I have been meaning for some time to write a column in defence of the hijab, on the same grounds on which I defended free speech last week. In a free country people should be able to wear what they like, just as they should be able to say what they like, so long as it does not imperil the life or liberty of others. My only reason for hesitating was the thought that I, as a non-Muslim man, am not self-evidently well qualified to judge what the hijab means to Muslim women. If a female Muslim journalist were to write about, say, the problems of jockstrap-wearing among rugby forwards, a similar objection might be made. But if we could only write about those things of which we have direct personal experience, there wouldn't be much journalism or literature left.
None the less, our respective articles' credibility would be significantly enhanced if that female Muslim journalist had talked to a wide range of jockstrap-wearing (or, perish the painful thought, non-jockstrap-wearing) rugby forwards, and if I had talked to a range of hijab-wearing and non-hijab-wearing Muslim women - which is what I hoped to do, and have not yet done. But since a debate has now been kick-started by another non-Muslim man, Jack Straw, and has raged for a week in the British media, I feel impelled to intervene without having done the kind of research I would normally wish to have done. Reader, you have been warned.
Straw's comments referred specifically to the veil that covers the whole of the face except the eyes (niqab), or even hides the eyes (burka), not to the many variants of the headscarf which are the more usual version of hijab in Britain. It would be absurd to pretend that this is not, in practice, a slightly different matter. The headscarf is no obstacle to human interaction, "face to face". I believe France is quite mistaken to ban adult women from wearing the headscarf (sometimes confusingly called "the veil" in French debate) in public offices. Returning to Heathrow from the United States the other day, I was glad to be greeted by one of Her Majesty's passport officials wearing a black hijab, covering everything except the face. Why not?
The niqab or burka is obviously a greater obstacle to communication - and even identification. In certain limited contexts it's reasonable for a liberal state to insist that the face-covering be temporarily removed: the taking of a passport photograph, for example, or that passport control at Heathrow (although these days the identity check might be more reliably done by finger and iris scans). Equally, it would be too much to expect of a schoolteacher to identify, by voice alone, row upon row of identically niqabbed schoolgirls.
Beyond that, the niqab plainly doesn't make a personal conversation easier. As Straw rightly observed, in his sensitively written article in a local newspaper, when you talk face to face you can almost literally "see what the other person means". Fareena Alam, the editor of the excellent British Muslim magazine Q-News, who wears a headscarf, tells me that she too feels uncomfortable talking to women in the niqab, because of that missing face-to-face contact. Yes, there's an issue here - though whether Straw was right to raise it in a newspaper article, prompting a predictable stream of if-they-want-to-live-here-why-can't-they-be-like-us whingeing from the Sun, the Daily Mail and assorted xenophobes anonymous, with no fine distinctions being drawn between niqab wearers and Muslims in general, is another question.
In any case, I don't think Straw was right to suggest to niqab-wearing women at his MP's constituency surgery that they might like to remove the face-covering, however courteously it was done. After all, he was in a position of power in relation to them. Presumably they had come to him with a problem they hoped he could solve. In that context, the distinction between a request and a command is somewhat blurred. Indeed "you might like to do X" is a familiar English syntax of polite command. Given that these women were availing themselves of a classic democratic channel of redress - and thereby demonstrating, in a far more important way than what they wore, a degree of integration into British society - I think he might just have worked a little harder to get their meaning.
And just how difficult is that anyway? I recently took part in a degree ceremony at Sheffield Hallam University. It was a heart-warming event. Many of the graduands were Asian British women - often, I was told, the first in the history of their family to go to university - and some of them came on stage to collect their degrees wearing a hijab. There was polite applause for each student and louder cheering for a few who were especially popular. One of the loudest cheers went up for a female student in a full niqab. Clearly her fellow students knew the woman behind the veil.
Suppose I had done the kind of research I would like to have done for this column. I could have talked to niqab-wearing women by email, on the telephone and in person, in English or through an interpreter. Yes, that 10 or 20% of extra, non-verbal communication would have been lost. Tough. After all, we're not talking romance or a life-long relationship here. We're talking getting things done and getting by in an increasingly diverse society.
The most tiresome argument in this whole debate is that the niqab makes white, middle-class English people feel "uncomfortable" or "threatened". Well, I want to say, what a load of whingeing wusses. Threatened by drunken football hooligans or muggers - that I can understand. But threatened by a woman quietly going about her business in a veil? As for uncomfortable: myself, I feel uncomfortable with a certain kind of pink-faced Englishman wearing crimson braces, a white-cuffed pinstriped shirt and a bow tie. Their clothing is a fair predictor of the views that will come out of their mouths. But I don't ask them to take off their braces.
As the the communities minister, Ruth Kelly, rightly said in a speech yesterday, "This is ultimately an issue of informed personal choice." Fareena Alam, who has talked to a great many of her fellow Muslim women, says most of the British niqab wearers she has met do so from a free personal choice. Those who are simply continuing the tradition of their lands of origin are a minority within what is anyway a tiny minority of British Muslim women; and those who are pressured or compelled to do so by husbands or fathers are a minority within that minority of a minority. I have not been able to verify this myself, so to speak statistically - and every single case of coercion, let alone of using the niqab to cover up evidence of physical abuse, is a case too many. But even a quick web search reveals some fascinating stories of educated young women freely choosing to put on the veil.
Why shouldn't they? What skin is it off your nose? As our society becomes more diverse, we will have to become more tolerant of diversity. We need to make a triage between the fundamentals of a free society on which we cannot compromise, matters that are properly the subject of intercommunal negotiation, and third-order issues best left to time and the quiet tides of social adaptation. Free speech belongs in the first category; the veil in the last.
Timothy Garton Ash