LONDON, 16 October 2006 — British Local Government Minister Phil Woolas yesterday joined an increasingly bitter debate over the wearing of Muslim face veil by calling for the dismissal of primary school teaching assistant Aishah Azmi.
In an interview with The Sunday Mirror newspaper, Woolas said Azmi “should be sacked. She has put herself in a position where she can’t do her job. She is denying the right of children to a full education by insisting that she wear the veil. If she is saying that she won’t work with men, she is taking away the right of men to work in school. There are limits in a liberal democracy. There are boundaries in a democracy and this is one of them. It’s a boundary we can’t cross.”
Azmi’s lawyer Nick Whittingham called Woolas’ remarks “ill-advised” and asked him to withdraw them. He warned Woolas’ comments might influence the employment tribunal looking into the classroom assistant’s case. Azmi has taken legal action against Headfield Church of England Junior School for her suspension. On the BBC ‘Today’ program over the weekend, she defended wearing the veil as her religious duty and said pupils at the school had never complained about her wearing it. She said she would remove the garment, but not in front of male colleagues. However, it emerged yesterday, that she did remove her veil when she was interviewed for the job by a male governor of the school.
Kirklees Council, her employer, had asked Azmi to take off her veil in class because children had difficulty understanding her during English lessons. When she refused to remove the veil, she was suspended, pending a ruling by the employment tribunal. The Council strongly rejected the notion that the action had anything to do with Azmi’s religion.
Shahid Malik, MP for Dewsbury in Yorkshire where Azmi lives, appealed yesterday for calm. In an interview with the BBC, he warned that things were getting out of hand and that politicians on all sides and community leaders should have “a reality check”.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, the Labour peer, also joined in the fray.
He warned that there was “a constant theme of demonization of the Muslim community.” Politicians and journalists, he lamented, were jumping on the bandwagon. “Let’s be honest, there are people in our community who call themselves Muslims who have been threatening our national security, it is very unfortunate. The politicians and some people in the media have used this for demonization of the entire communities. But the problem is that the politicians and some people in the media have used this for demonization of the entire community, which has become a very fashionable thing today.”
Lord Ahmed said Muslims were trying hard to deal with extremism and were having a debate among themselves about the veil. “But the problem is we constantly have this interference from people who are saying to us ‘Spy on your children, don’t do this, don’t do that’. Well, you know, if there was another way of doing things within the community it would be much better than doing these sort of quick, headline-grabbing activities that the government keeps doing.”
The current debate started two weeks ago when Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, said that he had asked one of his constituency members who came to see him at his surgery to remove her veil, which she did. He then suggested that Muslim women not use the veil because it created separateness and could be divisive in British society. Since then politicians and commentators have weighed into the debate, many supporting Straw.
Home Secretary John Reid recently called on Muslim parents to be vigilant against radicalism in their children, two months after Tony Blair urged Muslims to root out extremism. Chancellor Gordon Brown and Solicitor General Harriet Harman have also expressed their support for Straw.
Opposition Conservative Party Shadow home secretary David Davis warned yesterday Britain risks creating a system of “voluntary apartheid”. Davis writing in the Sunday Telegraph, said “what Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether in Britain we are developing a divided society. Whether we are creating a series of closed societies within our open society. Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid. At the starkest level, we may be creating conditions in the recesses of our society that foster homegrown terrorism,” he said.
Even the Muslim-friendly London Mayor Ken Livingstone weighed into the debate, saying he would like Muslims to give up the veil, but adding that change could not be imposed from outside.
Others have come to the defense of British Muslims. Sunday Times columnist India Knight, in a hard-hitting article, compared anti-Muslim prejudice to anti-Semitism. “It’s open season on Islam — Muslims are the new Jews. And the idea that Straw’s divisive statement should not only be tolerated but adopted on all sides, as it has been with a kind of bullying relish, troubles me.” In an unrelated case involving a religious symbol, Nadia Eweida, an airline check-in worker, is suing British Airways (BA) for religious discrimination after she claimed she was forced to take unpaid leave after refusing to remove or conceal a small crucifix necklace.
BA said items such as turbans, hijabs and bangles can be openly worn “as it is not practical for staff to conceal them beneath their uniforms,” but that smaller items such as crucifixes on necklaces should be concealed.
Not surprisingly, Christian groups have branded BA’s ruling as “extremely offensive.” Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland secretary, told the BBC he was baffled by BA’s attitude. “Frankly, I think the British Airways order for her not to wear a cross was loopy,” he added.
