.... Baroness Warsi says it would be a terrible thing if a passer-by thought about a woman wearing a burka: "That woman's either oppressed or making a political statement." But would either be so inaccurate? In London, I often meet women who wear the hijab, or headscarf, and never raise an eyebrow.
But the burka is different: it publicly isolates its wearer, rendering ordinary communication impossible, and references a specific strain of Middle Eastern fundamentalism which was rarely seen over here until relatively recently.
Journalists such as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, herself a Shia Muslim, have written courageously and passionately against the burka – "their veils are walls, keeping them in and us out" – and pleaded for a national conversation about it. Baroness Warsi could add to that conversation, rather than clothing it in sanctimonious generalities. [22 Jan. telegraph.co.uk] Read more
