OPINION
Sarah Pochin asked about the burka being banned (Image: PA)
Even eight years on I can remember clearly the outfits worn by the husband and wife leaving the restaurant I was just arriving at. They were strangers and I saw them for probably only 30 seconds but the way they dressed shocked me. The man was wearing a very trendy Carhartt T-shirt with jeans and expensive looking trainers.
His wife, however, was covered from head to toe, shrouded in black, hidden from the world. It is not as though I had never seen a woman covered up in a burka or a niqab before, but encountering a couple dressed so dramatically differently made me boil with anger. One in the latest fashionable Western clobber, the other forced to hide her face.
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Keir Starmer showed contempt for the Reform MP (Image: PA)
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This woman absolutely had not chosen to dress like this. How can I possibly know? Because the fleeting encounter happened in Saudi Arabia. No Saudi woman has a choice in how they dress or pretty much anything else.
Even visitors like me don’t really get a choice. I was wearing an abaya, a loose covering, after being told by an embassy official that I could, of course, decide not to put it on, but I would be treated badly by the men in the restaurant.
The poor official had also had to drive me to the venue because I was later finishing work than the rest of the group and there was no other way for me to join them.
When I entered the private dining area all of my female colleagues were wearing abayas too while the men sat there in their usual business suits.
We did it because it is polite to abide by a nation’s codes and culture. We were there to cover a visit by Theresa May, then prime minister, and blimey it was just such a relief when she carried out all of her engagements without covering her hair or even wearing the abayas the female hacks all were.
Mrs May had told us on the journey over there that she hoped that women in the country would “see what women can achieve”. She has always been a great champion for women.
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I recount this tale because a row blew up this week about whether the burka should be banned. Such a discussion should be rational and based on fact. But it is also clearly an emotional issue.
Seeing a woman dressed in medieval garb while her husband had his arms on show evoked emotion. Why did the poor woman have to be covered up? It cannot be anything other than oppressive. A male colleague later told how upset he felt watching a woman in a niqab on a flight trying to eat food.
There are videos online dedicated to giving tips on how to eat while wearing one. Suggestions include using straws to drink because using a cup can be “challenging”, ordering food that is easy to eat and trying to ensure the side you eat from is “against a wall”.
How can women be equal when they do not even have the dignity of carrying out the most basic of tasks necessary for staying alive without going to ludicrous lengths that no man has ever had to do.
Is it racist to raise concerns about the burka or is it just being a good feminist? Western female Muslims can, of course, theoretically choose whether or not to wear coverings and some may do. But it is an immediate physical symbol that puts a barrier up between them and the people around them.
The debate flared up after newly-elected Reform MP Sarah Pochin asked the Prime Minister if “in the interests of public safety” he would follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and “ban the burka?”
Pochin later said she had asked the question after a number of people had raised it with her. Starmer refused to even answer. His contempt for the woman asking was clear as was the contempt for the people she was asking on behalf of.
She is not alone in her concerns, either. A poll of Express readers attracted 31,000-plus responses – 96% in favour of a burka ban.
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When Nicolas Sarkozy banned the burka 16 years ago, he said face coverings were “not welcome” in France. Bans are for socialists. I believe in freedom.
But Sarkozy insisted the move had freedom at its heart. He said: "The problem of the burka is not a religious problem, it's a problem of liberty and women's dignity. It's not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement.”
Sarkozy said coverings made women “prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That's not our idea of freedom”. It is hard to disagree.