BRITAIN: A senior British cabinet minister said yesterday it would be better if Muslim women did not wear full veils, inflaming anger among the country's Islamic community and sparking heated debate on social integration.
Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw provoked a mixture of anger and derision on Thursday after he said the wearing of veils made community relations "more difficult" as they acted as "a visible statement of separation and difference".
"I'm not talking about being prescriptive," Mr Straw, Britain's foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq war in 2003, told BBC radio yesterday. "But with all the caveats, yes I would rather [women did not wear full veils]."
He said he had received a positive response when he asked women to take off the garments when they came to see him about issues in Blackburn, the northern English town with a 30 per cent Muslim population which he represents in parliament.
However, Mr Straw defended Muslims' right to wear headscarves, (hijabs), unlike the French government which banned them from state schools, sparking protests across the Islamic world.
While British newspapers and commentators applauded Mr Straw's stance, which he said was designed to provoke a "mature debate", many Muslims reacted with anger.
Local group the Lancashire Council of Mosques described his comments as "ill-judged and misconceived" and said many women found them "offensive and disturbing".
The question of how the Muslim community could be better integrated into mainstream British society has been a major political issue since last year's suicide bomb attacks on London's transport network by four British Islamists.
In many British towns, communities are divided, with little or no contact between ethnic groups. Commentators fear this is fuelling tension and extremism.
Two weeks ago home secretary John Reid, a possible successor to prime minister Tony Blair, vowed to prevent Muslim extremists setting up "no-go" ghettos.
On Wednesday, Conservative opposition leader David Cameron said many communities were growing up living "parallel lives" and that only better contact would overcome differences.
Mr Straw said: "Communities are bound together by informal chance relations between strangers. That is just made more difficult if people are wearing a veil."
Britain is home to about 1.8 million Muslims but Rajnaara Akhtar, chairman of the UK Protect-Hijab organisation, said fewer than 5 per cent of the women wore a full veil.
"It shows a fundamental lack of understanding," she said, adding that the government had failed to address the real issues of unemployment and poor education that had led to areas becoming "ghettoised".
"Surely that is where his attention should be focused, rather than on a tiny minority of Muslim woman that choose to cover their face out of religious conviction." - (Reuters)