The niqab is not just a fashion statement

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/niqab-not-just-a-fashion-statement

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Gaby Hinsliff would have us believe that she is tolerant of cultural fashion choices (Stop this bullying over what we can and cannot wear, 26 September). However, she wilfully ignores what it means to cover schoolgirls’ faces: the face-veil is no more just “a scrap of fabric” than a gag is, it is an iconic manifestation of an ideology which holds that women’s faces are analogous to their genitals as a source of shame which must be hidden from all men other than their husbands.

If it is a fashion choice, it is that of Isis, the Taliban, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab, who – along with our Saudi allies – brutally enforce this particular deletion of women from public life. Tolerating misogyny is one thing, but it is depressing that a certain patronising mindset seems to cover its own liberal face so it cannot see and challenge it.Natalie SeeveLiverpool

• Gaby Hinsliff deserves praise for picking up on human interaction methods as they apply to disabled people, but in discussing the niqab she picked the wrong disability. David Blunkett’s blindness would not disbar him from communicating with a niqab wearer, but Jack Straw’s deafness does.

When a constituent covered her mouth, he could not lip-read what she said and therefore he was unable to do his duty to her as an MP. Hinsliff reports on a petition which claims that what you wear “does not affect anyone else”. All full-face coverings deny deafened people the chance to engage with the wearer, so the school should be treating the matter as one of equality and discrimination, not against women’s empowerment, but as an offence against all hearing-impaired people. Deaf people’s numbers, incidentally, are likely to increase as people live longer.John StarbuckHuddersfield