Lifting the veil: do we all have to dance to Ukip's tune?

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/sep/20/zoe-williams-veil-niqab-personal-choice

Version 0 of 1.

Watching Jeremy Hunt on the telly on Thursday, with his carefully reasonable face, explaining how he couldn't possibly adjudicate on the matter of the niqab, and doctors who wore the niqab, and that was why he had written to the GMC, I finally knew the pain of an actor reaching the end of a terrible play after an incredibly long run. Not this stunt again. Every time they play these hackneyed, Ukip-thumping tunes, do we seriously all have to dance?

This is an incredibly niche issue: the number of women who wear the niqab at all are "pretty few and far between", said Shahin Ashraf, the Muslim chaplain at the University of Birmingham. The number of niqabis who are required to give evidence in court (<em>pace</em> the landmark ruling this week that witnesses had to remove the veil to give evidence) is minuscule; ditto, the number of doctors who wear a veil and won't ever remove it. It's like having a week-long political debate about whether goths should be forced to remove their piercings when they go through airport security. But of course it's not like that, because that's not really what it's about: "they talk about the most different Muslims that they can," said Rita Chadha, from Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London, in Ilford, "so that they can make Muslims seem incredibly different." She's not a Muslim, but from the centre she runs, sees maybe 200 a week, of whom one is in a niqab.

Chadha and I went round Ilford together, talking to women who wore headscarves, and one in a veil – the common theme is that everybody described the decision to wear a niqab as a personal one, a matter of opinion, essentially. The idea of the niqab as a calculable statement of religious strictness, which overhangs this debate – veil wearers are the most devout, and therefore, it is rarely said but usually assumed, are either extremists or oppressed by other extremists – just isn't taken seriously by people who actually wear hijabs. Fatima has worn a niqab, when she lived in Yemen, but here just wears the scarf. "In the end, this is a human freedom, to believe what you believe in. I don't wear a niqab because, in the Qur'an, he said, 'take the middle way'. But it goes very deeply in our religion that the private body is for the husband."

She sees no sense in the row, certainly not the judicial one – "everyone wearing a veil will take it off if there are only women present. You could get a woman to check a witness's identity, it's really no big deal."

Rahima, who was 37, just wore a headscarf, but her sister and one of her nieces were niqabis. "It's a personal choice, that's how they want to portray themselves. She doesn't think badly of me that I don't cover up, and I don't think badly of her. I've never felt any pressure." Aneesa, 17, wears a scarf but no niqab; nobody in her school wears a niqab, she's never met a doctor wearing one, and she says, quite patiently and kindly, "it's just a personal choice. People aren't usually under pressure."

Nevertheless, of course there are women for whom the niqab is a statement of conservatism, but it's much more complicated than religion. As Ashraf explains, from what she sees in Birmingham: "There are women from south Indian communities, and that's a very conservative approach, but it's not really faith based, it's more about keeping a connection with the conservatism of their culture. The others are converts.

"I was trying to persuade one to speak to media today, and she said: 'I've converted and this is my way of cleansing myself. I want to keep away from talking to [western media].'

''And then there are other niqabi women who think they shouldn't have to explain how they veil and why they veil. Which I understand, but it's difficult, because unless they express their own opinions, which they don't want to do, it's hard for us who only wear a hijab to express an opinion for them.''

Chadhu and I met a woman covering everything but her eyes, who wished to remain anonymous. "I've started wearing it in the last two years. It wasn't a piece of cake, to be honest. A lot of my family felt I shouldn't be doing it, but we should have our own choices. It's been really, really different. People react really unpleasantly. I went on a school trip with my son, and an older English man was muttering at me, you know how you can always tell what people are saying? Anyway, I stood up to let him sit down, and he went: 'Woah, she can speak English.' " (Chadha was doing a hypothetical impression of him on the way back to the office, muttering "if there's one thing I hate more than a terrorist, it's a terrorist with manners.")

"I think they've got nothing better to do," the anonymous veil-wearer continued, of the government's announcement. "They're just wanting to keep themselves busy." The double tragedy, apart from this pointless vindictiveness, is that they have got better things to do – they're just not doing them.

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.