little about Sarah Pochin upon her tight win in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election on May 1st. They know what they think of her now. Upon her first ever question in PMQs on June 4th, the new Reform UK MP seems to have split her party’s small collective of big-names, for the second time this year. And whilst the tiresome tumult of high-politics squabbling and fallouts have ensnared media attention, a much more important point has gone unnoticed: discussions about banning the headscarf used by some Muslim women is now swirling in even “respectable” right-wing circles.
Not even 24 hours passed and the Daily Express released a poll to their readership on the issue of a Burqa ban. Other outlets sent their swarm of reporters after Richard Tice to get a firmer grasp on Reform’s stance on the Burqa just a day following.
Since the question was posed, Zia Yusuf, party Chairman of Reform UK, has resigned and then rejoined, choosing not to explicitly state the reason for his momentary departure. Following PMQs, he called the choice to ask the question “dumb” because it “wasn’t policy”. Yusuf’s choice to dump and rekindle Reform has entirely swallowed the British media, as article after article is milked from a situation which has been largely kept close to Reform’s chest.
Actually, it is a wonder the topic of Burkas hasn’t had this much traction earlier, given how malignant it’s been on the European continent. One is made aware, as Pochin pointed out in her question, that in France the ban on full-face coverings was implemented in April of 2011, with Belgium and Denmark following suit in 2011 and 2018 respectively.
Muslim women’s clothing has been an issue on which the liberal and conservative centre has frequently aligned with the far right. The political furor it caused amongst Labour cabinet members in the mid-2000s is a landmark in the history of British social policy, whereas Boris Johnson’s now-infamous Daily Telegraph article comparing Muslim women wearing the Burqa to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” did not seem to hinder his ascension to Number 10 one year later.
The argument put forward by advocates of a ban is multi-pronged. On the one hand, these commentators and politicians raise “security concerns” about the Burqa’s potential to conceal identity—implying the constant threat of the Muslim person in British society. This was indeed the line of questioning that Pochin chose in PMQs, proposing the ban “in the interest of public safety”.
On the other hand, they attribute to Muslim women a lack of agency in their own homes and communities regarding the decision what to wear, alleging their subservience to tyrannical men who govern their lives. This line of argument was seen in Reform UK depute leader Richard Tice’s comment yesterday: “Let’s ask women who wear the burka, is that genuinely their choice?”—implying, of course, that it was not. It seems Tice is willing to discuss patriarchy only when it is a marginalised community that is subject to scrutiny.
In “A Dying Colonialism” Frantz Fanon discusses the European mindset and attitude towards the Muslim community and women’s place within it: “It described the immense possibilities of woman, unfortunately transformed by the Algerian man into an inert, demonetized, indeed dehumanized object. The behavior of the Algerian was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric”.
This notion, that the Muslim man is not only an external threat to the non-Muslim world but is an internal oppressor of Muslim women, is rife at moments like this. Far from a discussion about the nature of religious institutions and their role in female oppression, this is a blatant attack on the Muslim community, given a liberal lick of paint.
Notably absent from the conversation is the voice of Muslim women. There is no point denying that feminist movements in predominantly-Muslim parts of the world are facing more setbacks than those in much of contemporary Europe. But no current discussion in Britain seems to account for the agency of those individuals who for religion and/or social reasons choose to wear the Burqa, or another type of veil, or just a head covering. It seems evident from recent events in Iran and Kurdistan that Muslim women are very well capable of speaking for themselves on the issue. They certainly do not need posh white people in positions of exalted power and privilege to speak for them.
Image: VintageKat on Flickr
