Pluralist society’s veil of hypocrisy

THE former British Foreign secretary and current leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, has suggested that Muslim women who wear the veil risk provoking a climate of fear and resentment that plays into the hands of the extreme right.

So, to appease them, are Muslim women to forgo the public expression of their culture and religious beliefs? Those who don’t understand Muslim culture might find the veil “frightening and intimidating”, Mr Straw added.

Surely that is their own problem and the way forward is to educate such people away from their ignorant prejudices. Both Straw and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, say they believe that removing the veil should not be compulsory, but it is clear they are preparing public opinion for the day when it will.

However, anti-Muslim sentiment is only the tip of a problem that runs much deeper.

What we increasingly see is the call to downplay any public symbols or expression of religious belief and identity. Witness the banning of the headscarf in France, the removal of crosses and other icons from public buildings such as hospitals in case they might offend some unspecified persons.

This is the pretence of the so-called pluralist society.

Almost any form of self-expression that does not involve religion — especially the three main monotheisms — is accepted, but we are told to practise our beliefs behind closed doors. The general excuse given is to avoid religious intolerance, as if trying to discourage all public displays of worship and affiliation was not intolerant in itself. By way of example we are reminded of all the deaths caused by religious wars.

True, but people have killed and died in the name of many ideologies — communism, egalitarianism and capitalism, to name just a few.

And nowhere in the west is the call to tone down naked capitalism in the name of mutual respect very loudly proclaimed, except by the heretics, and the full force of the law is applied against such people, as we have witnessed at Rossport and elsewhere.

Religion is not something to be confined to the private sphere. Those who suggest that it is fail to understand the nature and demands of religious belief. A person who is required to be something different in public than in private is being asked to live a kind of lie.

A society where the religious are barred from wearing veils or skullcaps but where nobody raises an eyebrow at almost insatiable levels of shopping or people proclaiming their sporting affinities on T-shirts, and so on, is neither democratic nor tolerant.

Nick Folley

36 Ardcarrig

Carrigaline

Co Cork