Cork's reaction to the Muslim veil

BAN the veil. Three little words, cloaked in emotion, packaged in pro-woman sentiment, yet every bit as fundamentalist as any demand that a woman wear a niqab (face-veil) in public.

There are good intentions behind calls to ban the veil: a commendable wish to halt the liberty-curtailing husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers and religious leaders who coerce women to conceal their faces in public. But there’s flawed thinking there as well, a naivety, as not all who wear veils are forced to do so, and a blanket ban denies Muslim women the basic human right to dress as they choose, and to express themselves, their beliefs and their religion as they see fit.

In some countries in which the veil has been banned, there has been a rise in hate crimes against Muslims. Figures released by the National Observatory of Islamophobia show that in 2011 the number of anti-Muslim attacks in France rose by 34% on 2010 — the year in which the ‘burqa ban’ was introduced.