Ever since Boris Johnson resigned as foreign secretary, it was generally assumed that there would — in time — be a dramatic clash with Theresa May. But it was thought that the Prime Minister would pick her battle over a point of principle, perhaps on Europe, rather than over a joke in his Daily Telegraph column. Boris was defending the right of Muslims to wear what they like in public, but added that he thinks niqabs look like letterboxes. The ministerial reaction has been extraordinary, and deeply unedifying.
Boris’s point was that, in banning the niqab, Denmark had passed a surprisingly illiberal piece of legislation — all the more surprising in that it has emerged from a country often viewed as a bastion of liberty. It is not, he argued, the business of the state to lay down the law on what individuals can and cannot wear in public, beyond the demands of public decency. While there are good reasons to ask people to remove head-coverings when security considerations demand it, such as in airports or public buildings, that is not the same as a blanket ban which has clearly been concocted to target a particular religious group.
But freedom also means freedom to mock this peculiar Arab fashion and point out that there is no scriptural basis for it in the Koran. In a recent Spectator article, Qanta Ahmed pointed out how much trouble she has explaining to non-Muslims that her faith requires modesty, but not a veil. It is the extremists who demand that women cover up, who depend on the ignorance of the West to think that such dress is a fundamental part of Islam.
There are plenty more Muslims who agree — for example Dr Taj Hargey, an imam and director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, who in 2014 launched a campaign for a British burka ban.
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